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Love. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} + + .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .right {text-align: right;} + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none} + + ins.correction {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin solid gray;} + + .spacer {padding-left: 2em; padding-right: 2em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Disfranchisement of the Negro, by John L. Love + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Disfranchisement of the Negro + The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 + +Author: John L. Love + +Release Date: February 21, 2010 [EBook #31333] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stephanie Eason, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h3>OCCASIONAL PAPERS No. 6.</h3> +<h3>The American Negro Academy.</h3> +<h4>Rev. ALEXANDER CRUMMELL, Founder.</h4> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h1>The Disfranchisement of the Negro.</h1> +<p> </p> +<h3>By JOHN L. LOVE.</h3> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h4>Price 15 cents.</h4> +<h4>WASHINGTON, D. C.<br />Published by the Academy,<br />1899.</h4> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<h2>The Disfranchisement of the Negro.</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“A Constitution formed so as to enable a party to overrule its very +government, and to overpower the people too, answers the purpose +neither of government nor of freedom”—Edmund Burke.</p></div> + +<p>The assault, under the forms of law, which is being made upon the +political rights of the Negro is the symptom of an animus which has its +roots imbedded in the past. It does not mark a revival, but rather the +supreme desperate effort of the spirit of tyranny to compass the +political subjection and consequent social degradation of the black man. +Its provocation does not consist in any abnormal or perilous condition +in southern communities arising from a numerical preponderance of +Negroes. It is not made to meet a merely temporary emergency with the +intent to return to the principles of republican government upon the +advent of intelligence and wealth to the Negro. Indeed, the very intent +and purpose of the assault is to prevent such an advent, in so far as +human ingenuity and tyrannical violence can do so.</p> + +<p>It can not find its justification in a necessity of averting by radical +measures any imagined perils to social order which might arise from the +political domination of ignorance; for the spirit which prompts the +assault has ever fostered ignorance and endeavored to perpetuate it. In +fact, the assault is so iniquitous in its conception and is being +executed with such wicked and violent disregard of political morals and +human rights, as by comparison to render almost beneficent the +realization of the perils which the imagination of the assailants +pretends to fancy.</p> + +<p>There may be those who see in this assault nothing more than a supreme +effort of a benign civilization to save itself from utter ruin. It is, +however, to be borne in mind that the apostles of this civilization +which is of a peculiarly local type, have ever asserted that its +maintenance and future glory are inseparably connected with the +subjection of the Negro. Always they have spoken the language of +tyranny, which, in spite of its embellishments and jugglings, amounts to +this: the social well-being and political privileges of the Negro are +inconsistent with the economic interests and political ambitions of a +few southern white men. Into this language all of the feigned social<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> +perils and political nightmares of southern planters and politicians +easily resolve themselves.</p> + +<p>There may be those who indulge the hope that the final triumph of this +assault will have a salutary effect upon the social status of the Negro. +Their hope is due in no small measure to their ignorance of the history +of the character, spirit, and dominant purpose of the assailants. That +history furnishes the best key to an understanding of the present +assault upon the political rights of the Negro.</p> + +<p>Forty years ago the slave power plunged this nation into war for the +avowed purpose of perpetuating Negro slavery. Alexander Stevens, on his +return from the convention which had erected the Southern Confederacy, +addressing a large assembly at Savannah, uttered the following +significant words:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating +questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as +it exists among us—<i>the proper</i> status of the Negro in our form of +civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and +the present revolution.”</p></div> + +<p>Referring to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and the leading statesmen at +the time of the formation of the Federal Constitution, that Negro +Slavery was in violation of the laws of Nature, wrong in “principle, +socially, morally and politically,” he continued thus:</p> + +<p>“Those ideas were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption +of the equality of races. Our constitution (the Confederate +Constitution,) is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas. Its +foundations are laid, its corner stone rests upon the great truth that +the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to +the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”<small><a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">[1]</a></small></p> + +<p>It has become the rule to frown upon any and all references to the +circumstances and causes that produced the Civil War. This is true +especially of the men and women who upheld the cause of the Union as +against Secession. Naturally magnanimous, they have been at great pains +to avoid in their public utterances any references to the “late +unpleasantness” which might in any way wound the sensibilities of the +excessively sensitive South. Certainly, nothing can be more sincerely +desired than the utter eradication of the passions and animosities that +were evoked by armed conflict. But to ignore the fundamental cause and +motive which led the South to precipitate the war, with a view to +seeming not to be influenced by sectional prejudices is pushing +magnanimity to the verge of vapid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> sentimentality—a folly in which the +South, in so far as its attitude toward the Negro is concerned, has in +no sense shared.</p> + +<p>The doctrine of “the proper status of the Negro,” is as consistently +maintained by the South in eighteen hundred and ninety-nine as in +eighteen hundred and sixty, when it was made the shibboleth of the +Slavery Party and the tocsin of war; and there can be no proper +consideration of our present Negro Problem without regard to this +historical doctrine.</p> + +<p>The Southern Confederacy is now a political myth. In its attempt to make +Negro Slavery its corner stone, it carved the gravestones of more than a +million men. Upon the proclamation of peace and universal freedom, the +nation’s joy was without bounds. In the intense enthusiasm of the moment +over the “new birth of freedom,” and the overthrow of the slave power, +the doctrine of the “proper status of the Negro” seemed to be eternally +repudiated and the agitations relating to it seemed indeed “forever +settled.” But in the throes of its joy, there suddenly dawned upon the +nation the fact that the problems pertaining to the Negro had, because +of freedom, become more stupendous than even the question of slavery had +been. Henceforth the Negro Problem was to test severely the integrity of +republican principles.</p> + +<p>This was the critical period of the history of the Negro in America. +Within almost the twinkling of an eye, by an exigency of one of the +world’s greatest wars, his status had been suddenly changed. The slave +became a free man by the dispensation of Providence and against the will +of his master.</p> + +<p>A free man, yet penniless and homeless. A man of toil, but one whose own +and whose ancestral toil had created a material and social grandeur +which now mocked at his poverty and arrogantly denied him a share in its +blessings. A free man, but ignorant, the greatest curse imposed by his +former status which had contributed to the enlightenment of others. A +freeman, but helpless in the face of an impending persecution. He, whose +labor had contributed to the comfort and social happiness of +others,—who, while they were testing on scores of battle fields their +power to rob him of his freedom, was caring for and protecting their +wives and daughters and furnishing the sinews of the unholy war—was now +at the mercy of those who had gone forth to battle with the cry that, +“slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal +condition.”</p> + +<p>The Thirteenth Amendment became the law of the land through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> the travail +of war. But the war had sapped the Nation’s strength, had cost nearly a +million lives and created a debt of three billions. Weary of strife and +vexation, the nation was fain to leave the settlement of the problems, +to which the new status of the Negro had given rise, to those among whom +he was to live, i.e., to his former masters.