Attended the meeting at Faneuil Hall, for the consideration
of reconstruction of the Southern States. Dana made a statement to the effect
that voting was a civic, not a natural, right, and built up the propriety of
negro suffrage on the basis first of military right, then of duty to the negro,
this being the only mode of enabling him to protect himself against his late
master. His treatment was intended to be exhaustive, and was able, though cold
and conceited. Beecher tumbled up on the platform immediately after, not having
heard him, knocked the whole question to pieces with his great democratic
power, his humor, his passion, and his magnetism. It was Nature after Art, and
his nature is much greater than Dana's art.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards & Maud Howe Elliott, Julia
Ward Howe, 1819-1910, Large-Paper Edition, Volume 1, p. 226
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