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American Negro Academy, <Jashinf[ton, O.l,. jj
Occasional papers, v. 6, 1899. t^*

YALE
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

OCCASIONAL PAPERS No. 6.

The American Negro Academy,
Rev. ALEXANDER CRUMMELL, Foundef.

The Disfranchisement
of the Negro.
By JOHN L, LOVE,

Price 15 cents.

WASHINGTON, D. C.
Published by the Academy,
1899.

The Disfranchisement of the Negro.
"A Constitution formed so as to enable a party to over
rule its very government, and to overpower the people
too, answers the purpose neither of government nor
of freedom " — Edmund Burke.
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 rath
er 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 per
ilous condition in southern communities arising from a numerical
preponderance of Negroes. It is not made to meet a merely tempo
rary emergency with the intent to return to the principles of repub
lican government upon the advent of intelligence and wealth to the
Negro. Indeed, the very intent and purpose of the assault is to pre
vent such an advent, in so far as human ingenuity and tyrannical
violence can do so.
It can not find its justification in a necessity of averting bv rad
ical 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
perpettiate it. In fact, the assault is so iniquitous in its conception
and is being executed with such wicked and violent disregard of po
litical morals and human rights, as bj' con.parison to render almost
beneficent the realization of the perils which the imagination of the
assailants pretends to fancy.
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 civiliza
tion which is of a peculiarly local tj'pe, 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 w^hite men. Into this language all of the feigned so-

cial perils and political nightmares of southern planters and politi
cians easily resolve themselves.
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 as
sailants. That history furnishes the best key to an understanding of
the present assault upon the political rights of the Negro.
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, ut
tered the following significant words:
"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating
questions relating to our peculiar institution— African slavery as it exists
among us — t/ie proper sta.t'as of the Negro in our form of civilization.
This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revo
lution." 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:
"Those ideas were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the as
sumption of the equality of races. Our constitution (the Confederate
Constitution,) is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas. Its founda
tions 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.''*
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 magjianimous, 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 sen
sibilities 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 precipi
tate the war, with a view to seeming not to be influenced by section
al prejudices, is pushing magnanimity to the verge of vapid senti-
¦^Greeley's American Conflict, Vol. i, p. 417.

mentality — a folly in which the South, in so far as its attitude toward
the Negro is concerned, has in no sense shared.
The doctrine ot "the proper status of the Negro," is as consist
ently 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 pro
per consideration of our present Negro Problem without regard to
this historical doctrine.
The Southern Confederacy is now a political myth. In its at
tempt to make Negro Slavery its corner stone, it carved the grave
stones 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 Probletn was to test severely the integrity of
republican principles.
This was the critical period of the history of the Negro in Amer
ica. Withm 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.
A free man, yet penniless and homeless. A man of toil, but one
whose own and whose ancestral toil had created a material and so
cial 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 en
lightenment of others. A freeman, but helpless in the face of an
impending persecution. He, whose labor had contributed to the com
fort and social happiness of others,— who, while they were testing on
•scores of battle fields their power to rob him of his freedom, was car
ing for and protecting their v/ives 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."
The Thirteenth Amendment became the law of the land through

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 settle
ment of the problems, to which the new status of the Negro had giv
en rise, to those among whom he was to live, i. e., to his former mas
ters. This was indeed a critical period in the history of the Negro race
in the United States and th(; lessons of this period are exceedingly
important in the light of the present attack upon the political rights
of the black man.
In recent discussions of the merits and wisdom of Negra
suffrage, this period is as a rule strangely overlooked. The asser
tion so commonly made, that the conferring of the right to vote up
on the Negro was a colossal blunder, evinces the extent to which this
period has been ignored by those who make it, or else their remark
able 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 dis
crediting Nes:ro suffrage. Some have ignored the facts to such kn
extent as to a.ssert that Negro suffrage was the result of vindictive-
ness 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 North
ern sagacity. What the nation, through the agency of the Republi
can 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 surren
der 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.
By the acceptance of the terras imposed,' the rebellious states
placed themselves in a 'position of great responsibility and great op
portunity. 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