</p> + +<p>This was indeed a critical period in the history of the Negro race in +the United States and the lessons of this period are exceedingly +important in the light of the present attack upon the political rights +of the black man.</p> + +<p>In recent discussions of the merits and wisdom of Negro suffrage, this +period is as a rule strangely overlooked. The assertion so commonly +made, that the conferring of the right to vote upon the Negro was a +colossal blunder, evinces the extent to which this period has been +ignored by those who make it, or else their remarkable ignorance of the +history of Negro suffrage. Political prejudices and the blind zeal and +opportunism of those who have discovered some “sure cure,” for the +Negro’s ills have aided much in the work of discrediting Negro suffrage. +Some have ignored the facts to such an extent as to assert that Negro +suffrage was the result of vindictiveness on the part of the +Northerners, who wished both to humiliate the South and to perpetuate +the power of the Republican Party. The trouble with this assertion is +that it imputes too much to Northern sagacity. What the nation, through +the agency of the Republican party, did was to enact the Thirteenth +Amendment and thus to make President Lincoln’s conditional proclamation +of freedom an unconditioned part of the organic law. The extent of its +revenge was to insist upon the incorporation of this principle of +freedom into the old Slave Constitutions of the South. This was the +terms of surrender and having accepted this, the South was left alone +(the boon it has always craved) with full power to deal with the Negro +as tenderly as it saw fit. The Negro was left a “sojourner on +sufferance” in the great republic which he had assisted in saving, and +to the sweet charity of those who had sought to destroy it for the +purpose of binding him with unbreakable chains.</p> + +<p>By the acceptance of the terms imposed, the rebellious states placed +themselves in a position of great responsibility and great opportunity. +The responsibility of the old South, the South of slavery and rebellion, +was to properly adjust itself to the new conditions of freedom and +inseparable union, its opportunity was to prove to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> nation the claim +it so often and so boastfully makes that it is the Negro’s best friend +and is disposed to treat him fairly.</p> + +<p>Did the South rise to its opportunity? Did it treat liberally and kindly +those freedmen who as slaves had created its material wealth and many of +whom as soldiers had with the irony of fate helped to keep it from +separating from the Union of which it is now proud of being an integral +part? Did it hold out to them the promise of gradual citizenship, and, +in order that this citizenship should be intelligent, establish schools +for their education? Was it jealous or in any way solicitous about the +economic and industrial freedom of these people? In its bearing upon the +present disfranchising enactments of the South, the answer to these +questions is important.</p> + +<p>Unaccustomed to free schools, trained to despise and punish the +intellectual aspirations of the slave, these recently rebellious states +not only refused to educate the freedmen, but actually burned many +schools that were built by men and women of the North, who in obedience +to genuine Christian charity followed in the wake of the armies of +freedom. Then as now, it proceeded to fix the Negro’s status by hostile +legislation in the shape of Black codes. These laws reveal the +deliberate purpose of the South to reduce the freedmen to a state of +serfdom more bitter and degrading than slavery had been, and violated +the most sacred of the inherent rights of human nature.</p> + +<p>The civilized state of Alabama, which is now preparing to disfranchise +the Negro, declared that “stubborn and refractory servants, and servants +who loiter away their time,” were to be treated as vagrants, fined fifty +dollars and “in default of payment might be hired out at public auction +for a period of six months.”<small><a name="f2.1" id="f2.1" href="#f2">[2]</a></small> Thus the Thirteenth Amendment did not +destroy the auction block.</p> + +<p>Florida declared that “it shall not be lawful for any Negro or person of +color to own, use, or keep any bowie knife, dirk, sword or fire arms or +ammunition of any kind” without license, to be granted only upon the +recommendation of two “respectable” white men. For violating this law +the Negro was to stand in the pillory for one hour and then be whipped +with thirty-nine lashes on the bare back.<small><a name="f3.1" id="f3.1" href="#f3">[3]</a></small> South Carolina, always bold +to reveal its purpose, declared that “no person of color shall pursue +the practice, art, trade or business of an artisan, mechanic, shopkeeper +or any other employment besides that of husbandry or that of a servant +under contract for labor”<small><a name="f4.1" id="f4.1" href="#f4">[4]</a></small> without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> a license, which was good for one +year only; and she supplemented this with the following:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“That a person of color, who is in the employment of a master +engaged in husbandry, shall not have the license to sell any corn, +rice, peas, wheat or other grain, any flour, cotton, fodder, hay, +bacon, fresh meat of any kind or any other product of a farm, +without written permission of such master.”<small><a name="f5.1" id="f5.1" href="#f5">[5]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>Louisiana, which has recently outlawed the Negro by Constitutional +enactment, declared:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Every adult freedman or woman shall furnish themselves with a +comfortable home and visible means of support <i>within twenty days</i> +after the passage of this act!”<small><a name="f6.1" id="f6.1" href="#f6">[6]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>Failing to do so, such persons were to be hired out at public auction +for the rest of the year.</p> + +<p>Let it be borne in mind that these laws were not enactments of a distant +and forgotten past. They were the deliberate enactments of that period +for the purpose of nullifying the Thirteenth Amendment.</p> + +<p>Of this period Mr. Justice Miller in rendering the decision in the +Slaughter House Cases said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The process of restoring to their proper relations with the +Federal Government and with the other states those which had sided +with the rebellion, undertaken under the proclamation of President +Johnson in 1865, and before the assembling of Congress, developed +the fact that, notwithstanding the formal recognition by those +states of the abolition of slavery, the condition of the slave race +would, without further protection of the Federal Government, be +almost as bad as it was before. Among the first acts of legislation +adopted by several of the states in the legislative bodies which +claimed to be in their normal relations with the Federal +Government, were laws which imposed upon the colored race onerous +disabilities and burdens, and curtailed their rights in the pursuit +of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom +was of little value, while they had lost their protection which +they had received from their former owners from motives both of +interest and humanity.”<small><a name="f7.1" id="f7.1" href="#f7">[7]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>This is what happened to the Negro when the South was left alone to deal +with him and when he was voteless.</p> + +<p>James G. Blaine truly said that:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Without the right of citizenship his freedom could be maintained +only in name, and without the elective franchise his citizenship +would have no legitimate and no authoritative protection.”</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>Fortunately for the Negro and for the continuance of free institutions +in the South, the nation slowly perceived this truth, but not until a +long and bitter struggle had been carried on by the friends of freedom +for manhood suffrage and human rights. These infamous, repressive and +enslaving laws finally aroused the nation’s sense of justice and brought +it to the realization of the undeniable truth that in a free government +“the strong keen sword by which a freeman can protect all other rights +and give value to all other privileges is the elective franchise.”</p> + +<p>Yet in the full consciousness of this truth, attested beyond cavil by +the inhuman subjection of the Negro to the arrogant and oppressive will +of those who held peculiar notions about his “proper status,” the +Federal Government hesitated to go the full length of its duty. It +stopped midway. The war seemed not to have convinced it of the futility +and fatality of compromising with the South. The Fourteenth Amendment +was adopted. The Negro was thereby given the right which his Southern +guardians proudly refused him—the right of citizenship—but not the +right which is alone the guarantee of the privileges of citizenship—the +right to a voice in the government of which he was declared a citizen. +The power of conferring suffrage limited or universal, was left as the +special privilege of the South. But the South proceeded to nullify the +Fourteenth Amendment as it had nullified the Thirteenth and sent her +captains of rebellion to make the nation’s laws.