Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 25

23. Joel Prentiss Bishop, Secession and Slavery: Or the Constitutional Duty of Congress to Give the Elective Franchise and Freedom to All Loyal Persons, in Response to the Act of Secession, 2nd ed. (Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1866). (112 p.)

Monograph urging the extension of the suffrage to recently emancipated slaves as the central element of the emerging plan for Reconstruction. “In this pamphlet I showed, at a time when the people of this country were unwilling the truth should appear, that it was the duty of Congress, plainly pointed out in the Constitution as expounded by the Supreme Court of the United States, to pass an act the effect of which would be to give both freedom and the elective franchise to the slaves of the seceded states. That duty is still unperformed, and Congress is about to assemble once more.”