nation the claim it so often and so boastfully makes that it is the Ne
gro's best friend and is disposed to treat him fairly.
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 grad
ual citizenship, and, in order that this citizenship should be intelli
gent, 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.
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, wKb in obe
dience to genuine Christian charity followed in the wake of the arm
ies 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 vi
olated the most sacred of the inherent rights of human nature.
The civilized state of Alabama, which is now preparing to dis
franchise the Negro,_ declared that "stubborn and refractory servants,
and servants who loiter away their time," were to be treated as va
grants, fined fifty dollars and "in default of payment might be hired
out at public auction for a period of six months. "i Thus the Thir
teenth Amendment did not destroy the auction block.
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. 2
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 "3 with-
I. Blaine, " Twenty Years of Congress," II, , 94.
2, McPhersor, " History of Reconstruction," p. 40.
3. I bid p. 36.

d

8
out a license, which was good for one year only; and she supplement
ed this with the following:
•' That a person of color, who is in the employment of a master en
gaged in husbanefry, 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." i.
Louisiana, which has recently outlawed the Negro by Constitu
tional enactment, declared:
"Every adult freedman or woman shall furnish themselves with a
comfortable home and visible means of support within twenty days after
the passage of this act ! " 2.
Failing to do so, such persons were to be hired out at public auction
for the rest of the year.
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 Amend
ment. Of this period ;\[r. Justice Miller in rendering the decision in the
Slaughter House Cases said :
" The process of restoring to their proper relations with the Federal
Government and with the other states those which had sided with the re
bellion, undertaken under the proclamation of President Johnson in 1865,
and before the assembling of Congress, developed the fact that, notwith
standing the formal recognition by those states of the abolition of slav
ery, 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 dis
abilities and burdens, and curtailed their rights in the pursuit of life, lib
erty, and property to such an extent that their freedom was of little val
ue, while they had lost their protection which they had received from
their former owners from motives both of interest and humanity. "3
This is what happened to the Negro when the South was left a-
lone to deal with him and when he was voteless.
James G. Blaine truly said that :
" Without the right of citizenship his freedom could be maintained
only ill name, and without the elective franchise his citizenship would
have no legitimate and no authoritative protection."
i. McPherson, History of Reconstruction p. 35.
2. Blaine, "Twenty Years of Congress," II. , loi.
3, 16 Wall, p, 70.

Fortunately for the Negro and for the continuance of free insti
tutions 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."
Yet in the full consciousness of this truth, attested beyond cavil
by the inhuman subjection of the Negro to the arrogant and oppress
ive will of those who held peculiar notions about his " proper status,"
the Federal Government hesitated to go the full length of its dtity.
It stopped midway. The war seemed not to have convinced it of the
futility and fatality of compromising with the South. The Four
teenth 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 ot 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.
Impelled by the motive of self preservation, by the sheer neces
sity 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 pop
ular 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.
The period of Reconstruction has served as the text for discred
iting 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 tbe facts of Recon
struction. The great body of active citizens have grown into full cit-

izenship since the Reconstruction epoch, are consequently Ignorant of
its true history and quite satisfied to receive the information concern
ing it from those whose interest and delight it is to resort to misrep
resentation. It is not my purpose to enter into a defense of Reconstruction,
but merely to call attention to the following facts:
([) 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 opportunit}' had been given to return to normal re
lations with the Federal Goverment without the interference of the
Negro, faded signally and deliberately to do so in an acceptable manner.
Negro Suffrage was therefore an essential and beneficent factor in
the work of reconstruction, i
(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 no dark as to hide
their own flagrant crimes. Their method of history writing has been
that of suppression and distortion of facts.
(3) The true history of that period reveals some things that
place Negro Suffrage in a remarkably creditable light.
The statement has recently been made that "the reconstruction
regime in the South worked lasting injury to the colored race."2.
Place this statement in juxtaposition with a few of the things that
were really done by these newly enfranchised people who were prac
ticing their first lessons in the science of government.
' Judge Albion W. Tourgee has stated it thus:
" They obeyed the Conbtitution 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 thous
ands of white men who had been debarred from them by a lack of earth
ly possessions. They introduced home rule into the South. They abol
ished the whipping post, the branding iron, the stocks and other barbar
ous forms of punishment which had up to that time prevailed. They re
duced capital felonies from about twenty to two or three. In an age of
extravagance they were extravagant in the sum.s appropriated for p jbhc
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
1. islaine, " Twenty Years of Congress," II., 266.
2. Prof. Kelley Miller, article in "Washington Star," Nov. 14, 1898.