</p> + +<p>Impelled by the motive of self preservation, by the sheer necessity of +saving itself from those who would have destroyed it, and of saving to +the freedmen the simple inherent right of self-ownership, the nation was +forced to confer upon the Negro the right to vote by the adoption of the +Fifteenth Amendment. This step it is now popular to characterize as a +blunder or as an act of revenge designed to humiliate the South. If it +was, then the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery are +nameless crimes.</p> + +<p>The period of Reconstruction has served as the text for discrediting +Negro Suffrage and is always the apt illustration that gives point to +the argument of those who attempt to prove the incapacity of the Negro +to exercise the right of suffrage. There is no doubt that the effort to +mould public sentiment away from Negro Suffrage has been generally +successful and this success has been achieved very largely through +misrepresentation in regard to the facts of Reconstruction. The great +body of active citizens have grown into full<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> citizenship since the +Reconstruction epoch, are consequently ignorant of its true history and +quite satisfied to receive the information concerning it from those +whose interest and delight it is to resort to misrepresentation.</p> + +<p>It is not my purpose to enter into a defense of Reconstruction, but +merely to call attention to the following facts:</p> + +<p>(1) The attempt to reconstruct the rebellious states along lines of +Republican principles failed until the Negro was given the right to +vote. Those who had participated in the War of the Rebellion and to whom +the opportunity had been given to return to normal relations with the +Federal <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'Goverment'">Government</ins> without the interference of the Negro, failed signally +and deliberately to do so in an acceptable manner. Negro Suffrage was +therefore an essential and beneficent factor in the work of +reconstruction.<small><a name="f8.1" id="f8.1" href="#f8">[8]</a></small></p> + +<p>(2) The accepted history of that period has been written by those who +rode into power by murder and intimidation and to whose interest it is +to paint the history of reconstruction so dark as to hide their own +flagrant crimes. Their method of history writing has been that of +suppression and distortion of facts.</p> + +<p>(3) The true history of that period reveals some things that place Negro +Suffrage in a remarkably creditable light.</p> + +<p>The statement has recently been made that “the reconstruction regime in +the South worked lasting injury to the colored race.”<small><a name="f9.1" id="f9.1" href="#f9">[9]</a></small> Place this +statement in juxtaposition with a few of the things that were really +done by these newly enfranchised people who were practicing their first +lessons in the science of government.</p> + +<p>Judge Albion W. Tourgee has stated it thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“They obeyed the Constitution of the United States, and annulled +the bonds of states, counties, and cities which had been issued to +carry on the war of rebellion and maintain armies in the field +against the Union. They instituted a public school system in a +realm where public schools had been unknown. They opened the ballot +box and jury box to thousands of white men who had been debarred +from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They introduced home +rule into the South. They abolished the whipping post, the branding +iron, the stocks and other barbarous forms of punishment which had +up to that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about +twenty to two or three. In an age of extravagance they were +extravagant in the sums appropriated for public works. In all of +that time no man’s rights of person were invaded under the forms of +law. Every Democrat’s life, home, fireside and business<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> were safe. +No man obstructed any white man’s way to the ballot box, interfered +with his freedom of speech or boycotted him on account of his +political faith.”<small><a name="f10.1" id="f10.1" href="#f10">[10]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>This is the record which it is said “has worked lasting injury to the +colored race.” If the true history of this period proves anything it is +this, namely, that the only republican government in fact as well as in +form that has ever existed in the South was when the Negro, though a +mere tyro in the art of government, was a controlling factor in southern +politics. His “lasting injury” consists in the fact that he planted “the +seeds of all the New South’s prosperity.”</p> + +<p>The Southern politicians, who in their desperation to perpetuate Negro +Slavery created a national debt of more than three billions and stained +every vale and hillside with the blood of freemen, point with ineffable +horror at the extravagant financial legislation of the Reconstruction +period. It may be that this much paraded extravagance amounts to more +than the fiction of distorted facts; but, in view of the audacious +corruption of the era which preceded it, and the gigantic peculations of +that which has followed, the financial profligacy of Reconstruction may +not have been so bad after all.</p> + +<p>Replying to a characteristic speech of Senator Tillman delivered in the +recent South Carolina Constitutional Convention, in which he arraigned +the financial legislation of Reconstruction in that State Mr. Thomas E. +Miller, one of the six Negro members of the convention, said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. Tillman) speaks of the piling up +of the State debt; of jobbery and peculation during the period +between 1869 and 1873 in South Carolina, but he has not found voice +eloquent enough, nor pen exact enough to mention those imperishable +gifts bestowed upon South Carolina between 1873 and 1876 by Negro +legislators—the laws relative to finance, the building of penal +and charitable institutions, and, greatest of all, the +establishment of the public school system. Starting as infants in +legislation in 1869, many wise measures were not thought of, many +injudicious acts were passed. But in the administration of affairs +for the next four years, having learned by experience the result of +bad acts, we immediately passed reformatory laws touching every +department of state, county, municipal and town governments. These +enactments are today upon the statute books of South Carolina. They +stand as living witnesses of the Negro’s fitness to vote and +legislate upon the rights of mankind.</p> + +<p>“When we came into power town governments could lend the credit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> of +their respective towns to secure funds at any rate of interest that +the council saw fit to pay. Some of the towns paid as high as 20 +per cent. We passed an act prohibiting town governments from +pledging the credit of their hamlets for money bearing a greater +rate of interest than 5 per cent.</p> + +<p>“Up to 1874, inclusive, the State Treasurer had the power to pay +out State funds as he pleased. He could elect whether he would pay +out the funds on appropriations that would place the money in the +hands of the peculators, or would apply them to appropriations that +were honest and necessary. We saw the evil of this and passed an +act making specific levies and collections of taxes for specific +appropriations.</p> + +<p>“Another source of profligacy in the expenditure of funds was the +law that provided for and empowered the levying and collecting of +special taxes by school districts, in the name of the schools. We +saw its evil and by a constitutional amendment provided that there +should only be levied and collected annually a tax of two mills for +school purposes, and took away from the school districts the power +to levy and to collect taxes of any kind. By this act we cured the +evils that had been inflicted upon us in the name of the schools, +settled the public school question for all time to come, and +established the system upon an honest, financial basis.</p> + +<p>“Next, we learned during the period from 1869 to 1874, inclusive, +that what was denominated the floating indebtedness, covering the +printing schemes and other indefinite <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'expendtures'">expenditures</ins>, amounted to +nearly $2,000,000. A conference was called of the leading Negro +representatives in the two houses together with the State +Treasurer, also a Negro. After this conference we passed an act for +the purpose of ascertaining the bona fide floating debt and found +that it did not amount to more than $250,000 for the four years; we +created a commission to sift that indebtedness and to scale it. +Hence when the Democratic party came into power they found the +floating debt covering the legislative and all other expenditures, +fixed at the certain sum of $250,000. This same class of Negro +legislators led by the State Treasurer, Mr. F. L. Cardoza, knowing +that there were millions of fraudulent bonds charged against the +credit of the state, passed another act to ascertain the true +bonded indebtedness, and to provide for its settlement. Under this +law, at one sweep, those entrusted with the power to do so, through +Negro legislators, stamped six millions of bonds, denominated as +conversion bonds, “fraudulent.” The commission did not finish its +work before 1876. In that year, when the Hampton government came +into power, there were still to be examined into and settled under +the terms of the act passed by us providing for the legitimate +bonded indebtedness of the state, a little over two and a half +million dollars worth of bonds and coupons which had not been +passed upon.