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 CI 39 (2/95) UCSD Lb.
 
 NEQEO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 Should the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments be repealed? 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OP 
 
 Hon. EDWARD DE Y. MORRELL 
 
 Ml ' 
 
 OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESEN'TATIYES, 
 
 Monday, Apkil 4, 1904. 
 
 6f'98 
 
 "W A S H I ]sr & X O N". 
 
 1904.
 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. EDWAED DE Y. MOEPvELL. 
 
 The House being iu Committee of the ^Vhole House on the stateof the Union, 
 and having under consideration the bill (H. R. I'JSfjO) making appropriations 
 for the support of the Military Academy for the fiscal year ending June 30. 
 19<J5, and for other purposes — 
 
 Mr. MORRELL said: 
 
 Mr. Chair:iax: On the S'Tth of January the gentleman from 
 Georgia [Mr. Hardwick] , taking for his text two resolutions 
 that had been adopted by the Union League Club, of New York 
 City, delivered a somewhat unprovoked address in this House on 
 what is commonly called "'the negro question,'' a question touch- 
 ing the right of the negro to vote, which seems to be the legiti- 
 mate bequest of the slavery disctission. The resolutions referred 
 to are as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That the Government be requested to instruct the district attor- 
 neys in the various States where an illegal siippress'on of votes is alleged to 
 prosecute every case where there has been a violation of the laws of the 
 United States in reference to suffrage, if adequate eviJeac can be obtained 
 to justify a submission of such case to the grand jury. 
 
 Resolved, (1) That Congress ba requested and be respectfully urged to in- 
 vestigate with thoroughness an J impartiality the charges of a suppre.ssion of 
 votes contrary to the foui-leenth and fifteenth amendments to the Consti 
 tution of the United States, and in every ease where such restriction is ao- 
 complished by a limitation of the franchLse for any reason the repi-esentation 
 of such State in Congress be reduced, and also to see that the fifteenth amend- 
 ment be in no way violated either directly or by subterfuge; and (2J that 
 where the decisions of the courts or the practices at elections disclose the fact 
 that the statutes are inadequate, amendatory acts be passed remedying the 
 defects disclosed. 
 
 In the outset. Mr. Chairman. I vrish to congratulate the Democ- 
 racy ui-on having at last found a champion to voice boldly and 
 unflinchingly the Sintiments which the party has long cherished 
 but has not had the hardihood to proclaim. The gentleman from 
 Georgia states them courageously, and for that I honor him. 
 
 I have waited for those older and abler than myself to make 
 some reply, but so far in vain. 
 
 I feel that if the time has arrived, which is suggested by the 
 5l9i 3 

 
 remarks of the gentleman from Georgia, for a discnssion of the 
 so-called " negro question.'' it should be on the lines of coopera- 
 tion between all the States of the Union, North and South, East 
 and West, imiting in an earnest desire to solve, if possible, this great 
 problem— a problem which ought not to any longer separate north- 
 ern feeling from southera feeling, as it is one concerning which 
 all States and all sections should strive, as in all other great na- 
 tional questions, for a wise solution, always, however, within the 
 limits of the Constitution, which both North and Soitth, East and 
 West, equally claim and jealously guard. 
 
 In the gentleman's argument he has quoted, with a great deal 
 of satisfaction to himself, from perhaps the ablest of American 
 statesmen claiming the political faith of the Republican party — 
 the Hon. James G. Blaine. The very conclusions which he has 
 arrived at, and which he desires the House to accept by the reso- 
 lutions which he and others have introduced, were presented some 
 years ago for argument and disc-ussion under the heading of 
 '•Ought the negro to be disfranchised'- Ought he to have been 
 enfranchised? " This discussion was engaged in by eight gentle- 
 men—one, the Hon. James G. Blaine, who, as I have said, has 
 been so often quoted by the gentleman from Georgia; the others, 
 with the exception of General Garfield and Mr. Wendell Phillip-, 
 were gentlemen identified with the Democratic party and distin- 
 guished and influential in its councils at that time. 
 
 General Garfield was a Republican, afterwards President of the 
 United States, and one who had taken an honorable and promi- 
 nent part in all leg'slation respecting negro suffrage. Mr. Wen- 
 dell Phillips was neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but always 
 reserved to himself the right to criticise and condemn either partj'. 
 The other gentlemen who engaged in this discussion were the 
 Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar. United States Senator from Mississippi; 
 Wade Hampton, governor of South Carolina; Alexander H. 
 Stephens. Representative from Georgia: ]Montgomery Blair, a 
 member of the Cabinet of President Lincoln, and Thomas A. 
 Hendricks, United States Senator from Indiana, and subsequently 
 Vice-President of the United States in the first Cleveland Admin- 
 istration. 
 5998
 
 In the concluding article Mr. Blaine says: 
 
 Of the replies made by the other gentlemen, identified as they have been 
 ard are with t!;e Democratic party, it is noteworthy that, vrith the escejjtion 
 of Mr. Blair, they agree that the negro ought not to be disfranchished. Aa 
 all of these gentlemen were hostile to the enfraurhisement of the race, their 
 present position must be taken as a step forward, and as an attestation of the 
 wisdom and courage of the Republican party at the time they were violently 
 opposing its measures. This general expression leaves Mr. Blair to be treated 
 as an exception, and for many of his averments the best answer is to be found 
 in the sugge.stions and concesiions of his Democratic associates. I need not 
 make any elaborate reply to Mr. Blair, when he is answered with such sig- 
 nificance and such point by those of his own political household. It is one of 
 the curious developments of political history that a man who sat in the Cabi- 
 nt of Abraham Lincoln and was present when emancipation was decreed 
 should live to wi-ite a paper against the enfranchisement of the negro, when 
 the vice-president of the rebel Confederacy and two of its most distinguished 
 officers are taking the other side. 
 
 It will be noticed that in the argtiment of Mr. Blaine he does 
 
 not suppose possible the existence of conditions that confront us 
 
 to-day. He says: 
 
 The class of men whose views are thus hastily summarized do not contem- 
 plate the withdrawal of the suffrage from the negro without a corresponding 
 reduction in the representation in Congress of the States where the negro is 
 a large factor in the apportionment. And yet it is quite probable that they 
 have not given thought to the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of com- 
 passing that end. Under the Constitution, as it is now construed, the dimi- 
 nution of representative strength could only result from the State.3 passing 
 such laws as would disfranchise the negrro by some educational or property 
 test, as it is forbidden by the fifteenth apiendment to disfranchise him on ac- 
 count of his race. But no Southern State will do this, and for two reasons: 
 First, they will in no event consent to a reduction of representative strength, 
 and. second, they could not make any disfranchisement of the negro that 
 would not at the same time disfranchise an immense number of whites. 
 
 And yet the very thing has happened which Mr. Blaine in all 
 his faith and reliance in the power and justice of the Republican 
 party in meeting the issues believed would at once be corrected 
 and what he also did not believe that the Democratic party of the 
 South would attempt, fearing a reduction in representation which 
 is emphasized by the resolutions of the gentleman from Georgia. 
 
 Further on he says: 
 
 No human right on this continent is more completely guaranteed than the 
 I'lght against disf ranchisejnent on account of race, color, or previous condi- 
 tion of servitude, as embodied in the fifteenth amendment of the C institution 
 of the United States. 
 
 In the article contributed by Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, to 
 demonstrate the purity of the enactment of the laws of his State, 
 he laid great stress upon a decision which had just then been ren- 
 
 51,93
 
 6 
 
 dered by Judge Snead, in which attention was called to the polit- 
 ical debauchery and the puivhasable character of the negro vote. 
 Now, let me read from some newspapers, published within the 
 last two years in a certain county in the State which Mr. Stephens 
 had the honor to represent, showing how now that the negro has 
 been disqualified the purity of the ballot has been assured: 
 
 Eliminating the negro vote made a great stride forward in politics. Some 
 men in consi 'ering the expensiveness of the white purchasable vote declare 
 the white p:imary is a failure, but this is a superficial view. 
 
 Negro voters may have been cheaper, but wc paid a great deal more than 
 money for them . We gave a prominence to worthless negro vagabonds, and 
 white ward workers were comi elled for nights in advance of the election to 
 be corralled with negroes in bullpens in doling out cigars and whisky, serv- 
 ing barbecues, and permitting familiarities in speech and action from inso- 
 lent blacks, who took advantage of the need for their votes to push them- 
 selves into social equality. 
 
 The elimination of the negro vote has retired the negro bully and black- 
 guard from the election precinct, and we are also freed from the sight ot 
 noisy and half-drunken negroes being driven in carriages from polls to polls 
 to vote first in one name and then another. For this much let us give thanks. 
 
 But we have developed a new era. Many white men, who would not sell 
 their votes under the old regime, along with the negroes, now barter them 
 in the most bra en maaner. and it is declared we now have nearly 2,000 ptu-- 
 chasabie white voters. 
 
 The elimination of this evil is the next thing to which the citizens must 
 address themselves. There must be a sentiment created in the community 
 against buying votes, as well as to condemn the sellers. One is as reprehen- 
 sible as the other ,and the former is largely responsible for the latter. 
 
 The best men in the community must devote themselves to the solution of 
 this problem. The disease has grown to desperate proportions. There is no 
 common sense and no morals in a candidate having to buy his way into oflBce, 
 or in an ofiicial having to spend two or three years' salary to retain his office. 
 
 This is a political blot on the county that must be wiped out. Let the best 
 thought in the community be devoted to devising a practical remedy. In 
 eliminating the negro we have taken a valuable step. Now let us take an- 
 other ana eliminate the possibility to 2.000 purchasable white voters, being 
 the balance of power in all our elections. 
 