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, "i.
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.''
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 Recon
struction 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 Re
construction may not have been so bad after all.
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 conven
tion, said:
"The gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. Tillman) speaks of the piling
up of the State debt; of jobbery and peculation during the period be
tween 1869 and 1873 in South Carolina, but he has not found voice elo
quent enough, nor pen exact enough to mention those imperishable gifts
bestowed upon South Carolina between 1873 and 1876 by Negro legisla
tors — 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 adminis
tration of affairs for the next four years, having learned by experience
the result of bad acts, we immediately passed reformatory laws touch
ing 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,
'• When we came into power town governments could lend the credit

Chicago Weekly " Inter Ocean," Dec. 26, 1890.

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 cred
it of their hamlets for money bearing a greater rate of interest than 5
per cent.
" 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 spe
cific levies and collections of taxes for specific appropriations.
" Another source of profligacy in the expenditure of funds was the
law that provided for and empowered the levying and collecting of spe -
cial 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.
" Next, we learned during the period from 1869 to i874,inclusive, that
what was denominated the floating indebtedness, covering the printing
schemes and other indefinite expendtures, amounted to nearly $52,000,
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 indebted
ness and to scale it. Hence when the Democratic party came into pow
er 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, know
ing that there were millions of fraudulent bonds charged against the
credit of the state, passed another act to ascertain the true bonded in
debtedness, and to provide for its settlement. Under this law, at one
•sweep, those entrusted with the power to do so, through Negro legisla
tors, 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.
" Governor Hampton, General Hagood, Judge Simonton, Judge Wal
lace and in fact, all of the conservative thinking Democrats aligned

13
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 pro
fligate 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 perservation of the credit of the state.' The
thirty odd Negroes ih 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 charita
ble 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 re
constructed the s'.ate 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."
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 arro
gant reassertion of the malignant and desperate purpose of the south
ern 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
¦jerfdom. In the preparation for the execution of this infamous purpose,
they attempted and succeded in accomplishing what does great cred
it to the sheer audacity of southern political leadership. By sub
lime dissimulation they hoodwinked the other sections of the country
in regard to the South's attitude to the Negro. Their first maneu-

14
ver was to orive the Negro a bad reputation and denounce as mis
chievous 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 indus
trial 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, ot the Negro's ignorance,
criminal tendencies(fully attested by timely news dispatches from the
South), of his inferiorit}^, and of the menace he is to Anglo-Saxon
¦domination. 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.
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.
II
Before considering the new constitutions of the States of Missis
sippi, South Carolina and Louisiana, and the decisions of courts re
specting 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.
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 ac
complished by taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty of the
Negro; but the most cursory glance at these enactments will con-

'S
vince any one that neither inteUigence nor wealth constitutes the ba
sis of electoral qualification under them, while the confessions of
the framers of them as well as their operation proved that neither
ignorance nor poverty serves to disqualify.
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 par
tisan 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 in
tellectual outfit of a Hottentot and yet he will experience no difficul
ty in convincing the .'^ame individual that he is qualified to exercise
all the rights and privileges of that class whose "destiny it is to dom
inate." This is the sort of educational qualifications these great con
stitutional documents prescribe !
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. 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 opera
tion until one year after the ad( ptionof the constitution. Before the ex
piration of that time another standard of qualification was provided
and all who qualified under it were not to be affected by the subse
quent operation of the educational test.
This latter provision is as follows, being section 241 of Article
12 of the constitution of Mississippi, defining who are electors:
''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."
Under this section of the Mississippi constitution, the white pop
ulation of that state qualified as electors. But to prevent the Negroes