</p> + +<p>“Governor Hampton, General Hagood, Judge Simonton, Judge Wallace +and in fact, all of the conservative thinking Democrats aligned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> +themselves under the provision enacted by us for the certain and +final settlement of the bonded indebtedness and appealed to their +Democratic legislators to stand by the Republican legislation on +the subject and to confirm it. A faction in the Democratic party +obtained a majority of the Democrats in the legislature against +settling the question and they endeavored to open up anew the whole +subject of the state debt. We had a little over thirty members in +the house and enough Republican senators to sustain the Hampton +conservative faction and to stand up for honest finance, or by our +votes place the debt question of the old state into the hands of +the plunderers and peculators. We were appealed to by General +Hagood, through me, and my answer to him was in these words: +‘General, our people have learned the difference between profligate +and honest legislation. We have passed acts of financial reform, +and with the assistance of God when the vote shall have been taken, +you will be able to record for the thirty odd Negroes, slandered +though they have been through the press, that they voted solidly +with you all for honest legislation and the <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'perservation'">preservation</ins> of the +credit of the state.’ The thirty odd Negroes in the legislature and +their senators, by their votes did settle the debt question and +saved the state $13,000,000. We were eight years in power. We had +built school houses, established charitable institutions, built and +maintained the penitentiary system, provided for the education of +the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the jails and court houses, rebuilt the +bridges and re-established the ferries. In short, we had +reconstructed the state and placed it upon the road to prosperity +and, at the same time, by our acts of financial reform transmitted +to the Hampton Government an indebtedness not greater by more than +$2,500,000 than was the bonded debt of the State in 1868, before +the Republican Negroes and their white allies came into power.”</p></div> + +<p>With the disgraceful dicker of 1877, this era closed, and with it passed +away for a time, whose limit has not yet been fixed, whatever there has +been, of republican government in the South. How the overthrow of +Reconstruction government was accomplished is well-known. The +significance of its overthrow is that it marked the arrogant reassertion +of the malignant and desperate purpose of the southern oligarchy, +trained in the absolutism of slave mastery, to despoil the Negro of the +rights of citizenship, and to reduce him to a state of serfdom.</p> + +<p>In the preparation for the execution of this infamous purpose, they +attempted and <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'succeded'">succeeded</ins> in accomplishing what does great credit to the +sheer audacity of southern political leadership. By sublime +dissimulation they hoodwinked the other sections of the country in +regard to the South’s attitude to the Negro. Their first maneuver<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> was +to give the Negro a bad reputation and denounce as mischievous meddlers +those who insisted that he be dealt with justly. The Southern oligarchy +put forward its youngest and best men. Its first point of attack was +Massachusetts; and thither went Grady and Gordon and Watterson who with +persuasive accent plead the cause of the “New South.” With charming +recklessness of statement, they proclaimed the era of sectional +fraternity and with consummate cunning set forth in the next breath to +eastern capitalists the industrial possibilities of the South. Gradually +they reached the climax of their mission, to wit: Leave the Negro to us: +we are his friends, his natural guardians: we know him better than you +do, and can more wisely fix his status in our social scheme. Then the +old, old story was repeated with endless refrain, of the Negro’s +ignorance, criminal tendencies (fully attested by timely news dispatches +from the South), of his inferiority, and of the menace he is to +Anglo-Saxon domination.</p> + +<p>Thus while the sons of slave masters were poisoning the minds of the +north and west, the slave drivers were at home perfecting the conspiracy +against Negro citizenship.</p> + +<p>The year 1890 witnessed the beginning of the execution of this +conspiracy which promises to continue until the Negro is divested of +every right which is worth the having. In 1890 a minority of the people +of the state of Mississippi arrogated to themselves the right to despoil +the majority of the citizens of that state of the rights of free men by +nullifying the Fifteenth Amendment.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>Before considering the new constitutions of the States of Mississippi, +South Carolina and Louisiana, and the decisions of courts respecting +them, I have deemed it proper to review the history of Negro Suffrage +and to indicate the unvarying attitude of the ruling classes of the +South towards it. In the light of this history, let us now briefly +examine these recent enactments in their relation to the political +rights of the Negro.</p> + +<p>It is no secret that the avowed purpose of the framers of these +instruments was to deprive the Negro of the right to vote. Their purpose +is not more startling than is the defiance with which they have hurled +it from the housetops. This purpose they claim to have accomplished by +taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty of the Negro; but the most +cursory glance at these enactments will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> convince any one that neither +intelligence nor wealth constitutes the basis of electoral qualification +under them, while the confessions of the framers of them as well as +their operation proves that neither ignorance nor poverty serves to +disqualify.</p> + +<p>In Mississippi a Negro may be as rich as Dives and as wise as Solomon +and yet he may not be able to satisfy an ignorant and partisan +registration officer that he is qualified to be an elector; while a +white man may be as poor as Lazarus and may not possess the intellectual +outfit of a Hottentot and yet he will experience no difficulty in +convincing the same individual that he is qualified to exercise all the +rights and privileges of that class whose “destiny it is to dominate.” +This is the sort of educational qualifications these great +constitutional documents prescribe!</p> + +<p>How to disfranchise the Negro by an educational test without at the same +time disfranchising a very large number of white men, was at first a +problem that presented many difficulties to the framers of the +Mississippi document. Such a problem, however, cannot long remain a +difficult one to men who are masters of the art of legalizing fraud.</p> + +<p>That the illiterate white vote might not, by the play of accident, +become eliminated by an educational test, it was provided that that part +of the constitution which prescribes it, was not to go into operation +until one year after the adoption of the constitution. Before the +expiration of that time another standard of qualification was provided +and all who qualified under it were not to be affected by the subsequent +operation of the educational test.</p> + +<p>This latter provision is as follows, being section 241 of Article 12 of +the constitution of Mississippi, defining who are electors:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Every male inhabitant of the state, except idiots, insane persons, +and Indians not taxed, who is a citizen of the United States, +twenty-one years of age and upwards, who has resided in the state +two years, and one year in the election district * * * in which he +offers to vote and who is duly registered as provided in this +article, and who has never been convicted of bribery, burglary, +theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, +perjury, embezzlement, or bigamy, and who has paid on or before the +first day of February of the year in which he offers to vote, all +taxes which may have been legally required of him and who shall +produce to the officer holding the election satisfactory evidence +that he has paid his taxes.”