 There are a great many more dollars in circulation to-day than there were 
 yesterday. Ten-dollar bills, five-dollar bills, but no small change, were 
 strictly in evidence at every polling place yesteiday. Politics may have a 
 commercial tint, but there is no hypocrisy displayed. The coin is always on 
 hand tor buying voters and tliere is a large element ever ready to be pur- 
 chased. It takes no delicate approaches to catch a floater, and the average 
 rioaters will barter like peddlers for a good price. 
 
 This morning the very first and most effective thing done at the different 
 wards was to flash the pay roll. There seems to be no talisman like letting 
 the floater get a " sight.' It teaches him to be independent and not to make 
 himselt too cheap. To stretch the language a trifle, "it makes him self- 
 respecting." 
 
 In the Fourth Ward the display of ten-dollar Williams was lavish in the 
 extreme. The Fourth Ward seems to be strongly tinctured with the " Re- 
 publican spirit of commercialism," and the workers walked about with the 
 ducats strung between their fingers just the same as a sport on the race track. 
 The boys up m '•bloody six hundred" are too honest to hide the fact that 
 money is beine usea. 
 5998
 
 In order that Members of the House may have an opportunity 
 of studying and comparing the views and conclusions of men who 
 had taken the most prominent parts in bringing about a condi- 
 tion that they were at that time discussing, whose judgments and 
 decisions were made after careful deliberation as to what might 
 or what might not be the effect of a misstatement, I shall print 
 as 1 art of my remarks the arguments of these distinguished gen- 
 tlemen 
 
 These articles to which I refer were written some twenty-five 
 years ago. It is therefore necessary to ask ourselves what the 
 causes are, if any. which have brought about the necessity which 
 is evidenced by the resolutions introduced by the gentleman from 
 Georgia and the conclusions reached by him in his arguments. 
 
 By the introduction of his resolutions for the repeal of the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth amendments the gentleman from Georgia ad- 
 mits the necessity of some action by Congress concerning these 
 particular parts of the Constitiation. The question at once arises, 
 What is this necessity and what would be the effect if these amend- 
 ments were not repealed? No other answer can be made except 
 that their provisions are in danger of being enforced by Congress. 
 "What provision in these amendment? is to be feared by the Repre- 
 sentatives from certain Southern States who have introluced 
 these resolutions? Surely not that which provides that the right 
 of suffrage shall not be denied on account of race, color, or pre- 
 vious condition of servitude, for the manner in which these Stat:s 
 have brought about the abridgment of the suffrage has been 
 twice d:cided by the Supreme Court of the United States to be 
 matters for State regulation. The only conclusion, therefore, 
 which can be arrived at for the necessity for the repeal of the 
 amendment referred to in the resolutions is the fear that the 
 provisions which require that repre.sentation in Congress shall 
 be reduced accordingly might be enforced. 
 
 I shall not follow the gentleman in his zig-zag journey through 
 the last half century of American history, but shall admit as not 
 at all relevant or important to this discussion the most of his his- 
 torical citations. I shall frankly admit that most of the Northern 
 States have at one time or another refused the ballot to the negro, 
 and that there are only three or four States in the Union where 
 the suffrage has always been extended to the negro. In several 
 
 5998
 
 8 
 
 Northern States, indeed, voting is still prohibited to the negro by 
 their organic law, though in effect this law is now overridden 
 and nullified by the fifteenth amendment. I also concede that a 
 majority of the statesmen of the North before the rebellion were 
 not in favor of interfering with slavery in the South or of ex- 
 tending negro suffrage in the North. Many of the most con- 
 spicuous, fearless, and effective abolitionists that this country 
 ever saw, men in favor of universal emancipation, and effecting 
 it whenever they could, regarding slavery as an unmixed evil, a 
 curse to white and black alike, and to be abolished at the earliest 
 practicable moment, were southern men. I need not mention 
 such names as Washington, Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Grimke, 
 Birney, Cassius M. Clay, and if we could call the roll a thousand 
 brave and generous souls would answer. 
 
 Nor shall I claim Mr. Lincoln as an original antislavery man. 
 When he was elected President he seemed to have been almost in- 
 different to the existence of slavery, and declared that he was 
 willing to preserve the Union half slave and half free. He had 
 no intention of meddling with slavery in the States where it ex- 
 isted, and did not wish to give the ballot to the negroes even in 
 his own State. He wanted to save the Union. Nothing else was 
 of any consequence. On these questions his views and purposes 
 were shared by almobl all the members of the party which elected 
 him. 
 
 Many millions of our people assume, without thinking, that 
 negro suffrage was forced upon the South by the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth amendments as an act of hostility and in a spirit of re- 
 venge. The exact opposite is true. These amendments were 
 added to the Constitution in the interest of harmony and for the 
 purpose of perfecting the real purpose of the thirteenth amend- 
 ment. Here is the state of things: Slavery had been abolished. 
 The whites of the South could not conceive of the possibility that 
 the free negro would work without physical compulsion. When 
 it became known that President Johnson's purpose was to allow 
 " the States lately in rebellion " to resume their former relations 
 to the Union, with full control of their own affairs, the whites 
 perceived that by municipal laws they could reduce the black 
 race to semislavery, which would keep it industrially and p iliti- 
 cally in the power of the former masters. Several of the Southern 
 
 59118
 
 9 
 
 States adopted legislative statutes and civic ordinances for the 
 purpose of carrying out this policy and realizing this reestab- 
 lished relation of servitude. Louisiana adopted these ordinances: 
 
 Every negro is required to be in the regular service of some white person 
 or former owner, who shall be responsible for the conduct of said negro; but 
 said employer or former owner may permit said negro to hire his own time 
 by special permission in writing, which permit shall not extend over seven 
 days at one time. 
 
 No negro shall sell, barter, or exchange any article of merchandise with- 
 out the special written permission of his employer. 
 
 Regtilations were also adopted compelling negroes, under pen- 
 alty, to be in their quarters at certain hours, and others defining 
 the times, places, and methods of their buying and selling. This, 
 of course, established a peonage scarcely less dear than the slavery 
 from which they had escaped. It made their emancipation a 
 mockery. It f.bolished free labor. It reestablished the overseer 
 system. If these laws continued to exist, slavery was not abol- 
 ished. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln has been quoted as saying that he was not in sym- 
 pathy with giving the right of franchise to the negro. Let me 
 ask if it is imagined that had Mr. Lincoln lived and realized that 
 practically the only condition which was imposed bj' the victors 
 of that most terrible of all terrible struggles— namely, the adop- 
 tion in spirit as well as in fact of the thirteenth amendment — was 
 not being carried out, and therefore the chief result of the war 
 nullified, would he not have sanctioned and put into force the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth amendments with all that dogged ear- 
 nestness of purpose with which he waged the war for the preser- 
 vation of the Union, even though it cost him as much or even 
 more sorrow? 
 
 In this situation two alternatives presented themselves — in- 
 definite or prolonged military rule by the Federal Army in the 
 Southern States or the endowment of the black race with enough 
 political power to insure their protection. 
 
 In this dilemma the ablest and most distinguished men in both 
 Houses of Congress were gathered aboiat President Johnson, in- 
 cluding General Grant, his successor, and an earnest and pro- 
 longed conference was held. After much discussion it was 
 decided that permanent military rule was too obnoxious to bi- 
 seriously considered, and that remedy was rejected. 
 
 The majority of the Republican party did not consider the
 
 10 
 
 enfranchisement of the negro an ideal solution of the vexing prob- 
 lem. But it seemed the best at hand, and was adopted as a gi-eat 
 improvement upon anarchy. 
 
 If the army rule had been continued . with a regiment of Federal 
 soldiers in every State, military rule would undoubtedly have pro- 
 dncf d. as it always does produce, en rmous and terrible evils. 
 
 One of the ablest st >tesmen of that time, Cai'l Schurz, traveled 
 through the South soon after the close of the war as the personal 
 agent of President Andrew Johnson to study the conditions which 
 reconstruction had to face. He says: 
 
 It ii not to be forgotten that negro enfranchisement was resorted to in a 
 situation so complicated that whatever might have been done to solve the 
 most pressing problems would have appeared a colossal mistake in the light 
 of subsequent developments. 
 
 On July 28, 18G8, the Secretary of State, in pursuance of a con- 
 current resolution of Congress passed one week previously, issued 
 a proclamation declaring that the fourteenth amendment had 
 been ratified by three-fourths of the States; and on the 30th day 
 of March, 1870, he issued a similar proclamation, declaring that 
 the fifteenth amendment had been duly ratified by three-fourths 
 of the States. The Sapreme Court has decided a great number 
 of cases arising under both these amendments, as may be seen by 
 reference to the Constitution. Manual, and Digest prepared for 
 the Fifty-eighth Congress. The validity of the amendments has 
 been sustained in everj- one of these cases. It is now too late to 
 question their validity or disobey their mandates. Indeed. I do 
 not think their validity was ever questioned in this House until 
 the 2Tth of January, 1904. when the gentleman from Georgia 
 consented to illuminate the subject. 
 
 It is attempted to apologize for the violation by some of the 
 Southern States of these amendments, or at least to minimize 
 their offense against human rights, by asserting that some North- 
 ern States, as Ohio, Kansas, and Minnesota, rejected negro 
 suffrage for themselves during the very year that the fifteenth 
 amendment was adopted, and that no State in the Union except 
 New York had ever explicitly extended to the negro the right to 
 vote. This is indeed true, but it is to be added that since the 
 adoption of the fifteenth amendment they have never denied to 
 him the right to vote on account of color. 
 
