As the movement for the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment grew around the country, a large gathering of African-American military and naval veterans met in convention in Philadelphia with delegates from at least ten states and the District of Columbia. William D. Mathews of Kansas was elected as convention president. Resolutions thanked the nation for the steps taken so far towards emancipation but also held that "the denial of the right of suffrage to all American citizens regardless of color was a blasphemous denial of the divine principle on which all governments are founded" and advocated strongly the rights of black veterans to the franchise. (By John Osborne)
"United States," The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1867 ... (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1870), 734.