</p></div> + +<p>Under this section of the Mississippi constitution, the white population +of that state qualified as electors. But to prevent the Negroes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> from +qualifying, section 242 of Article 12, further provides that persons +offering to register shall take the following oath:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I do solemnly swear that I am twenty one years old and that I will +have resided in the state two years and (this) election district +for one year preceding the ensuing election, and am now in good +faith a resident of the same, and that I am not disqualified from +voting by reason of having been convicted of any of the crimes +mentioned in the constitution of this state as a disqualification +to be an elector, that I will truly answer <i>all questions +propounded to me concerning my antecedents so far as they relate to +my right to vote</i> and also as to <i>my residence before my citizenship +in this district</i>, that I will support the constitution of the +United States and of the state of Mississippi and will bear true +faith and allegiance to the same—so help me God.</p> + +<p>Any willful and corrupt false statement in said affidavit or in +answer to any material question propounded as herein authorized +shall be perjury.”</p></div> + +<p>In the foregoing provisions attention is called to the following:</p> + +<p>(1) The crimes mentioned as <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'disqualifing'">disqualifying</ins> from voting are such as it is +always easy, when desirable, to convict the Negro of committing. Under +the present method of administering justice in the states where these +disfranchising constitutions operate, the Negro has neither any +guarantee of a fair and impartial trial nor any protection against +malicious prosecution or false accusations when it is convenient to +convict him.</p> + +<p>(2) The penalty for not paying taxes almost a year before election day +is a disqualification from voting. But this of course is not the sole +penalty. Whether he is a qualified elector or not, every man must in the +case of real property pay his taxes, or suffer the loss of his property, +and certainly no man, not even the poorest of the Negroes and poor +whites, can escape the obligation of the poll tax by a mere forfeiture +of his right to vote.<small><a name="f11.1" id="f11.1" href="#f11">[11]</a></small> Thus the penalty for not paying taxes is +twofold in so far as the Negro is concerned. The poor white man may or +may not experience any difficulty about producing “to the officer +holding the election satisfactory evidence that he has paid his taxes.”</p> + +<p>(3) The Negro who may desire to vote must answer under oath not certain +specific interrogatories concerning his antecedents and former places of +residence, but to “truly answer all questions propounded” to him, with +the understanding that the slightest mistake will be construed as a +corrupt and willful false statement exposing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> him to prosecution for +perjury, thus rendering him everlastingly disqualified to vote.</p> + +<p>When, under the foregoing provision the white male inhabitants of the +state became qualified electors, the following provision, being section +244 of article 12 of the constitution of Mississippi, went into +operation:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“On and after the first day of January, 1892, every elector in +addition to the foregoing qualifications, shall be able to read any +section of the constitution of this state; or shall be able to +understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable +interpretation thereof.”</p></div> + +<p>This section contains the so-called educational test, and the elector’s +qualifications under it are determined by a registration officer whose +discretion is as limitless as his prejudices. The registration officers +of South Carolina acting under a similar provision of the constitution +of that state required the Negroes who offered themselves for +registration to understand and explain section 4 of article 5 of the +constitution of South Carolina, which is as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The supreme courts shall have power to issue writs or orders of +injunctions, mandamus, quo warranto, prohibition, certiorari, +habeas corpus, and other original and remedial writs, etc.”</p></div> + +<p>Fearing apparently that these provisions of the constitution might not +prove a sufficient barrier to the Negro’s intellect and cunning, the +legislature of Mississippi has gone the full length of the power granted +it, in its efforts to keep the Negro from voting. Section 3643 of the +code of 1892 of that state, which regulates the appointment of managers +of elections, contains this remarkably clever provision:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Commissions shall appoint three persons to be managers of +election, who shall not be of the same political party, <i>if +suitable persons of different political parties can be had in the +district</i>.”</p></div> + +<p>Imagine commissioners of election of the Mississippi type regarding a +Negro, or a white man known to be favorable to Negro suffrage, as a +“suitable person!”</p> + +<p>One would suppose that the elector having successfully passed the ordeal +of the registration officer would be allowed smooth sailing during the +remainder of the voyage to the polls. But no; having passed Scylla, he +must encounter Charybdis at the very brink of the ballot box; for +section 3644 of the above mentioned Code provides that any of the +managers of election</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“May examine on oath any person duly registered and offering to +vote touching his qualifications as an elector.”</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>The effect of the constitution of Mississippi is to set up a standard of +qualification of a much higher intellectual scale than that of any of +the most enlightened states in the Union and to deprive a hundred and +eighty thousand citizens of the elective franchise previously enjoyed by +them.</p> + +<p>The attempt is often made by southern politicians of the dominant class +to justify the Mississippi plan of disfranchisement by pointing to the +fact that Massachusetts, a northern state, has provided for a qualified +suffrage by the adoption of an educational test. But compared with the +Mississippi provision that of Massachusetts is as modest and simple as +the average Mississippi school house.</p> + +<p>Amendment XX to the Massachusetts Constitution is as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“No person shall have the right to vote, or be eligible to office +under the constitution of this commonwealth, who shall not be able +to read the constitution in the English language, and write his +name. <i>Provided however</i>, that the provisions of this amendment +shall not apply to any person prevented by physical disability from +complying with its <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'requisiion'">requisition</ins>, <i>Nor to any person, who now has the +right to vote</i>, nor to any person who shall be sixty years of age +or upwards at the time this amendment shall take effect.”</p></div> + +<p>Thus Massachusetts requires that those wishing to exercise the elective +franchise in the future must be able merely to read the English +language; and expends annually more than four dollars per capita to +educate them; while Mississippi requires, not only future electors, but +those who have previously exercised the right to vote to give “<i>a +reasonable interpretation</i>” to the satisfaction of a registration +officer, and expends annually less than one dollar per capita for +education!</p> + +<p>Here it may be well to state that, although the idea of a qualified +suffrage grew out of the desire and the necessity to prepare the foreign +born element of our population, aliens to our institutions and language, +for an intelligent exercise of the ballot, the Negro does not make +objection or complaint to a just and fair educational test of his +fitness to exercise the right of suffrage. Absolutely loyal to +republical institutions, he is willing to go as far as any in the matter +of fairly and justly protecting the ballot from abuses that grow out of +ignorance.</p> + +<p>The Constitution of Mississippi has served as the pattern for the +disfranchising enactments of South Carolina and Louisiana. The main +provision in the South Carolina Constitution regulating suffrage is as +follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>“Up to January 1, 1898, all male persons of voting age applying for +registration, who can read any section of this constitution +submitted to them, <i>or understand and explain it</i> when read to them +by the registration officer, shall be entitled to registration and +become electors.”</p></div> + +<p>It will be observed that the understanding and interpreting clause of +the foregoing operates the reverse of that of the Constitution of +Mississippi. The South Carolina provision was limited to cease after +January 1, 1898, while that of Mississippi was limited to begin January +1, 1892 and to continue thereafter without ceasing.</p> + +<p>Subdivision (d) of the above mentioned section of the South Carolina +Constitution provides as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Any person who shall apply for registration after January 1, 1898, +if otherwise qualified, shall be registered: <i>Provided</i> that he can +both read and write any section of the constitution submitted to +him by the registration officer or can show that he owns and has +paid taxes collectible during the previous year on property in this +state assessed at three hundred dollars ($300) or more.”