 Notwithstanding the immense majority in Congress and of 
 59S8
 
 11 
 
 states by which these amendments were ratified, the gentleman 
 
 from Georgia has the assurance to say: 
 
 The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were adopted, if adopted at all, 
 against the will of a majority of all the people in the Union, by trickery and 
 treachery in the North and by force and violence in the South. 
 
 He announces that awful things will happen if the United States 
 shall have the temerity to attempt to enforce these amendments. 
 It will cause a cyclone, ahuriijane.possiblyan earthquake. The 
 fourteenth amendment provides that when the right to vote for 
 President, Representatives in Congress, or State ofl&cers is denied 
 to citizens of the United States " except for participation in re- 
 bellion or other crimes, the basis of representation therein shall 
 be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citi- 
 zens bears to the whole number of male citizens 21 years of age in 
 said State.' 
 
 And here the gentleman from G-eorgia raises his voice and ex- 
 claims: 
 
 If Ccngi"ess should be unwise enough to elect to exercise the discretionary 
 power vested in it by section 5 of Article XIV. it will not only b; the most 
 serious stran of the present cordial i-elations so happily existing between 
 the sections, but it will require a readjustment of the basis of representation 
 that will not start at the Potomac and at Rio Grande, but will stretch from 
 Hatteras to the Golden Gate, from Maine to Florida, and will embrace in its 
 majestic sweep every State and Territory in the Union and even our new 
 islands of the sea 
 
 By this comprehensive menace the gentleman from Georgia 
 means tliat under section 2. Article XIV, it is prescribed that 
 when the right to vote " is denied to any of the male inhabitants "" 
 of any State who are "21 years of age and citizens of the United 
 States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebel- 
 lion or for other crimes." the basis of represent:ition in that State 
 shall be reduced accordingly. 
 
 I admit the contention. That is what it means. He further 
 claims that several of the Northern Stat, s do in fact at the present 
 time abridge the franchise of citizens of the United States who 
 are 21 years old by requiring educational or property qualifica- 
 tions, or prepayment of taxes, or a specific religious belief, or na- 
 tivity in the United States, or the use of the Australian ballot. 
 requiring a certain degree of intelligence; and he insists that the 
 basis of representation shall be reduced accordingly in said States. 
 I shall not enter upon that discussion. It is a question for the 
 5^98
 
 12 
 
 Federal courts. If after due consideration tliey shall deliber- 
 ately decide and declare that such limitations of the franchise do 
 in fact come within the purport of that amendment, the people 
 of the States which for the promotion of the public welfare have 
 placed such limitations upon the franchise will accept the de- 
 cision without a murmur and modify their basis of apportion- 
 ment according thereto. 
 
 Of the 9,000,000 so-called negroes in the United States. 8,000.000 
 are in the fifteen Southern States. Of males 21 years of age the 
 negroes number about 2,000,000 in this nation. The gentleman 
 from Georgia alleges that ' ' of the more than a million and a half 
 negro males of voting age" in the eleven States that once con- 
 stituted the Southern Confederacy "three-fourths of a million 
 can neither read nor write." 
 
 I would ask him if he is proud of this record; if he experiences 
 self-satisfaction in the reflection and the declaration that a ma- 
 jority of the negroes of the South can neither read nor write. 
 He says that the illiteracy of the southern negro has been rap- 
 idly reduced since he was made free; that negro illiteracy in 
 those States was 77 i>ev cent in 1880, 63 per cent in 1890. and 49 
 per cent in 1900 — in other words, that more than one-half the 
 negroes of the South can now read and write, and that the num- 
 ber who can read and write to-day is 50 per cent greater than it 
 was when Lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation. 
 
 This would seem to be a marvelously good showing, but it is 
 argued otherwise. It is insisted that while the southern negro is 
 more intelligent, he is more wicked and pernicious. Or, in the 
 language of the gentleman, " During this same period his crimi- 
 nality increased in more rapid ratio than his illiteracy decreased." 
 This h? tries to prove by adducing the alleged fact that the num- 
 ber of negroes arrested in the South has increased one-third dur- 
 ing the last twenty years. On arriving at this datum my friend 
 exclams: "There you are; there are more prisoners than there 
 used to be; ergo, more crime." He seems to think that settles the 
 question. I want to ask: Does it settle the question? Let us see. 
 In "old slavery times" there were very few negroes arrested 
 in the entire South. If a negro "went bad," he was flogged or 
 subjected to some physical remonstrance, which he appreciated 
 and which was continued until he went good again. 
 
 5998
 
 13 
 
 So there were almost no arrests. After the war the negroes 
 became subject to the statute law, but the planter was still to 
 some extent the patriarch and had his own methods of restraining; 
 the vicious and lawless. When the ballot was given to the negro 
 by the fifteenth amendment and the reconstruction measures 
 were enforced, it caused tremendous irritation and exasperation 
 between the races. The bitter hostilities then engendered still 
 exist, and, I might suggest, have something to do with the increase 
 in the niimber of negro prisoners. 
 
 While it is undeniably the right of each State to care for its 
 criminal population as it deems most advisable, yet I venture the 
 opinion that if the various jails and penitentiaries in some of the 
 Southern States were conducted in a manner which woiild not 
 bring the inmates into social contact with one another, so that 
 one imprisoned for a trifling offense would not be brought in con- 
 tact and contaminated by the habitual or confirmed criminal, and 
 if such institutions were conducted at an expense to the State 
 rather than at a substantial profit it is but reasonable to suppose 
 that crime in the South would show a marked decrease. 
 
 Professor Frances Kellor, of the University of Chicago, in a 
 sociological study of the criminal negro (in the Arena, January, 
 1901), says: 
 
 Before the war the South had but few penal institutions. The criminal 
 then, as now, was the negro; and, as a slave, he was chastised or dispatched 
 by his master as the nature of his crime demanded. The few whites were 
 confined in jails or county prisons. The previous condition of the negro as 
 a slave makes tlie progress of the reformatory idea exceedingly slow, for it 
 must grow with the conception of the negro as a man. 
 
 The current opinion in the South is that the negro is incapable of reform. 
 In Alabama and Georgia county reformatories are being established, and 
 New Orleans is stmggling to obtain one. In those already existing much 
 labor and little instruction are the practice. 
 
 Most of the advancement seen in Northern i)enal systems and laws is un- 
 known. Many of the people are hostile to the reformatory idea, for the basis 
 of the .southern system is financial. A successful prison administration is 
 judged by the amount of net revenue in the State. There are no southern 
 organizations for the study of criminality and no State bureaus of charity. 
 In fact, one State often does not know the systems of its neighbor. These 
 conditions are fatal to the application of any scientific moasui'es and preclude 
 the study of the (-auses of crime. So long as a State's criminals bring it a net 
 revenue of from $.30,000 to S1.5().(XX) a year it is difficult to introduce methods 
 leading to reform and to decrease of crime. 
 
 Let me ask what is bringing about this ratio of increase in 
 crime? 
 
 First. To my mind, it is the methods employed in the punisli- 
 ment of crime. 
 r,<m
 
 14 
 
 Second. Tlie dawning realization that the white man intends 
 by indirection to annul the civil rights guaranteed the negro by 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. 
 
 Third. The cruel limitation realized by the colored man who 
 has been educated or who has educated himself, when he realizes 
 that notwithstanding his intellectual qualities, no matter how 
 great or how superior to those of his neighbors, his color compels 
 him forever to herd with the lowest of his people. 
 
 Is it fair through education and the consequent knowlege of 
 the rights guaranteed under the Constitution as it stands to-day 
 to raise up and give the colored man, like the children of Israel, 
 a glimpse of the promised land— civil rights— only to drag him 
 back int'j a position of hopelessness? 
 
 If the negroes are going back as a result of education, so are 
 we. What example, may I ask, do we give of civilized methods 
 as the result of over two thousand years of education and conse- 
 quent supposed re.iuement? We institute the stockade principle, 
 where a man is worse than a slave; we prevent him by intimida- 
 tion from exercising the civil rights which we know belong to him 
 under the instrument which made us what we are. When a 
 crime is committed we follow him like a wild beast, with dogs. 
 When captured we burn him alive, like the Indians did their cap- 
 tives during the early days of this country, and at the same time 
 we are admitting the Indians to citizenship. 
 
 Professor Frances Kellor, in an article on the criminal negro, 
 says: 
 
 The statement is often seen that crime has increased among the negroes 
 since the war. That is a matter of no surprise, because increased freedom 
 of an ignorant people invariably means increased violations of law. In the 
 second place, acts sanctioned in slavery, as adultery and small thefts, were not 
 then considered as crimes. Third, there were no records kept before the war, 
 so no close comparisons are possible. Fourth, Gince the freeing of the negro 
 penalties for certain crimes have been increased. There are no agencies in 
 the South for reforming criminals, and wayward children are not protected 
 as in the North. For these reasons increase of crime does not mean deterio- 
 ration of the race, but it is one phase of its attempt to meet new conditions 
 and exterral forces. In the Xortli crime is increasing among the negroes, 
 but there also they are meeting a most complex and advanced civilization, 
 for which they have but a slight preparation. 
 
 A more exhaustive study of criminalty, carried out along lines some of 
 which have been indxated in the preceding articles, would tend to lead to 
 conclu.sions having this import: 
 
 1. Climate, soil, food, and economic and social conditions are essential ele- 
 mer^ts in any study of criminality, and by "social conditions" are meant all 
 'environmental factors. Until these influences are estimated and moasui'es 
 5998
 
 15 
 
 are based upon the recoguition of them, no great reduction in the amount ol 
 crime can be anticipated. With reference to these the negi'o is more disad- 
 vantageously placed than is any other class in America. 
 
