Potent Quotables: Every Vote Counts
Since the founding of the U.S., writers and speakers have stressed individual agency and the importance of the vote. Match the quotations on voting rights with the appropriate speakers.
1. "This Government is menaced with great danger, and that danger cannot be averted by the triumph of the party of protection, nor by that of free trade, nor by the triumph of single tax or of free silver. That danger lies in the votes possessed by the males in the slums of the cities, and the ignorant foreign vote which was sought to be bought up by each party, to make political success."
Carrie Chapman Catt, 1894: Some white women suffrage leaders were willing to use class, ethnic, and racial arguments to bolster the case for granting white women the vote. In 1894 (a year of extraordinary class conflict that included the national Pullman and coal strikes), Catt addressed an Iowa suffrage gathering and maintained that women’s suffrage was necessary to counter "the ignorant foreign vote" in American cities and protect the life and property of native-born Americans. See text here.
2. "Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1892: Speaking to fellow suffragists on the occasion of her retirement as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Stanton repeated this speech before a U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary and a U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage. The speech was published in the Woman's Journal and 10,000 copies of the text from the Congressional Record were reprinted and distributed throughout the country.
3. "I am not . . . in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them . . . to intermarry with white people."
Abraham Lincoln, 1858: During his debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln referenced his concerns with race, reflecting prevalent nineteenth-century attitudes. At one point he even advocated black settlements in Haiti, Central America, or Africa. While his primary purpose was to preserve the Union, he issued the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves, forever changing the construct of race in the United States. See the special edition of the Organization of American Historians' Magazine of History, vol. 21:4 (October 2007) for more information on Lincoln, race, and slavery.
4. "It is true that a strong plea for equal suffrage might be addressed to the national sense of honor."
Frederick Douglass, 1867: In January 1867, Douglass appealed to Congress for impartial suffrage. He believed that restrictions of rights for blacks restricted rights for all people, and that the nation needed the great potential strength located in African Americans, to share the burdens of society. Here is the full text of his speech.
5. "The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men."
Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965: When the Voting Rights Bill was signed on August 6, 1965, Johnson addressed the nation from the Capitol Rotunda, calling the historic day a triumphal victory. He then charged the Attorney General to file a lawsuit against the constitutionality of poll taxes, and the Department of Justice to work to register voters who were previously denied the right. "I pledge you that we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy." See full text here.
6. "Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."
John Quincy Adams: In 1824 the presidential race included five candidates: Speaker of the House Henry Clay, Secretary of Treasury William H. Crawford, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, and John Quincy Adams. After Crawford suffered a stroke, there was no clear favorite. No candidate had a majority of the electoral votes. According to the 12th Amendment, the election went to the House of Representatives to vote on the top three candidates: Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. As Speaker of the House, Clay voiced his support of Adams, who shared a similar platform. The House elected Adams, who became the only U.S. president who did not win the popular vote or the electoral vote.
7. "Voting is the most precious right of every citizen, and we have a moral obligation to ensure the integrity of our voting process."
Hillary Clinton, 2005: On February 17, 2005, U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) presented comprehensive voting reform legislation to make sure that every American is able to vote and every vote is counted. The Count Every Vote Act was introduced but did not pass.
False. Moses Fleetwood Walker, an Oberlin College star, played for one season, in 1884, with the Toledo team of the American Association, before he was forced out the following year because of racism.
False. Robinson, although generally regarded as an excellent player, was not seen as even the best player on his team, the Kansas City Monarchs. Rickey signed him because of a combination of qualities--not only his proven and potential talent and skill at the game, but also his personal integrity and his likely strength (as Rickey saw it) at withstanding the abuse that Rickey thought Robinson would face on and off the field for breaking the color barrier in major league baseball.
Sylvester Graham (1794-1851) was the most renowned food reformer of the 19th century. He wrote The Philosophy of Sacred History Considered in Relation to Human Aliment and the Wines of Scripture. Graham was known by the nickname of "Doctor Sawdust" because of his promotion of the virtues of bread made with whole-wheat ("Graham") flour. His followers set up "Graham hotels," like small, provisional utopias, where guests following Graham's dietary regimen could board with like-minded progressive reformers.
Business partners Henry D. Seymour and William Heston of Ravenna, Ohio, registered the Quaker Man as a trademark in 1877 (the first trademark registered for a breakfast cereal). They made Quaker Oats, steel-cut oats packaged in 2-pound paper boxes with cooking directions on the outside, an innovation for the time. The name "Quaker Oats" would seem to tie the product to the owners' religious views, but Seymour said he chose it simply because he found an encyclopedia article on Quakers and decided that the qualities described there—integrity, honesty, and purity—were ones he wanted to link to his company's product. Heston credited himself with the name, saying that while walking on the streets of Cincinnati, he had seen a picture of Quaker William Penn, whose clothes and character inspired him to choose the name. Nevertheless, either way, it couldn't have hurt to conjure the figure of a religious Nonconformist, waving a scroll inscribed "Pure," on the package of a breakfast cereal. Potential customers would have associated it with the other Progressive health food items, especially wholegrain breakfast foods, that were being urged by food reformers descended from Protestant Nonconformists and Inner Light advocates.
Ellen Gould White (1827-1915), the Seventh-Day Adventist prophetess, had a vision in 1863 in which the relation of physical health to spiritual health, the body to the spirit, was revealed to her. She set up the Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek, as well as other sanitariums. She published the pamphlet, Health, or How to Live. Don't trust the appetite, she said, which has become perverted, or the dietary customs of society. She counseled eating grains, nuts, fruit, and whole-grain flour.
In 1898, they founded the Sanitas Food Company, to sell health food via mail order. In 1906, Will established the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company. When J. H. sold to W. K. his interest in the corn flakes company, J. H. used the proceeds in 1911 to create the influential Race Betterment Foundation, in order to prepare the way for a super race of "new men," and to set up a "eugenic registry" that evaluated couples for breeding based on their genetic pedigrees in order to stop the propagation of "defectives." 
Danforth then contacted "Dr. Everett Ralston," whose real name was Albert Webster Edgerly (aka Edmund Shaftsbury or Shaftesbury) (1852-1926), a debarred lawyer, con man, cult leader, self-appointed health expert, and elocution teacher, who had founded perhaps the world's first multilevel marketing scheme. This was the Ralston Health Club, a Washington, D.C.-based, national membership health products club, with 800,000 members in 1898.The Club required its members to pay large amounts for a series of books that told the secret of how to live for 200 years by collecting and preserving in the body the occult force of "Glame" and learning to speak his invented "Adam-Man tongue." Danforth secured "Dr. Ralston's" endorsement of Purina Wheat, and added his name to Danforth's company—Ralston-Purina. Danforth's cereal became Ralston Health Club Breakfast Food, then Ralston Purina Wheat, then Instant Ralston. 