</p></div> + +<p>Subdivision (c) of the South Carolina law effected the disfranchisement +of more than one hundred thousand electors who had passed the legal age +of attending school. But for this fact, the provision of subdivision (d) +if fairly applied could meet with no objection. However, it cannot be +absolutely fair as long as South Carolina expends less money per capita +in the education of its Negro population than in the education of its +white population. The report of the Superintendent of Education of South +Carolina shows that it has cost $4.23 per capita to educate the white +children of the state and only $1.35 per capita to educate the colored +children.</p> + +<p>When the present Constitution of South Carolina was in process of +construction, the Supreme Court of the United States had not passed upon +the legality of the so-called educational provision of the Mississippi +Constitution, and the possibility that it might in the near future +declare all such enactments repugnant to the Constitution of the United +States deterred the members of the South Carolina constitutional +convention from going the full length of the Mississippi plan. Although +they had assembled for no other purpose than to disfranchise the Negro, +yet out of fear of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, +they failed to do all they purposed.</p> + +<p>George L. Tillman, the brother of the present United States Senator from +that state, spoke in the convention the following significant and +pathetic words:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>“Mr. President, we can all hope a great deal from the constitution +we have adopted. It is not such an instrument as we would have made +had we been a free people. We are not a free people; we have not +been since the war. I fear it will be some time before we can call +ourselves free. I have had that fact very painfully impressed upon +me for several years. <i>If we were free, instead of having Negro +suffrage we would have Negro slavery; instead of having the United +States Government we would have the Confederate States Government; +instead of paying $300,000 pension tribute we would be receiving +it.</i>”<small><a name="f12.1" id="f12.1" href="#f12">[12]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>The Constitution of Louisiana, in its attempt to disfranchise the Negro +and enfranchise, so to speak, every other class of men, the ignorant +scum of Europe, as well as the intelligent and illiterate native born +whites, outdoes both Mississippi and South Carolina. It adopts +practically the same educational and property qualifications as are +contained in the Mississippi and South Carolina instruments. The fifth +section of it furnishes a true index to the spirit which is behind all +of these disfranchising enactments. With vindictive memory, the framers +of the Louisiana Constitution qualified as electors all who were +entitled to vote on January 1, 1867 or at any date prior thereto as well +as the sons and grandsons of such persons, whether or not they possess +intelligence or property. Herein they display the same spirit which +refused to accord to the Negro the right to vote previous to 1867.</p> + +<p>What has been the attitude of the Courts towards these enactments which +in the interest of oligarchy have set aside republican governments in +the South and nullified the Constitution of the United States?</p> + +<p>Naturally, the state courts have upheld them. The most <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'remarkable'">remarkble</ins> +judicial utterance since the famous Dred Scott decision is that of the +supreme court of Mississippi in the case of Ratliff vs. Beale, +predicated upon the constitution of Mississippi respecting the elective +franchise. The Court said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Within the field of permissible action, under the limitations +imposed by the Federal Constitution, the convention swept the +circle of expedients to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by +the Negro race. By reason of its previous condition of servitude +and dependence, this race had acquired or accentuated certain +peculiarities of habit, of temperament, and character, which +clearly distinguished it as a race from that of the whites—a +patient, docile people, careless, landless, and migratory within +narrow limits, without forethought, and its criminal members given +rather to furtive offenses than to the robust crimes of the whites. +<i>Restrained by the Federal Constitution from discriminating against +the Negro race, the convention discriminated against its +characteristics and the offenses to which its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> weaker members were +prone.</i>”<small><a name="f13.1" id="f13.1" href="#f13">[13]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>Thus a court created by this new constitution of Mississippi declares +that it, in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment, discriminates against the +Negro race “by reason of its previous condition of servitude and +dependence,” and at the same time upholds that instrument.</p> + +<p>The constitutionality of these disfranchising enactments has not been +made a direct issue in the Supreme Court of the United States. The case +of Williams vs. State of Mississippi<small><a name="f14.1" id="f14.1" href="#f14">[14]</a></small>, the decision of which is +commonly supposed to have sustained their constitutionality, only +brought the question up collaterally without proper allegations or +sufficient proof. From an intimation made by the Court in this case, it +is not improbable that when a direct issue upon their constitutionality +is properly presented, it may render a decision consonant with that +which it rendered in the case of Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, wherein the Court +said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Though the law in itself be fair on its face and impartial in +appearance, yet, if it be applied and administered by public +authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as to +practically make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons +in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of +equal justice is still within the prohibition of the +Constitution.”<small><a name="f15.1" id="f15.1" href="#f15">[15]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>There are other grounds for the belief that the Federal Supreme Court +will refuse to sustain these instruments of disfranchisement, even +though it has not of recent years acted in a manner to inspire faith.</p> + +<p>These enactments have never received the approval of the people of the +states. Of a total of 235,604 male citizens of voting age in South +Carolina in 1890, more than 102,000 of whom were white men, only 60,925 +participated in the election of November 6, 1894, at which the members +of the constitutional convention were elected. Of the number thus voting +only 31,402 were counted in favor of holding the convention. Thus +one-seventh of the citizens called a convention and enacted a +constitution which disfranchised more than one hundred thousand +electors. The constitutions of Mississippi and Louisiana were adopted in +the same way.</p> + +<p>These so called constitutions, besides being repugnant to the spirit and +purpose of the Fifteenth Amendment are also violative of the acts of +Congress restoring the rebellious states to the Union, which acts <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>the +Federal Supreme Court has on several occasions declared +constitutional.<small><a name="f16.1" id="f16.1" href="#f16">[16]</a></small></p> + +<p>Pursuant to the reconstruction legislation, these states adopted +constitutions admitting the Negro to the ballot and then asked to be +readmitted to representation in Congress. Congress, having approved of +their constitutions, enacted that they be entitled to representation in +Congress, “upon the following <i>fundamental</i> conditions: That the +constitutions of neither of said states shall ever be so amended or +changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United +States of the right to vote in said states, who are entitled to vote by +the constitution thereof herein recognized.”<small><a name="f17.1" id="f17.1" href="#f17">[17]</a></small></p> + +<p>These states accepted these fundamental conditions and are consequently +bound by them.<small><a name="f18.1" id="f18.1" href="#f18">[18]</a></small></p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>What effect have these disfranchising enactments had upon the status of +the Negro? Has he lost nothing more than the bare right to vote? Has he +been deprived of nothing but an abstract right to a voice in the affairs +of government and of no other privilege than the possibility of a share +of political power?