 2. The laws and penal institutions in the South nre not conduete 1 with a 
 view to decreasing crime, but to care for the prisoner and secure revenx:e. 
 Preventive measures, especially with reference to children, are just finding 
 I place. Experience has shown that the intitulional system is of great im- 
 portance in both prevention and reformation. 
 
 3. The measurements and tests made upon a limited number do not reveal 
 physical and mental conditions that should discourage efforts in education 
 and development. 
 
 4. The environments in the South are favorable to the commission of crime 
 by negroes. It is impossible to estimate the persistency of racial traits or of 
 the limitations, mental or physical, imposed by racial development, until a 
 parallel environment is removed; that is, the environment must be shown 
 to be of such a nature that it offers every oijportunity for development and 
 improvement. In no phase of negroe.s" life, domestic, social, industrial, po- 
 litical, or religious, does this appear to be the case. 
 
 Even if. as it is a.ssumed, crime has increased among the negroes. 
 why should education be blamed for this? Surely this is an un- 
 fair conclusion. I think everyone will admit that education has 
 been of benefit to a great many negroes. If, on the other hand, 
 some have not profited by the education that they have received, 
 is it fair that we should say that the education of the negro is a 
 mistake and deprive all negroes of education? 
 
 On the l'2th of last I'ebruary, at a meeting in New York, the 
 
 question of negro industrial education and its bearing on the race 
 
 problem was discussed. Andrew Carnegie presided. President 
 
 Eliot, of Harvard, was among the speakers. Ex-President 
 
 Grover Cleveland, who has some standing in this country, though 
 
 he is not believed in by the latter-day Democracy, sent a letter, 
 
 in which he said: 
 
 I am so completely convinced of the importance of this cause, as it is re- 
 lated to the s<3lution of a problem no patriotic citizen should neglect, that 1 
 look upon every attempt to stimulate popular interest and activity in its be- 
 half as a duty of citizenship. 
 
 Booker T. Washington, whom the gentleman from Georgia 
 
 would disfranchise because of his color, was the leading speaker 
 
 at this convocation of great men. I quote from his speech a few 
 
 paragraphs which were not, but might have been, spoken in 
 
 reply to the gentleman from Georgia: 
 
 After making careful inquiry I can not find a half a dozen cases of a man 
 or woman who has completed a full course of educatioii in any of our repu- 
 table institutions like Hampton, Tuskegeo, Fisk", or Atlanta, who are im- 
 prisoned. The records of the S'jutli show that 'JO per centof the colored yeo- 
 ple imprisoned are without knowl dge of trades and (il per cent are illiterate. 
 
 But it has been said tiiat the negro pi'oves economically valueless in pro
 
 16 
 
 portion as he is educated. Let us see. All will agree that the negro in Vir- 
 ginia, for exauijile, began life forty years ago in complete poverty, scarcely 
 owning clothing or a day's food. The reports of the State auditor show the 
 negro to-day owns at least one twenty-sixth of the real estate in that Com- 
 monwealth exclusive of his holdings in towns and cities, and that in the coun- 
 ties east of the Blue Ridge Mountains he owns one-sixteenth. In Middlesex 
 County he owns one-sixth; in Hanover, one-fourth. In Georgia the official 
 records show that, largely through the influence of educated men and women 
 from Atlanta schools and others, thenegr.es added last year $1,536,000 to their 
 taxable property, making the total amount upon which they pay taxes in 
 that State alone 816,700,000. 
 
 Few people I'ealize under the most difficult and trying circumstances, dur- 
 ing the last forty years, it has been the educated negro who counseled pa- 
 tience, self-control, and thus averted a war of races. Every negro going out 
 of our institutions properly educated becomes a link in the chain that shall 
 forever bind the two races together in all essentials of life. 
 
 Thomas Nelson Page, who has made a deep study of the negro 
 
 problem, says: 
 
 It is from the educated negro, that is, the negro who is more enlightened 
 than the general body of his race, that order must come. The ignorance, 
 venality, and superstition of the average negro are dangerous to us. Educa- 
 tion will divide them and uplift them. 
 
 If it is true that, as a distinguished southern statesman has re- 
 marked, "A smart nigger is a bad nigger," we must change all 
 our opinions of the value of an education. For such a conclu- 
 sion would involve whites as deeply as blacks. If education 
 tends to depravity, debauchery, and an increase of criminality, 
 then we have too many schools, too many colleges, too many 
 books, too many newspapers, and, for that matter, too many edu- 
 cated Members of Congress. 
 
 It is not alone in the Southern States that the negro is unfairly 
 treated in the enforcement of law; it is also true that in the North- 
 em States courts and juries are often his enemies, always ready 
 to exaggerate his faults and ignore his virtues. 
 
 The negro, especially the ambitious and aspiring negro, is treated 
 very much as the Jew is treated by the ignorant peasantry of 
 Russia. Everywhere prejudice tracks him and defeats him: 
 everywhere he is more or less looked upon as necessarily an infe- 
 rior and is discriminated against in many of the walks of life. 
 
 The Rev. Edgar G. Murphy, secretary of the Southern Society, 
 
 which holds a conference on race problems at Montgomery, Ala., 
 
 in May. in a recent address delivered in Philadelphia, said: 
 
 The general problem of the negro's legal rights, his rights before the 
 
 southern jury and before the average coiu-t, presents our subject, however, 
 
 under one of its darkest aspects. It is hard for the negro to get justice. The 
 
 evil is not easy ot remedy, but southern men are working upon it, and 
 
 5'J98
 
 17 
 
 sonthprn men themselves will right it, in so far as it can be righted. I need 
 hardly tell you that this evil is not peculiar to the South. As Prof. W. P. 
 Wilcox, of Cornell, chief statistician in the Census Office and a northern man, 
 has indicated in a recent paper upon negro criminality, there are more con- 
 victions of negroes for crime at the North, in proportion to the number of 
 the negro population, than at the South. The result is due, I think, not only 
 to the negro's weaknesses, but to the popular prejudice everywhere against 
 an inferior race. 
 
 A short time ago a distinguished statesman of the other House 
 declared that there was more crime in New Eiigland in proportion 
 to the population than in his own State, and he proved it to his 
 satisfaction by showing that there were more jails and State 
 prisons. In the same way. doubtless, he would prove that New 
 York furnishes a larger ijroportion of lunatics than his own State 
 becaiise it builds more lunatic asylums. In the same way he would 
 . prove that the people of Massachiisetts are more illiterate than 
 the people of Georgia by showing that the people of Massachu- 
 setts had the most schoolhouses. 
 
 I am not one of those who believe that the negro race, any more 
 than any other race, can be taken up bodily as it were and put 
 upon a plane of high civilization and usefulness. It must depend 
 absolutely upon the individual negro, as it depends upon the indi- 
 vidual Anglo-Saxon, or those of other extraction, as to whether 
 they will rise and become capable of assuming a place in the af- 
 fairs of men rather than remain in oblivion. 
 
 Governor Vardaman, of Missi.esippi, made a crusade through 
 the North in opposition to negro education. Here is a choice 
 sample of his refined, classic style: 
 
 I am opposed to the nigger's voting, it matters not what his advertised 
 moral and mental qualifications may be. I am just as much opposed to 
 Booker "Washington, with all his Anglo-Saxon reenf orcement, voting, as I am 
 to voting by the cocoanut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon, Andy 
 Dotson, who blacks my shoes every morning. Neither one is fit to perform 
 the supreme functions of citizenship. 
 
 While I admire the ability lately shown by the distinguished 
 governor to uphold the majesty of the law in his State, yet I 
 might suggest that this elegant quotation does not demonstrate a 
 vast superiority over the gentleman referred to in the quotation. 
 
 The same distinguished governor, however, is at least consist- 
 ent, for, having conducted his campaign upon the platform of ceas- 
 ing to educate the negro, he has during the past few days vetoed 
 a bill carrying an appropriation for a negro school. We have 
 
 5998 2
 
 18 
 
 here what might be likened to a very elementary problem. A 
 certain State does not disfranchise the negro on account of his 
 color, but simply imposes an educational test, which of course 
 requires that for a negro to vote he shall have the necessary edu- 
 cation. To obtain this education he must goto school. Suppose 
 that all the bills carrying the negro-school appropriations are 
 vetoed, then we have "no school funds:" therefore no schools, no 
 opportunity for learning: therefore, illiteracy, or quod erat dem- 
 onstrandum — disfranchisement. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, if I were a Southerner born and bred, and felt 
 toward the negro as Governor Vardaman and the gentleman from 
 Georgia feel. I would 1 e in favor of sacrificing some of the repre- 
 sentation of my State in Congress to achieve my purpose honestly. 
 I would agree with Governor Hampton when he said that to get 
 the negro out of politics he would gladly give up the representa- 
 tion based on his vote. 
 
 A question has been raised as to a possible social equality be- 
 tween the white and the black races. In answer to that I can 
 not do better than quote from the best exponent of the best 
 thought and education among the negro race in this country, 
 Booker T. Washington, who says: 
 
 In all things social as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all 
 things essential to mutual progress. 
 
 To begin with, social equality no more exists in this country, 
 either in the North or the South, among whites than it does in 
 any other country. The man himself, or the woman herself, is 
 the judge of his or her equal. 
 
 Social equality has nothing whatever to do with civil rights. 
 It is a thing separate and apart, and therefore nothing to do with 
 this question. 
 
