The Daily Phoenix

Let Enfranchisement be General.

The New York Tribune is of opinion that Governor Brownlow, judging from his last speech at Knoxville, will go for general enfranchisement in that State. We doubt it, but take occasion to extract two paragraphs from the Tribune's article on the subject of enfranchisement:

Mr. Sumner has now a bill before the Senate, proposing the enfranchisement of the blacks throughout the State where they are still subjects only, not practically citizens. The object is emphatically good; we trust that the means will be found fit, and the power invoked relevant and adequate. But why should not the mover so widen the scope of his proposition as to provide for a general enfranchisement of our countrymen North and South, who are now subject to a rule wherein the consent of the governed is, so far as they are concerned, ignored. Why should not Mr. Sumner, so long and so honorably identified with the championship of black emancipation, and whose plea for universal suffrage is the broadest and most sweeping ever yet made in Congress or Parliament, honor himself yet more by pleading the right of all Americans to a voice in the Government which they are all required to support and obey?

That men who are rebels have no right to control the Government they were seeking by force to overthrow, is a self-evident truth. It is by no means so clear that it is even wise to perpetuate the disfranchisement of large classes because they were rebels years ago. The Tories of our Revolution became, not long after its triumphant close, fellow-members of the body politic with those who had discomfited them in deadly war; so of Shays' insurrectionists in Massachusetts and whiskey rebels in Pennsylvania. May we not reasonably hope that the whole American people, with at most few and definite exceptions, will be enabled to take part in the choice of our next President and Congress? Is not the enfranchisement of all our countrymen who need it the dictate of National safety as well as National peace?