49. James F[ord] Rhodes, .Negro Suffrage and Reconstruction,. Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings (December 1904): 465-67.


Lecture criticizing the decision to grant suffrage to African Americans during Reconstruction. The speaker quotes passages from his history of the United States history as well as Louis Agassiz.s correspondence, in which the famous anthropologist argues that people of African descent were .not now fit to have conferred upon him political rights.. Rhodes also quotes at length from John A. Andrew.s speech to the Massachusetts legislature, in which the governor questions the wisdom of black suffrage.