 The corner stone upon which the democratic institutions of 
 this country ai-e founded, the hope of all Americans, whether 
 they be native born or naturalized, white or black, is based and 
 exemplified in the general principle enunciated by President 
 Roosevelt when he declared: 
 
 I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately 
 can I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the -wishes and feelings of the 
 people of each 1 reality, but I can not consent to take the position that the 
 door of hope, the door of opportunity, is to be shut upon any man, no matter 
 how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude 
 would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong. 
 5998
 
 19 
 
 And he then proceeds: 
 
 If, as you hold, the great bulk of the colored people are not yet fit in point 
 of character and influence to hold su -h positions, it seems to me that it is 
 worth while putting a premium upon the effort among them to achieve the 
 character and standing which will tit them. 
 
 No fair-minded man can help but admire the frankness of the 
 President when he asserts in no uncertain language that it is a 
 good thing to make the negro realize that if he shows in marked 
 degree the qualities of good citizenship he can look forward to 
 and hope for recognition. 
 
 Again. I say if the statistics quoted by the gentleman are cor- 
 rect, then there must be as much radically wrong with the 
 method of education employed as there is with the opportunities 
 given them of exercising the rights guaranteed to them under the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Personally I do not be- 
 lieve in higher education for whites or blacks, except where ex- 
 ceptional cases are found. I think that the three R"s — "reading, 
 'riting, and 'rithmetic " — as the old schoolmaster used to say, to- 
 gether with geography, United States history, and a good manual 
 training, would make us a stronger nation. Instead of the com- 
 pulsory military service in vogue in European powers, I should 
 like to see tried a compulsory trade service. 
 
 I heartily agree with Professor N. Southgate Shaler, of Har- 
 vard University, that it is not to be denied that the task of devel- 
 oping the latent powers of the negro race, which, in his opinion, 
 are far greater than is generally believed, is very serious. He 
 says: 
 
 It means a certain amount of technical education of a very gi-eat number 
 of the children of ten million people. * * * 
 
 Yet this need not affright us, for we may be sure that this, like all other 
 well-directed education, will be a very good investment of public money, for 
 it will bear fruit in money as well as other values. Every black man, other- 
 wise to be a mere plodding laborer, who by such training is lifted to the 
 grade of a skilled artisan, will have his value to the State increased several 
 fold. His annual earnings as a" field hand " will not exceed $150; as a skilled 
 blacksmith, cai-penter, or machinist, they should be at least $400, and in 
 something like this measure his value will be advanced by his training. 
 
 The negro must not imagine that simply because he is a negro 
 those who would befriend him among the whites will step in and 
 protect him if he commits a crime. On the other hand, the whites 
 mu9t not impose unjust restrictions, unjust laws, and unjust sen- 
 tences upon the negro simply because he is a negro. To do so is
 
 20 
 
 undemocratic, un-American, and in direct opposition to the prin- 
 ciples upon which this Government was founded and opposed to 
 the welcome which we have extended to the oppressed of all 
 nations. 
 
 In the struggle which faces their race negroes should regard 
 any one of their color who commits a crime not only an offender 
 against the law, but an enemy of his owai people, and instead of 
 ranging themselves on the side of the offender do all in their power 
 to aid justice. 
 
 To lessen the steady growth of lynching, which has so increased 
 in frequency as to be appalling to the farsighted, sober-thinking 
 members of the community, I would suggest that the remedy ad- 
 vocated by Justice Brewer, of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, of doing away with the right of appeal in criminal cases 
 be at once adopted by all the States. The distinguished justice 
 says: 
 
 What can be done to stay this epidemic of lynching? One thing is the es- 
 tablishment of a gri-eater confidence in the summary and certain punishment 
 of the criminal. Men are afraid of law's delays and the uncertainty of its 
 results. Not that they doubt the integrity of the judges, but they know that 
 the law abounds with technical rules, and that appellate courts will often re- 
 verse a judgment of conviction for a disregard of such rules, notwithstand- 
 ing a full belief in the guilt of the accused. If all were certain that the guilty 
 ones would be promptly tried and punished, the inducement to lynch would 
 be largely taken away. 
 
 In an address which I delivered before the American Bar Association at 
 Detroit some years since I advocated doing away with appeals in criminal 
 cases. It did not meet the favor of the association, but I still believe in its 
 wisdom. For nearly a hundred years there was no appeal from the judg- 
 ment of conviction of criminal cases in our Federal courts and no review ex- 
 cept in a few cases, in which, two judges sitting, a conference of opinion on 
 a question of law was certified to the Supreme Court. 
 
 In England the rule has been that there was no appeal in criminal cases, 
 although a question of doubt might be reserved by the presiding judge for 
 the consideration of his brethren. E. J. Phelps, who was minister to Eng- 
 land during Mr. Cleveland's first Administration, once told me that while he 
 was there only two cases were so reserved. Does anyone doubt that justice 
 was fully administered by the English courts? 
 
 It is said in extenuation of lyncliing in case of rape that it is an additional 
 cruelty to the unfortunate victim to compel her to go upon the witness 
 stand and, in the presence of a mixed audience, tell the story of her wrongs, 
 especially when she may be subject to cross-examination by an overzealous 
 counsel. I do not belittle this matter, but it must be remembered that often 
 the unfortunate victim never lives to tell the story of her wrongs; and if she 
 does survive she must tell it to some, and the whole community knows the 
 fact. Even in the court room any high-minded judge wiU stay counsel from 
 any unnecessary cross-examination, and finally, if any lawyer should attempt 
 it, the community may treat him as an outcast. 
 
 I can but think that if the community felt that the criminal would cer- 
 tainly receive the punishment he deserves, and receive it soon, the eager-
 
 21 
 
 ness for lynching would disappear and mobs, whose gatherings too often 
 mean not merely the destruction of jails and other property, but also the 
 loss of innocent lives, would greatly diminish in number. 
 
 One thing is certain, the tendency to lynching is to undermine the respect 
 for the law, and unless it be checked we need not be astonished if it be re- 
 sorted to for all kinds of offenses, and oftentimes innocent men suffer for 
 wrongs committed by others. 
 
 Our duty toward the negro race would seem to me to be one of 
 encouragement and protection — encouraging those who, having 
 made the effort, have achieved success in spite of the difficulties 
 under which they necessarily labored, owing to the natural limita- 
 tions of a race scarcely three hundred years from savagery; pro- 
 tecting those who, having less ability, are not given an opportunity 
 or perhaps are not as fortunate as their fellows. We should not 
 forget that it was through the labor of these people that many 
 of what were the richest States in this country were raised from 
 their original primeval wilderness and made to blossom like a rose. 
 
 The negro race on its side should realize what has been done 
 for it — no matter what its stifferings during slavery — in having 
 received in less than three hundred years a civilization which it 
 has taken other races ages to acquire. The race must realize its 
 own weaknesses and its own shortcomings consequent upon the 
 comparatively few years which it has enjoyed ciWlization. It must 
 realize that the whites are as necessary to the negro race as the 
 negro race in certain States is necessary to the white. The 
 negroes should not imagine and harbor fancied wrongs, and those 
 among them who are gifted with good sense and sober judgment 
 should exercise their best efforts to wipe out such a spirit, and, 
 particularly in success, set an example of modest, conservative 
 behavior. The negro race should also remember that tha war 
 which made them free caused untold suffering and in some cases 
 made poor those to whom, although they were their slaves, they 
 owe the civilization which they now possess. 
 
 Compare the colored people, whom it is quietly proposed to 
 disfranchise, with certain clas.ses of foreigners who come to our 
 shores, ignorant of our laws, ignorant of our language, ignoraiftt 
 of our institutions, who are eagerly naturalized sometimes even 
 before the legal qualifications have been quasi conformed to. 
 
 Let me refer the House to a carefully prepared list of the prop- 
 erty interests of those affected by the amendments the gentleman 
 would annul, which I shall print: and in this connection let me
 
 22 
 
 suggest another thought. By repealing the fourteenth and fif- 
 teenth amendments, at once all the negroes in the United States 
 would be disfranchised. Of all the farms at the present time in 
 the United States, according to the census of 1900, 13 per cent are 
 owned or operated by negro farmers, and according to Mr. Tal- 
 cott Williams, editor of the Philadelphia Press, the amount of 
 property now owned by the negroes in this country amounts to 
 almost $500,000,000. 
 
 Now, by the resolutions introduced by the gentleman from 
 Georgia and others, it is proposed to disfranchis© all the owners 
 of this property. I would like to ask what were the causes which 
 led up to the Declaration of Independence; what it was that 
 our forefathers fought for during 1776? Let me suggest that the 
 initial cause for which we fought was that there should be "no 
 taxation without representation," and there can be no representa- 
 tion without the right to exercise the franchise. Direct repre- 
 sentation of those governed in the governing body is the keystone 
 of our democratic institutions. If our Government is not a rep- 
 resentative government it is nothing. 
 
 I can not agree with those who advance the argument that the 
 South should be left to solve the negro problem, for the reason 
 that when States enact legislation affecting the political status of 
 large numbers of its citizens of voting age the result of such leg- 
 islation is national in its effect, and, therefore, must at once be- 
 come the object of concern to all sections of the country. 
 
 One word in regard to the fourteenth amendment. In the four- 
 teenth amendment the very use of the word "shall," in prescrib- 
 ing the results to happen when certain conditions arose, leaves no 
 discretion to Congress. It is absolutely mandatory upon Congress 
 to take the course prescribed. 
 
 It has been urged that some Northern States have restrictions on 
 the suffrage. The object of the Crumpacker resolution is to have 
 a full and fair investigation of the election laws of all the States. 
 for the purpose of ascertaining to what extent manhood citizen- 
 ship has been disfranchised. If the result of the investigation 
 should be such as to justify it, the purpose is to urge a reduction 
 of the representation of the disfranchising States in accordance 
 with the requirements of the Constitution. 
 
