Changed sentiment

This is entirely for my own recollection. The signs of a changed faith in suffrage and democracy are evident throughout writings in the late 19th century. I am trying to document some of these, to show the change in attitudes of the time. Here is John Goadby Gregory, writing in defense of Wisconsin's early enfranchisement of black men through a referendum (and court case).


In John G. Gregory, "Negro Suffrage in Wisconsin," Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Art and Letters, XI (1898), p.101

The day has gone by when suffrage was glowingly regarded as an end. We recognize it now as merely a means toward an end. There are among us intelligent people who grumble at the results - or what they conceive to be the results - of universal manhood suffrage in the United States. Did our fathers blunder when by extending the franchise they sought to expand the limits of human freedom? My purpose in this paper has been to present fact, not to blossom into theory. It is a fact, I take it, that the liberal suffrage provisions of our law are a noble monument to a glorious faith in the approximate perfectibility of humanity. As a native and a citizen of Wisconsin, I am proud that at an early stage of her career, and in advance of nearly all of her sister commonwealths, she turned into the broad path in which they have seen fit to follow.

Good for him.