</p> + +<p>Surely the loss of any one of the foregoing is not unimportant in a +democratic form of government. But he has lost much more, and the +probabilities are that, if these obvious discriminations are allowed to +continue, he will be brought to his deepest humiliation. The law which +deprives him of the badge of citizenship, changes at once his legal +status and cuts him off from respect. His disqualification as an elector +shuts him out of the jury box in courts where what few rights he has +left are adjudicated and his grievances redressed. His disqualification +as an elector and as a juror discredits him as a witness. In the states +which have adopted these disfranchising constitutions, more than three +hundred thousand citizens have been thereby disqualified as jurors. This +is all the more outrageous, because in the same states advantage has +been taken in criminal legislation of what the Supreme Court of +Mississippi has termed “certain peculiarities of habit and character of +the Negro” whereby “furtive offenses,” which in other communities are +treated as mere misdemeanors, are made felonies and are usually visited +with greater punishment than are the “robust crimes” of the whites. In +South Carolina, for instance, the breach of a labor contract has been +made a crime, the object being to reduce the Negro to a state of +serfdom.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>Not only has the legal status of the Negro been gravely affected by +these disfranchising enactments; his economic status has also been +lowered. A Mississippian states the following as the reason for +disfranchising the Negro in his state:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“It is a question of political economy which the people of the +North can not realize nor understand <i>and which they have no right +to discuss as they have no power to determine</i>. If the Negro is +permitted to engage in politics his usefulness as a laborer is at +an end. <i>He can no longer be controlled or utilized.</i> The South has +to deal with him as an industrial and economic factor and <i>is +forced to assert its control over him in sheer self-defense</i>.”<small><a name="f19.1" id="f19.1" href="#f19">[19]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>Thus Negro labor must be managed, and control must be asserted over him. +His possession of the ballot would make him a free laborer and would +enable him to demand the wages of free labor. It is truly an “economic +problem,” in which not only the Negro of the South is concerned, but +also the interests of free labor in every section of this country.</p> + +<p>These disfranchising enactments in that they lower the legal and +economic status of the black man, also tend to lower his educational and +social status. The political and economic supremacy of the southern +oligarchy is dependent upon the ignorance and the social degradation of +the Negro. It is, therefore, not surprising that the politicians now +dominant in the South assert that education disqualifies him as a field +hand,—as a manageable factor,—and that consequently there must be a +decrease in the amount of money expended for his education or that his +education must be directed along lines which will make him more +adaptable to management as an economic factor for their sole benefit. +The educated Negro is not more desirable now than he was fifty years +ago. It is a marvel how the great body of southern white people, a great +many of whom are favorable to the advancement of the Negro, will permit +men of the type of the average politicians who now exercise control +among them to stand thus in the way of the true progress of the South.</p> + +<p>First, it is asserted that the right to vote destroys his usefulness as +a laborer; then, that education turns his head and makes him +discontented with the plantation where wages reach the high water mark +of six dollars a month, which may or may not be paid according to the +whim of his employer; and finally that the privilege of respectable +accommodations furnished by common carriers which enjoy unusual public +franchises makes him impudent, noisy and self-respecting, the proper +remedy for which is a system of “Jim Crow <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>Cars.” Thus with the passing +away of the Negro’s right to vote, begins the reappearance of the odious +system of Black Laws which are designed to degrade the womanhood and +manhood of the Negro race. The whole trend of southern legislation is to +fix what has been termed the “proper status of the Negro—subordination +to the superior race.” Not a single line has been written upon the +statute books of a single southern state within the last decade in +recognition of the Negro as a man entitled to respect, or fair and just +consideration.</p> + +<p>In 1857, Mr. Lincoln uttered the following words in reference to +slavery, which are not wanting in significance in their bearing upon the +present assault upon the Negro:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“To aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, +it (the Declaration of Independence) is assailed and sneered at, +construed and hawked at and torn, till, if the framers could rise +from their graves, they would hardly recognize it. All the powers +of earth seem combined against him. Ambition follows, philosophy +follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining in the cry. +They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person +and left no prying instrument with him; and now they have him as it +were bolted with a lock of a hundred keys which can never be +unlocked, except by the concurrence of every key in the hands of a +hundred different men and they scattered to a hundred different +places. And now they stand musing as to what invention in all the +domain of mind and matter can be produced to make the impossibility +of his escape more complete than it is.”</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>The nation can not put up with many more of these instruments of +disfranchisement. It can not endure the present ones very much longer. +The question is ceasing to be one of interest merely to the Negro; it is +rapidly becoming one of national moment. It is becoming a contest +between democracy and oligarchy in which the stability and integrity of +republican institutions are involved. Already a few thousand minions of +oligarchy are exerting a larger influence in the national government +than do millions of freemen who are obeying the Federal Constitution by +maintaining a republican form of government. The election returns from +the three states of Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi show how +startling is the power which they exercise in Congress by reason of +these disfranchising instruments. The following shows the number of +votes polled in these states for members of Congress in 1898 and in the +case of Louisiana the votes polled may be compared with the returns of +1896 when the old constitution was in force:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="Louisiana"> +<tr><td colspan="5" align="center"><b><span class="smcap">Louisiana</span></b></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">District.</td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td><td align="center">Total Vote, 1898.</td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td><td align="center">Total Vote, 1896.</td></tr> +<tr><td>I</td><td> </td><td align="center">6,318</td><td> </td><td align="center">15,412</td></tr> +<tr><td>II</td><td> </td><td align="center">7,856</td><td> </td><td align="center">16,848</td></tr> +<tr><td>III</td><td> </td><td align="center">5,903</td><td> </td><td align="center">15,968</td></tr> +<tr><td>IV</td><td> </td><td align="center">5,900</td><td> </td><td align="center">16,148</td></tr> +<tr><td>V</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,805</td><td> </td><td align="center">15,264</td></tr> +<tr><td>VI</td><td> </td><td align="center">2,494</td><td> </td><td align="center">16,482</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td> </td><td align="center">——</td><td> </td><td align="center">———</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td align="right">Average</td><td align="center">5,549</td><td align="right">Average</td><td align="center">16,020</td></tr></table> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="states"> +<tr><td colspan="3" align="center"><span class="smcap"><b>Mississippi</b></span></td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td><td colspan="3" align="center"><span class="smcap"><b>South Carolina</b></span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td>District.</td><td> </td><td align="center">Total Vote, 1898.</td><td> </td><td align="center">District.</td><td> </td><td align="center">Total Vote, 1898.</td></tr> +<tr><td>I</td><td> </td><td align="center">2,468</td><td> </td><td>I</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,559</td></tr> +<tr><td>II</td><td> </td><td align="center">3,175</td><td> </td><td>II</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,138</td></tr> +<tr><td>III</td><td> </td><td align="center">2,661</td><td> </td><td>III</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,361</td></tr> +<tr><td>IV</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,551</td><td> </td><td>IV</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,632</td></tr> +<tr><td>V</td><td> </td><td align="center">5,105</td><td> </td><td>V</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,230</td></tr> +<tr><td>VI</td><td> </td><td align="center">6,071</td><td> </td><td>VI</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,916</td></tr> +<tr><td>VII</td><td> </td><td align="center">3,605</td><td> </td><td>VII</td><td> </td><td align="center">4,938</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td> </td><td align="center">——</td><td> </td><td> </td><td> </td><td align="center">——</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td align="right">Average</td><td align="center">3,948</td><td> </td><td> </td><td align="right">Average</td><td align="center">4,539</td></tr></table> + +<p> </p> +<p>The total congressional vote of Louisiana which elected six members to +Congress is less by nearly 500 votes than the average for one district +in Iowa. <i>One elector in Louisiana exercises about seven times as much +power in Congress as one in Ohio.