 If, after this investigation, it is discovered that these other
 
 23 
 
 States restrict the franchise contrary to the Constitution, then 
 their representation would have to be reduced accordingly. Why 
 this dread of such an investigation? If what is urged is true, the 
 Northern States may be as seriously affected as the Southern 
 States. I have not heard a protest against such an investigation 
 from the gentleman from Connecticut, for instance, or from the 
 gentleman from Ohio, or from members of the Pennsylvania 
 delegation. 
 
 In the beginning of my remarks I said that I would endeavor to 
 find, if any existed, the reasons why what was declared in 1879 
 by the leaders of both parties best qualified to judge ought to have 
 been done and ought to be maintained in relation to the franchise 
 should now be changed. 
 
 After this review of the subject the only reason which I can 
 find for the introduction of the resolutions of my friend from 
 Georgia is that certain States have done through legislative en- 
 actment that which the statesmen of the days of '79 did not in 
 their wildest dreams imagine would be done, and that they now 
 dread the results which the statesmen of both parties of those 
 days declared would inevitably follow — namely, reduction of 
 representation. 
 
 I feel that this is not a party question, but one which concerns 
 the integrity of the Constitution itself. It has been suggested 
 that the State of Pennsylvania, like some others of the Northern 
 States, imposes restrictions upon the franchise. I for one do not 
 propose to remain silent and inactive under the imputation, which 
 must necessarily follow, that the Pennsylvania delegation ought 
 to be reduced and that some of the delegation as it now stands 
 are occupying seats in this Chamber con' rary to the direct man- 
 dates of the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 As I remember, the gentlemen representing their several States, 
 Kke myself, on the 9th day of November, when the name of the 
 State which they represented was called, left their seats, went 
 down and ranged themselves before the bar of the House, raised 
 their right hand and gave solemn, audible assent to the oath of 
 ofBce which was read by the distinguished Speaker of the House. 
 
 Surely, gentlemen, we all realize the sacred character of an 
 oath; surely we realize that when with uplifted hand we call
 
 24 
 
 upon God to witness, we intended to convey that we subscribe ab- 
 Bolutely and entirely to what we swear to. However, we either 
 failed to appreciate the solemnity of the oath and all it contained, 
 or else we must have satisfied our consciences by making a mental 
 reservation in regard to the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments 
 of that Constitution which we swore to uphold; otherwise the 
 resolutions introduced by several of the gentlemen on the other 
 side of the Chamber, and the necessity for which has been so elo- 
 quently defended by the gentleman from Georgia, would not be 
 necessary. 
 
 By the introduction of these various resolutions for the repeal 
 of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments we are asked to wipe 
 out that part of the Constitution which cost the country in life, 
 suffering, and treasure a thousandfold more than was suffered by 
 those who framed and fought for the original instrument. 
 
 According to an oflScial estimate which I have just received 
 from the Record and Pension Office, 2,200,000 northern and south- 
 ern men were enlisted in all the different branches of the service 
 during the civil war — a number almost incredible when we stop 
 for a moment to think about it. Of these, 359,200 actually died 
 in the field — an army almost double the size of that at present 
 sent to the front by Japan and larger by 50,000 than the army 
 with which the Czar of Russia expects to crush the power of the 
 Mikado. 
 
 The struggle which these vast armies of men engaged in for 
 four long years resulted in what? The very changes in the Consti- 
 tution which, together with the thirteenth amendment, it is now 
 quietly proposed to annul. Would not we, as legislators, both 
 those on this side of the Chamber and those on the other, particu- 
 larly the gentlemen who gave their personal services during that 
 great struggle, find ourselves in the position of the young Napo- 
 leon on the battlefield of Wagram, in the play of L'Aiglon, when 
 he seemed to hear the groans and cries of those who had fallen in 
 the long fierce Napoleonic war.s? Would not we from Pennsyl- 
 vania, who sent 340.000 men to the front, and would not those 
 from South Carolina, who sent almost an equal number; would 
 not the Representatives from New York, who sent almost 450,000; 
 would not the Representatives from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, North 
 
 5998
 
 Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and other States, all hear and be 
 pursued with the groans and cries of their proportion of dead, 
 culminating in one great outburst of " Why did we fight? Why 
 have we died?" If the one great initial result of what was sacri- 
 ficed and suffered is so easily to be undone? 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 STATISTICS AS TO NEGRO FARMERS. 
 
 The census of 1900 contains abundant and indisputable evidence of the great 
 progrress in material prosperity by the negro agriculturists during the past 
 few years The act of Congi'oss providing for the previous census — the census 
 of 1890— directed that statistics concerning the negro farmers should be in- 
 cluded in the enumeration at that time. Accordingly reports on that subject 
 were collected in the field; but, unfortunately, for some reason not stated, 
 they were not tabulated and published. Therefore there is no record on the 
 subject prior to 1900 with which a comparison could be instituted showing 
 the exact measure of the progress of the negro farmers during the last decade 
 of the nineteenth century. The figures of the Twelfth Census, however, af- 
 ford proof enough, without comparisons, of the gratifying growth of the 
 negro race in the United States in the important line of agricultural industry 
 
 The actual number of negro farmers in the United States is not given in 
 the census, but the number of farms owned or operated by negroes is given; 
 and as in almost aU cases the farm is owned or leased by a single individual, 
 the number of negro farmers in the country may be assumed to be nearly 
 the same as the number of farms run by negroes. 
 
 The number of farms in the United States operated by negro farmers, ac- 
 cording to the census of 1900, was, in June of that year, 746,717, or 13 per cent 
 of the whole number. In the Southern States the percentage was much 
 greater, and naturally it is in those States that the great majority of negro 
 farmers reside and operate. In fact, the negro forms such a small proportion 
 of the agriculturist element in the North and West that it is hardly worth 
 while to dwell upon the statistics for that part of the country. 
 
 Turning to the South, we find the number of farms operated by negroes, 
 as compared with the whole number of farms, and the percentages, to be as 
 follows: 
 
 State. 
 
 Whole 
 
 number of 
 
 farms. 
 
 Operated 
 by ne- 
 groes. 
 
 Percent- 
 age of ne- 
 gro farms. 
 
 Virginia 
 
 167,886 
 224.637 
 155.355 
 224,691 
 41), 814 
 223,2:?0 
 220,803 
 115,969 
 352,190 
 178,694 
 
 44,795 
 53,9!'6 
 85, 381 
 82,823 
 13,521 
 94,()ti9 
 
 12«,:i-)l 
 
 5S.096 
 65.473 
 46,978 
 
 28.7 
 
 North Carolina 
 
 24.3 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 55.0 
 
 Georgia 
 
 36 9 
 
 Florida 
 
 3:5.1 
 
 Alabama 
 
 43 1 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 58.2 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 50.1 
 
 Texas 
 
 18.5 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 26.3 
 
 
 
 Thus it is seen that in these ten Southern States, constituting the old 
 Southern Confederacy, the percentage of negro farmers and farms in 1900 
 was about 37, and that in three of those States the negro farmej's actually 
 constituted more than one-half, the total number of farmers. 
 5998
 
 26 
 
 It may be noticed, in passing, that of the negro farms of the United States 
 70.5 per cent are cotton farms, while 6.9 per cent are hay and gi-ain farms, 
 4.1 per cent live-stock farms, and 2.0 per cent tobacco farms. 
 
 No other race in the United States has so large a proportion of its farmers 
 devoted to a single stapleas is the case with the negroes in reference to cotton. 
 
 In the North Atlantic States negro farmers operated in 1900 only 0.3 per 
 cent of all farms: in the North Central States, 0.6 per cent; and in the far 
 Western, only 0.2 per cent. 
 
 Of the farms deriving their principal income from cotton, 49.1 per cent, or 
 very nearly one-half, are operated by negroes; of the rice farms, 37.3 per 
 cent, and of the sugar farms, 14.8 per cent. 
 
 If now we consider the value* of the products of the ne>ro farms of the 
 United States (exclusive of the products fed to Uve stock), we find that 34.1 
 per cent of these farms realized between $ .'50 and $ >U0 worth of such products 
 in 1899; 33.1 per cent realized between $100 and $250; 12.8 per cent realized be- 
 tween $500 and $1,000, and 9.8 per cent realized between |50 and $100. These 
 results are not materially different from the results on white farms. The 
 percentages of the whites show somewhat higher, but not much higher' 
 values attained in that year. 
 
 As to the character of tenure, it is found that of the negro farmers of the 
 United States in 1900 38 per cent were share tenants, 36.6 per cent cash ten- 
 ants, 21 per cent owners, and 4 per cent part owners. In this respect the 
 figures as to the white farms are materially different. Of the white farmers 
 about 60 per cent are ownei*s. The showing of the negroes as to ownership 
 and cash tenancy is, however, quite creditable. 
 
 As to the acreage, the negro farms of between 20 and 50 acres constitute 
 45.9 per cent of the total negro farms; between 50 and 100 acres, 18 per c^nt; 
 between 10 and 20 acres, 16 per cent, and between 100 and 175 acres, 8.9 per 
 cent. This is not materially different from the acreage percentage of the 
 white farms— a little smaller, but not much. Especially in the Southern 
 States the difference in favor of the whites in respect to acreage is very 
 small. 
 