i6
from qualifying, section 242 of Article 12, further provides that persons
offering to register shall take the following oath :
"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 all
questions propounded to me concerning my antecedents so far as they relate to my
right to vote and also as to my residence before ?ny citizenship in this district,
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. Any willful and corrupt false statement in said affidavit or in answer
to any material question propounded as herein authorized shall be per
jury." In the foregoing provisions attention is called to the following:
([) The crimes mentioned as disqualifing from voting are
such as it is alwa3-s easy, when desirable, to convict the Ne
gro of committing. Under the present method of adminis
tering 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 accu
sations when it is convenient to convict him.
(2) The penalty for not paying taxes almost a year before elec
tion 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 Ne
groes and poor whites, can escape the obligation of the poll tax by a
mere forfeiture of his right to vote.* Thus the penalty for not pay
ing taxes is twofold in so far as the Negro is concerned. The poor
white man may or may not experience any difficulty about produc
ing "to the officer holding the election satisfactory evidence that he
has paid his taxes."
(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 pro
pounded" to. him, with the understanding that, the slightest mistake
will be construed as a corrupt and willful false statement expos-
* I 20 So Rep, 869, also Mississippi Code (1892) Sec. 3802.

17
ing him to prosecution for perjury, thus rendering him everlastingly
disqualified to vote.
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 con.stitution of Mississippi, went into
operation: "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 con
stitution of this state; or shall be able to understand the same when read
to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof."
This section contains the so-called educational test, and the elec
tor's qualifications under it are determined by a registration of
ficer whose discretion is as limitless as his prejudices. The registra
tion officers of South Carolina acting under a similar provision of the
constitution of that state required the Negroes who offered them-^
selves for registration to understand and explain section 4 of article
5 of the constitution of South Carolina, which is as follows:
"The supreme courts shall have power to issue writs or orders of in
junctions, mandamus, quo warranto, prohibition, certiorari, habeas cor
pus, and other original and remedial writs, etc."
Fearing apparently that these provisions of the constitution
might not prove a sufficient barrier to the Negro's intellect and cun
ning, the legislature of Mississippi has gone the full length of the
power granted it, in its efforts to keep the Negro from voting. Sec
tion 3643 of the code of 1892 of that state, which regulates the ap
pointment of managers of elections, contains this remarkably clever
provision: "The Commissions shall appoint three persons to be managers of
election, who shall not be of the same political party, if suitable persons of
different political parties can be had in the district."
Imagine commissioners of election of the Mississippi type re
garding a Negro, or a white man known to be favorable to Negro
suffrage, as a "suitable person ! "
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
"May examine on oath any person duly registered and offering to
vote touching his qualifications as an elector."

i8

The effect of the constitution of Mississippi is to set up a stand
ard 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 pre
viously enjoyed by them.
The attempt is of ten made by southern politicians of the domi
nant 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.
Amendment XX to the Massachusetts Constitution is as follows:
"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. Provid-
td however, that the provisions of this amendment shall not apply to any
person prevented by physical disability from complying with its requisi-
ion, Nor io any person, who now has the right to vote, nor to any person who
shall be sixty years of age or upwards at the time this amendment shall
take effect."
Thus Massachusetts requires that those wishing to exercise the
elective franchise in the future must be able merely to read the Eng
lish 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 "a reasonable interpretation' to the satisfaction of a registration
ofificer, and expends annually less than one dollar per capita for ed
ucation !
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 for
eign 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 republi-
cal institutions, he is willing to go as far as any in the matter of fair
ly and justly protecting the ballot from abuses that grow out ot ig
norance. 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 :