</i> The average congressional vote of +Mississippi for seven districts is nearly 35,000 votes less than the +average for twenty-one districts in Ohio, while the total congressional +vote of South Carolina for seven Congressmen is more than seven thousand +below the total vote of a single congressional district in North +Carolina. The total vote cast in the twenty congressional districts of +South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi in the election of 1898 was +91,184; while that polled in the ten congressional districts of +Wisconsin was 332,204. Thus, although these states cast nearly two +hundred and fifty thousand votes less than the state of Wisconsin, they +control twice as much power as that state in the national legislature.</p> + +<p>The southern people themselves can not permit these violent +infringements of the principles of republican government to continue +without irrevocable detriment to their best and highest interests. In +the degree that they stand by in silence and see the Negro stripped of +his civil and political rights by a band of unscrupulous men who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> seek +no higher end than their personal aggrandizement, they compromise their +own civil and political freedom, and put in jeopardy the industrial +progress of the south. The bane of the South today is her selfish and +misguided political leadership, the men who will not scruple to +sacrifice upon the altars of their insatiable ambition for power every +interest linked with her economic <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'prosperty'">prosperity</ins> and all consideration for +civic virtue by which alone the greatness of a people is measured.</p> + +<p>Her misfortune lies not in any danger from Negro domination, for of all +the classes of her population the Negro is the least capable of working +her injury and the least disposed to do so. Her real danger lies in the +pernicious activity of her dominant political leaders who perpetuate +their control by overriding local and national authority to the +diminution of both public and private security. Law has been dethroned +and the respectable and industrious portion of the people must witness +the spectacle and endure the humiliation of riot, bloodshed, and +assassination with impunity of innocent and unoffending citizens by the +beneficiaries under these disfranchising constitutions.</p> + +<p>The leading paper of the state of Louisiana, which threw the weight of +its influence in favor of the constitutional convention which was held +for the sole and avowed purpose of disfranchising the Negro, has +recently made the following important confession:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Assassination is still the order of the day and night in +Tangipahoa Parish. William McGee, a white man, employed at a saw +mill was the victim. He was waylaid yesterday morning and fired +upon, with the result that he was badly hurt. A posse turned out +with dogs to find the murderers, but to no purpose, although the +posse was fired on several times out of ambush. The authorities in +that parish seem incapable of making arrests of the perpetrators of +these numerous assassinations that occur among them, but when by +some chance an arrest is made, no jury is found that will convict. +The result is that outlaws have everything their own way, while the +peaceable people have no assurance that at any moment they will not +be murdered by cowardly assassins.”<small><a name="f20.1" id="f20.1" href="#f20">[20]</a></small></p></div> + +<p>Thus it is that the southern white people, by permitting a few desperate +politicians to outlaw the Negro, find themselves at the mercy of an +oligarchy which has everything its own way.</p> + +<p>According to the census of 1890, there are 102,657 white male citizens +of voting age in South Carolina and 132,947 colored male citizens of +voting age, making a total of 253,604 male citizens who were entitled to +vote in that year. The election returns from that state for November +1898 show that the highest total vote polled for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>any office was only +28,258, averaging less than eight hundred votes to each county, thus +showing that less than one eighth of the male citizens have it in their +power to control the administration and policies of the state.</p> + +<p>If by a mere technicality one class of citizens can be deprived of the +rights and immunities guaranteed by the organic law of the nation, what +is to prevent any other class from sharing the same fate? If less than +one fourth of the male citizens of Mississippi can usurp the right to +exclusively manage the local government, what is to prevent a smaller +proportion from doing the same? If it is possible for a minority of the +people of Alabama to disfranchise one class of citizens on account of +race without the consent of the majority, what is to prevent the +disfranchisement of any other class on account of <i>political</i> views? +Southern white men who view with <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'apprehenson'">apprehension</ins> these untoward political +tendencies, who are alarmed at the passing away of the last vestiges of +a republican form of government from that section of our Union, and who +silently condemn and deplore the outrageous and inexcusable manner in +which the black man is being divested of his political and civil rights +for mere party advantage, must seriously and actively face the +situation, if they would save the south from the shame and the +humiliation with which she is threatened, and which she has already too +keenly experienced at the hands of a profligate leadership.</p> + +<p>There is a dormant statesmanship in the south that must and will exert +itself mightily, “a moral and intellectual intelligence which is not +going to be much longer beguiled out of its moral right of way by +questions of political punctilio, but will seek that plane of universal +justice and equity which it is every people’s duty before God to seek.”</p> + +<p>But the question is not a sectional one. The whole American people are +deeply concerned in it. Nullification in South Carolina is as great a +national menace today as it proved to be half a century ago. Republican +institutions and the national welfare can have no guarantee or +protection against the evil consequences threatened by defiant trampling +upon constitutional authority. Not in its most palmy days did the slave +system possess such power as is aimed at by these latter day nullifiers. +Having shorn the Negro of his political rights and brought him into +industrial subjection, thereby usurping power both in state and national +government, they now threaten to dominate the economic and industrial +policies of the nation.</p> + +<p>This government can not long continue half republican in form and half +oligarchic.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">John L. Love.</span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><b>Footnotes:</b></p> + +<p><a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">[1]</a> Greeley’s American Conflict, Vol. I, p. 417.</p> + +<p><a name="f2" id="f2" href="#f2.1">[2]</a> Blaine, “Twenty Years of Congress,” II., 94.</p> + +<p><a name="f3" id="f3" href="#f3.1">[3]</a> McPherson, “History of Reconstruction,” p. 40.</p> + +<p><a name="f4" id="f4" href="#f4.1">[4]</a> Ibid p. 36.</p> + +<p><a name="f5" id="f5" href="#f5.1">[5]</a> McPherson, History of Reconstruction p. 35.</p> + +<p><a name="f6" id="f6" href="#f6.1">[6]</a> Blaine, “Twenty Years of Congress,” II., 101.</p> + +<p><a name="f7" id="f7" href="#f7.1">[7]</a> 16 Wall, p. 70.</p> + +<p><a name="f8" id="f8" href="#f8.1">[8]</a> Blaine, “Twenty Years of Congress,” II., 266.</p> + +<p><a name="f9" id="f9" href="#f9.1">[9]</a> Prof. Kelley Miller, article in “Washington Star,” Nov. 14, 1898.</p> + +<p><a name="f10" id="f10" href="#f10.1">[10]</a> Chicago Weekly “Inter Ocean,” Dec. 26, 1890.</p> + +<p><a name="f11" id="f11" href="#f11.1">[11]</a> I 20 So Rep, 869, also Mississippi Code (1892) Sec. 3802.</p> + +<p><a name="f12" id="f12" href="#f12.1">[12]</a> Journal of S. C. Constitutional Convention. 1731.</p> + +<p><a name="f13" id="f13" href="#f13.1">[13]</a> 20 So. Rep. 865.</p> + +<p><a name="f14" id="f14" href="#f14.1">[14]</a> 170 U. S. 213.</p> + +<p><a name="f15" id="f15" href="#f15.1">[15]</a> 118, U. S. 373.</p> + +<p><a name="f16" id="f16" href="#f16.1">[16]</a> 16, Wall., 70-73; 92 U. S., 214.</p> + +<p><a name="f17" id="f17" href="#f17.1">[17]</a> 15 Stat. at Large. 73. Also 16 Stat. 67.</p> + +<p><a name="f18" id="f18" href="#f18.1">[18]</a> Art. 6 Const. U. S., 2. Story on Const., Secs. 1836-1843.</p> + +<p><a name="f19" id="f19" href="#f19.1">[19]</a> Chicago Inter Ocean, Nov. 4, 1890.</p> + +<p><a name="f20" id="f20" href="#f20.1">[20]</a> New Orleans Picayune, April 4, 1899.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Disfranchisement of the Negro, by John L. 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