 The greater percentage of tenancy among the negroes and of ownership 
 among the whites is a perfectly natural condition of affairs. In view of the 
 short time that has elapsed since emancipation, nothing else could be reason- 
 ably expected. As the census says: " To find any other condition would prove 
 the negro race industrially superior to the white race," especially as "the 
 negro started with nothing forty years ago." The following paragraphs 
 from the census are also in point: 
 
 " In 1860 in the South Atlantic States there were 301,940 farms, practically all 
 operated by white farm owners or managers. In 1900 there were 673,354 farms 
 operated by white farmers, of which 4.)0,541 were conducted either by farm 
 ers who owned the whole or a jiart of their land or by hired white managers, 
 and 222,813 by cash or share tenants. In forty years the number of farms 
 operated by white farmers increased 371,414, and of that number 148,601, or 
 40 per cent, were those of owners or managers, and 222,813, or 60 per cent, 
 those of tenants. In the period which witnessed this addition of white farm 
 ers in the South Atlantic States 287,933 negroes had acquired control of farm 
 land in those States, of whom 202,.578, or 70.4 per cent, were tenants, and 85,355, 
 or 29.6 per cent, were owners or managers. 
 
 " In considering these comparative figures, account should be taken of the 
 following facts: The negroes at the close of the civil war were just starting 
 out upon their career as wage-earners. They had no land and no experience 
 as farm owners or tenants, and none of them became farm owners by inher- 
 itance nor inherited money with which to buy land. Of the 371,414 white 
 farmers added since 1860, vei-y many were the children of landowners and 
 came into the possession of farm land, or the wherewithal to purchase the 
 5998
 
 27 
 
 same, by inheritance. When this difference in the industrial condition of the 
 two races in 1860 is taken into account, the fact that the relative number of 
 owners among the negro farmers in the South Atlantic States in 1900 was 
 practically three-fourths as great as the relative number of owners among 
 the white farmers of those States added in the same period marks a most 
 noteworthy achievement." 
 
 The statistics for the South Central States show about the same proportion *, 
 As already stated, the total number of farms in the United States operated 
 by negroes in 1900 was 746,717. The value of these farms, including buildings, 
 tools, machinery, and live stock, was $499,948,734. The value of the products 
 of these farms, inclusive of products fed to live stock on the premises, was 
 $255,751,145, and exclusive of products fed to live stock, $229,907,702. The value 
 of the negro farms was about 2i per cent of the total valuation of the farm 
 property of the United States, while the value of the products of the negro 
 farms was about 6 per cent of the total value of the farm products of the 
 United States. 
 
 Turning to the Southern States again, we find that the corresponding pro- 
 portions are greatly increased. In round numbers the values of aU the farm 
 property in those States, and of the negro farm property, were in 1900 as 
 foUows: 
 
 State. 
 
 Total farm 
 values. 
 
 Xegro farm 
 values. 
 
 Virginia 
 
 
 §323,000.000 
 
 2:54,aX),(X)0 
 153. ax), 000 
 22ii.(m.n;0 
 
 179.000,000 
 
 204, 000. aw 
 
 198. 000, UX) 
 962.(KK),f)C'0 
 181. OX), 000 
 
 $25,000,000 
 
 North Carolina ... 
 
 
 28,00(),()(XI 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 
 44.000,000 
 
 Georgia 
 
 
 49,a«,noo 
 
 Florida . .... 
 
 6,(100,0«X) 
 
 Alabama 
 
 47.0(XI.1XX) 
 
 Mississippi. . 
 
 86. 000, om 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 38, 00(1. ao 
 
 Texas - ._ 
 
 56,(KK).000 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 
 34,000,000 
 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 2,716,000,000 
 
 413,000,000 
 
 
 
 
 In other words, the value of the negro farm property in these ten States is 
 about 15 per cent of the total farm property in those States, and if Texas be 
 eliminated, a State which is in much of its area not closely affiliated with the 
 South, and in which the negroes have comparatively small interests, the pro- 
 portion would be over 20 per cent. 
 
 The figures in regard to the relative values of farm products at the South 
 are still more striking: 
 
 State. 
 
 Total farm 
 products. 
 
 Negro farm 
 products. 
 
 Virginia 
 
 North Carolina 
 South Carolina. 
 
 Georgia 
 
 Florida 
 
 Alabama 
 
 MissLssippi 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 Texas 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 Total 
 
 $73, (XX), 000 
 79,0<Xl.(Xi0 
 62,U(X),l«iO 
 92,0(X).(K)0 
 
 ]6,(I(KI.(K)() 
 
 81,0(M).IXK) 
 91,0(K),(I00 
 (k),OtX),()00 
 201), 000, 000 
 66. (XX), 000 
 
 13, 
 
 000,000 
 (KK),000 
 (KKI,I100 
 
 000. (XX) 
 
 (HHI.OOO 
 00il.(X)0 
 
 (xxi.ooo 
 
 OOO.OOO 
 000, (KK) 
 000,000 
 
 835,000,000 
 
 206,000,000 
 
 Here the proportion of the products of negro farms, as compared w th the 
 total farm products of tlie ten States, is seen to be nearly 25 per cent, or, tak- 
 ing out Texas, nearly 80 per cent. 
 6098
 
 28 
 
 In all parts of the country except the far West the per cent of improved 
 land on farms operated by negroes is greater than on those of white farmers. 
 The greatest difference of this kind in 190() was in the South Central States, 
 where the farms of negroes had 63.8 per cent of improved land, while those 
 of the whites had but about 28 per cent. 
 
 The total acrea:i:e of the negro farms in the whole country is about 40,000,000 
 acres; acreage of all farms about 840,000,000 acres. These figures are for 1900. 
 
 [North American Review, No. CCLXVin, March, 1879.] 
 
 I. OUGHT THE NEGKO TO BE DISFRANCHISED?— OUGHT HE TO HAVE BEEN 
 ENFRANCHISED? 
 
 [James G. Blaine, L. Q. C Lamar, Wade Hampton, James A. Garfield, Alex- 
 ander H. Stephens, Wendell Phillips, Montgomery Blair, Thomas A. Hen- 
 dricks, conclusion— James G. Blaine.] 
 
 Mr. Blaine: These questions have lately been asked by many who have 
 been distinguished as the special champions of the negro's rights: by many 
 who have devoted their lives to redressing the negro's wrongs. The ques- 
 tions owe their origin not to any cooling of philanthropic interest, not to any 
 novel or radical views about universal suffrage, but to the fact that, in the 
 judgment of many of those hitherto accounted wisest, negro suffrage has 
 failed to attain the ends hoped for when the franchise was conferred; failed 
 as a means of more completely securing the negro's civil rights; failed to 
 bring him the consideration which generally attaches to power; failed, in- 
 deed, to achieve anything except to increase the political weight and influ- 
 ence of those against whom, and in spite of whom, his enfranchisement was 
 secured. 
 
 Those who have reached this conclusion, and those who are tending 
 toward it, argue that the important franchise was prematurely bestowed on 
 the negro; that its possession necessarily places him in inharmonious rela- 
 tions with the white race; that the excitement incident to its free enjoyment 
 hinders him fi-om progress in the riidimentary and essential branches of ed- 
 ucation; that his advance in material wealth is thus delayed and obstructed; 
 and that obstacles, which would not otherwise exist, are continually accii- 
 mulating in his path, rendering his progress impossible and his oppression 
 inevitable. In other words, that suffrage in the hands of the negro is a chal- 
 lenge to the white race for a contest in which he is sure to be overmatched, 
 and that the withdrawal of the franchise would remove all conflict, restoi-e 
 kindly relations between the races, place the whites on their proper and hon- 
 orable responsibility, and assure to each race the largest prosperity attain- 
 able under a government where both are compelled to live. 
 
 The class of men whose views are thus hastily summarized do not contem- 
 plate the withdrawal of the suffrage from the negro without a corresponding 
 reduction in the representation in Congress of the States where the negro is 
 a large factor in the apportionment. And yet it is quite probable that they 
 have not given thought to the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of com- 
 passing that end. Under the Con.stitution, as it is now construed, the dimi- 
 nution of representative strength could only result from the States passing 
 such laws as would disfranchise the negro by some educational or property 
 test, as it is forbidden by the fifteenth amendment to disfranchise him on ac- 
 count of his race. But no Southern State will do this, and for two reasons: 
 First, they will in no event consent to a reduction of representative strength; 
 and, second, they could not make any disfranchisement of the negro that 
 would not at the same time disfranchise an immense number of whites. 
 
 Quite another class— mostly resident in the South, but with numerous 
 sympathizers in the North— would be glad to have the negro disfranchised 
 on totally different grounds. Born and reared with the belief that the negro 
 is inferior to the white man in everything, it is hard for the class who were
 
 20 
 
 masters at the South to endure any phase or form of equality on the part of 
 the negri'o. Instinct governs reason, and with the mass of Southern people 
 tl»e aversion to equality is instinctive and ineradicable. The general conclu- 
 sion with this class would be to deprive the negrro of voting if it could be 
 done without impaii-ing the representation of their States, but not to make 
 any move in that direction so long ns diminished power in Congress is the 
 constitutional and logical result of a denial or abridgment of suffrage. In 
 the meanwhile, seeing no mode of legally or equitably depriving the negro 
 of his suffrage except with unwelcome penalty to themselves, the Southern 
 States as a whole— differing in degree but the same in effect— have striven to 
 achieve by indirect and unlawful means what they can not achieve directly 
 and lawfully. They have so far as possible made negro suffrage of none ef- 
 fect. They have done this against law and against justice. 
 