'9
" Up to January i, 1898, all male persons of voting age applying for
registration, who can read any section of this constitution submitted to
them, or understand and explain it when read to them by the registration
officer, shall be entitled to registration and become electors."
It will be observed that the understanding and interpreting
clause of the foregoing operates the reverse of that of the Constitu
tion of Mississippi. The South Carolina provision was limited to cease
after January i, 1898, while that of Mississippi was limited to begin
January 1, 1892 and to continue thereafter without ceasing.
Subdivision (d) of the above mentioned section of the South Car
olina Constitution provides as follows:
"Any person who shall apply for registration after January i, 1898, if
otherwise qualified, shall be registered: Provided that he can both read
and write any section of the constitution submitted to him by the registra
tion officer or can show that he owns and has paid taxes collectible dur
ing the previous year on property in this state assessed at three hundred
dollars ($300) or more.
Subdivision (c) of the South Carolina law effected the disfran
chisement of more than one hundred thousaifd electors who had
passed the legal age of attending school. But for this fact, the pro
vision of subdivision (d) if fairly applied could meet with no objec
tion. However, it cannot be absolutely fair as long as South Caro
lina expends less money per capita in the education of its Negro pop
ulation 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.
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 con
stitutional 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.
George L. Tillman, the brother of the present United States
Senator from that state, spoke in the convention the following signif
icant and pathetic words :
" Mr. President, we can all hope a great deal from the constitution

20
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. 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 Con
federate States Government ; instead of paying $joo,ooo pension tribute we would
be receiving it. " 1
The Constitution of Louisiana, in its attempt to disfranchise the
Negro and enfranchise, so to speak, every other class of men, the ig
norant 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 qnalifications 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 ot the Louisiana Constitution qualified as electors all who
were entitled to vote on January i, 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. What has been the attitude of the Courts towards these enact
ments which in the interest of oligarchy have set aside republican
governments in the South and nullified the Constitution of the United
States ?
Naturally, the state courts have upheld them. The mostremark-
ble 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:
" Within the field of permissible action, under the limitations imposed
by the Federal Constitution, the convention swept the circle of expedi
ents to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the Negro race. By rea
son 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 rath
er to furtive offenses than to the robust crimes of the whites. Restrained
by the Federal Constitution from discriminating against the Negro race, the cottr-
vention discriminated against its characteristics and the offenses io which its
I. Journal of S, C. Constitutional Convention. 1731.

weaker members were prone." 1
Thus a court created by this new constitution of Mississippi de
clares that it, in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment, discriminates
against the Negro race " by reason of its previous condition of servi
tude and dependence," and at the same time upholds that instrument.
The constitutionality of these disfranchising enactments has not
been made a direct issue in the Supreme Court of the United States.
The case of William^s vs. State of Mississippi 2,' 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 constitutionali
ty 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:
" Though the law in itself be fair on its face and impartial in. appear
ance, 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 illeg
al discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to
their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of
the Constitution. "3
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. These enactments have never received the approval of the peo
ple 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 hund
red thousand electors. The constitutions of Mississippi and Louisi
ana were adopted in the same way.
These so called constitutions, besides being repugnant to the spir
it and purpose of the Fifteenth Amendment are also violative of the
acts of Congress restoring the rebellious states to the Union, which acts

I. 20 So. Rep. 86s.
a. 170 U. S. 213.
3. 118, U. S. 373.

the Federal Supreme Court has on several occasions declared consti
tutional.! 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 representa
tion in Congress, "upon the ioWo-wmg fundamental 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."^
These states accepted these fundamental conditions and are con
sequently bound by them 3 III
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?
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 ol^j^ious 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 oft from respect. His disqualifi
cation as an elector shuts him out of the jury box in courts where
what few rights he has left are adjudicated and his grievances re
dressed. His disqualification as an elector and as a juror discredits
him as a witness. In the states which have adopted these disfran
chising constitutions, more than three hundred thousand citizens
have been thereby disqualified as jurors This is all the more outrag
eous, because in the same states advantage has been taken in crim
inal legislation of what the Supreme Court of Mississipjn 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.
I. i6. Wall. , 70—73; 92 U. S. , 214 ^. 15 Stat, at Large. 73. Also i5 Stat. 67.
3. Art. 6 Const. U. S ,¦ -^. Story on Const., Sees. 1836— 1843,

23
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 :
"It is a question of political economy which the people of the North
can not realize nor understand and which they have no right to discuss as they
have no power to determine. If the Negro is permitted to engage in politics
his usefulness as a laborer is at an end. He can no longer be controlled or
utilized. The South has to deal with him as an industrial and economic
factor and is forced to assert its control over him in sheer self-defense. " i
Thus Negro labor must be managed, and control must be as
serted over him. His possession of the ballot would make him a free
laborer and would enable him to demand the wages of free laborT"
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.
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 disquali
fies him as a field hand, — as a manageable factor, — and that consequent
ly 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 aver
age politicians who now exercise control among them to stand thus
in the way of the true progress of the South.
First, it is asserted that the right to vote destroys his usefulness
as a laborer ; then, that education turns his head and makes him dis
contented with the plantation where wages reach the high water
mark of six dollars a month, which may or may not be paid accord
ing to the whim of his employer ; and finally that the privilege of re
spectable accommodations furnished by common carriers which en
joy unusual public franchises makes him impudent, noisy and self-
respecting, the proper remedy for which is a system of "Jim Crow
I Chicago Inter Ocean, Nov. 4, 1890.

24
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.
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 :
"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 impossibil
ity of his escape more complete than it is."
IV
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 becom
ing 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 gov
ernment. 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 Louisi
ana the votes polled may be compared with the returns of 1896 when
the old constitution was in force :

25

District. I 
II.... III... IV...
v.... VI...

Louisiana
Total Vote, 1898. Total Vote, 1896.
 6,318  iS>4r2
 7,856  16,848
 S.903  15,968
 5,9°o  16,148
 4,805  15,264
 2,494  16,482
Average

5,549

Average
Mississippi
District. Total Vote, 1898
1  2,468 I....
n  3,175 n...
Ill  2,661 III..
IV  4,551 IV..
V  5,105 V...
VI  6,071 VI .
VII  3,605 VII
Average 3,948

16,020
South Carolina
District Total Vote, 1898.
--¦-4,559

 4,138
 4,361
 4,632
 4,230
 4,916
 -4,938
Average 4,539

The total congressional vote of Louisiana which elected six mem
bers to Congress is less by nearly 500 votes than the average for one
district in Iowa. One elector in Louisiana exercises about seven times as
much power in Congress as one in Ohio. 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 congres
sional 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 dis
tricts 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.
The southern people themselves can not permit these violent in
fringements 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

26
seek no higher end than their personal aggrandizement, they compro
mise their own civil and political freedom, and put in jeopardy the in
dustrial progress of the south. The bane of the South today is her
selfish and misguided political leadership, the men who will not scru
ple to sacrifice upon the altars of their insatiable ambition for power
every interest linked with her economic prosperty and all considera
tion for civic virtue by which alone the greatness of a people is meas
ured. 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 dan
ger lies in the pernicious activity of her dominant political leaders
who perpetuate their control by overriding local and national author
ity 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 unoffend
ing citizens by the beneficiaries under these disfranchising constitu
tions. 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:
"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 re
sult 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."^
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.
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 i8g8 show that the highest total vote polled for
I New Orleans Picayune, April 4, 1899.

27
any oflfice 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 poli
cies of the state.
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 possi
ble 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 political views ? Southern white men who view with apprehen-
son these untoward political tendencies, who are alarmed at the pass
ing away of the last vestiges of a republican form of government
from that section of our Union, and who silently condemn and de
plore 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.
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."
But the question is not a sectional one. The whole American
people are deeply concerned in it. Nullification m 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 nuUifiers. Having shorn the Negro of his politi
cal rights and brought him into industrial subjection, thereby usurp
ing power both in state and national government, they now threaten
to dominate the economic and industrial policies of the nation.
This government can not long continue half republican in form
and half oligarchic. John L. Love.

3 9002 00523 8358

¦¦i»:- C^lli.l..^