 Having stated the position of both classes on thi.s question, I venture now 
 to give my own views in a series of statements in which I shall endeavor to 
 embody both argunaent and conclusion: 
 
 First. The two classes I have named, contemplating the possible or desir- 
 able disfranchisement of the negro from entirely different standpoints, and 
 with entirely different aims, are both and equally in the wrong. The first is 
 radically in error in supposing that a disfranchisement of the negro would 
 put him in the way of any development or progress that would in time fit 
 him for the suffrage. He would instead grow more and raore unfit for it 
 every day from the time the first backward step should bo taken, and he 
 would relapse, if not into actual chattel slavery, yet into such a dependent 
 and defenseless condition as would result in only another form of servitude. 
 For the ballot to-day, imperfectly enjoyed as it is by the negro, its freedom 
 unjustly and illegally curtailed, its independence ruthlessly marred, its 
 purity defiled, is withal and after all the strong shield the race has against a 
 form of servitude which would have all the cruelty and none of the allevia- 
 tions of the old slave system, whose destruction carriedwith it the shedding 
 of so much innocent blood. 
 
 The second class is wrong in anticipating even the remote possibility of se- 
 curing the legal disfranchisement of the negro without a reduction of repre- 
 sentation. Both sides have fenced for position on this question. But for the 
 clause regulating representation in the fourteenth amendment to the Con- 
 stitution we should to-day have the South wholly under the control, and le- 
 gally under the control, of those who rebelled against the Union and sought 
 to erect the Confederate government— enjoying full representation by rea- 
 son of the negroes being counted in the apportionment without a pretense 
 of suffrage being conceded to the race. The fourteenth amendment was 
 designed to prevent this, and if it does not succeed in preventing it it is be- 
 cauho of evasion and violation of its express provisions and of its clear intent. 
 Those who erected the Confederate government may be in exclusive posses- 
 sion of power throughout the South, but they are not so fairly and legally, 
 and they will not be permitted to continue in the enjoyment of political 
 power unjustly seized^and seized in derogation and in defiance of the rights 
 not merely of the negro, but of the whites in all other sections of the country. 
 Injustice can not stand before exposure and argument and the force of pub- 
 lic ojnnion, and no more severe weapons of defense will be required against 
 the wrong which now afflicts the South and is a scandal to the whole country. 
 Second. But, while discussing the question of the disfranchisement of the 
 negro, and settling its justice or expediency according to our discretion, it 
 may be worth while to look at its impracticability or, to state it still more 
 Strongly, its impossibility. Logicians attach weight to arguments drawn ab 
 inconvenienti. Arguments mtist be still more cogent and conclusions still 
 more decisive when drawn ab impo.ssibili. The negro is secure against dis- 
 franchisenient by two constitutional amendments, and he caH not be re- 
 
 6y:8
 
 30 
 
 manded to the nonvoting class until both these amendments aije annulled. 
 And these amendments can not be annulled until two-thirds of the Senate 
 and two-thirds of the House of Representatives of the United States shall 
 propose, and a majority in the legislatures or conventions of twenty-nine 
 States shall by aflarmative vote approve, theannulment. In other words, the 
 negro can not be disfranchised so long as one vote more than one-third in 
 the United States Senate or one vote more than one-third in the House of 
 Representatives shall be recorded against it, and if these securities and safe- 
 guards should give way, then the disfranchisement could not be effected so 
 long as a majority in one branch in the legislatures of only ten States should 
 refuse to assent to it and refuse to assent to a convention to which it might 
 be referred. No human right on this continent is more completely guaran- 
 teed than the right against disfranchisement on account of race, color, or 
 previous condition of servitude, as embodied in the fifteenth amendment to 
 the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 Third. In enforcement and elucidation of my second point it is of interest 
 to observe the rapid advance and development of popular sentiment in re- 
 gard to the rights of the negro as eKpressed in the last three amendments to 
 the Constitution of the United States. In 1863 Congress submitted the thir- 
 teenth amendment, which merely gave the negro freedom, withftut suffrage, 
 civil rights, or citizenship. In 1866 the fourteenth amendment was sub- 
 mitted, declaring the negro to be a citizen, but not forbidding the States to 
 withhold suffrage from him — yet inducing them to grant it by the provision 
 that representation in Congress should be reduced in proportion to the ex- 
 clusion of male citizens 21 years of aje from the right to vote, except for re- 
 bellion or other crime. 
 
 In 18 59 the decisive step was taken of declaring that " the right of citizens 
 of the United States to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or 
 by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." 
 A most important provision in this amendment is the inhibition upon the 
 "United States" as well as upon "any State;" for it would not be among the 
 impossible results of a great political revolution, resting on prejudice and 
 gi*asping for power, that, in the absence of this express negation, the United 
 States might assume or usurp the right to deprive the negro of suffrage, and 
 then the States would not be subjected to the forfeiture of representation pro- 
 vided in the fourteenth amendment as the result of the denial or abridgment 
 of suffrage by State authority. In this stately progression of organic enact- 
 ments the will of a great people is embodied, and its reversal would be one 
 of those revolutions which would convulse social order and endanger the au» 
 thority of law. There will be no step backward, but under the provision 
 which specifically confers on Congress the power to enforce each amend- 
 ment by "appropriate legislation" there will be applied, from time to time 
 fitfully, perhaps, and yet certainly, the restraining and correcting edicts of 
 national authority. 
 
 Fourth. As I have already hinted, there will be no attempt made in the 
 Southern States to disfranchise the negro by any of those methods which 
 would stiil be within the power of the State. There is no Southern State 
 that would dare venture on an educational qualification, because by the last 
 census there were more than 1,000,000 white persons over 15 years of age. in 
 the States lately slaveholding, who could not read a word, and a still larger 
 number who could not write their names. There was, of coui"se. a still 
 greater number of negroes of the same ages who could not read or write; but 
 in the nine yeai-s that have intervened since the census was taken there has 
 been a much greater advance in the education of the negroes than in the edu- 
 cation of the poor whites of tne South; and to-day on an educational qualifi- 
 cation it is quite probable that, while the proportion would be in favor of 
 the whites, the absolute exclusion of the whites in some of the States would
 
 31 
 
 be nearly as great as that of the negroes. Nor would a property test operate 
 with any greater advantage to the whites. The slave States always had a 
 large class of very poor and entirely uneducated whites, and any qualifica- 
 tion of property that would seriously diminish the negro vote would also cut 
 off a very large number of whites from the suffrage. 
 
 Thus far I have directed my argument to the first question propounded, 
 "Oughtthe negro to be disfranchised?" The second interrogatory, "Ought 
 he to have been enfranchised? " is not practical, but speculative; and yet, 
 unless it can be answered with confidence in the affirmative, the moral tenure 
 of his suffrage is weakened, and, as a consequence, his legal right to enjoy it 
 is impaired. For myself I answer the second question in the affirmative, 
 with as little hesitation as I answered the first in the negative. And, if the 
 question were again submitted to the judgment of Congress, I would vote 
 for suffrage in the Ught of experience with more confidence than I voted for 
 it in the light of an experiment. Had the franchise not been bestowed upon 
 the negro as his shield and weapon of defense, the demand upon the General 
 Government to interfere for his protection would have been constant and 
 irritating and embarrassing. Great complaint has been made for years past 
 of the Government's interference, simply to secure to the colored citizen his 
 plainest constitutional right. But this intervention has been trifling com- 
 pared to that which would have been required it we had not given suffrage 
 to the negro. In the reconstruction experiments under President Johnson's 
 plan, before the negro was enfranchised, it was clearly foreshadowed that he 
 was to be dealt with as one having no rights except such as the whites should 
 choose to grant. The negro was to work according to labor laws; freedom 
 of movement and transit was to be denied him by the operation of vagrant 
 laws; liberty to sell his time and his skiU at their market value was to be re- 
 strained by apprentice laws; and the slavery that was abolished by the Con- 
 stitution of a nation was to be revived by the enactment of a State. To coun- 
 teract these and all like efforts at reenslavement, the national authority 
 would have been constantly invoked; interference in the most positive and 
 peremptory manner would have been demanded, and angry conflict and pos- 
 sibly resistance to law would have resulted. The one sure mode to remand 
 the States that rebelled against the Union to their autonomy was to give suf- 
 frage to the negro; and that autonomy will be complete, absolute, and un- 
 questioned whenever the rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution of 
 the Republic shall be enjoyed in every State — as the administration of jus- 
 tice was assured in Magna Charta— "promptly and without delay; freely 
 and without sale; completely and without denial." 
 
 James G. Blaine. 
 
 Mr. Lamar: The precision with which Mr. Blaine states his premises and 
 the unimpassioned spirit in which he draws his conclusions render the discus- 
 sion which he proposes both possible and profitable. His statement it.self de- 
 prives the issue of nearly all its difficulty and danger. He lays down with 
 force and clearness his propositions: 
 
 1. That the disfranchisement of the negro is a political impossibility under 
 any circumstances short of revolution. 
 
 2. That the ballot in the hands of the negro, however its exercise may have 
 been embarrassed and diminished by what he considers, erroneously, a gen- 
 ei-al southern policy, has been to that race a means of defense and an element 
 of progress. 
 
 I agree to both propositions. In all my experience of southern opinion I 
 know no southern man of infiuence or consideration who believes that the 
 diifranchisement of the negro on account of race, color, or former condition 
 of servitude is a political possibility. I am not now discussing the pro- 
 priety or wisdom of universal suffrage, or whether, in the interests of wise, 
 safe, and orderly government, all suffrage ought not to be qualified. What
 
 32 
 
 I mean to say is that universal suffrage being given as the condition of our 
 political life, the negro once made a citizen can not be placed under any other 
 condition. And in this connection it may surprise some of the readers of this 
 discussion to learn that in 1869 the white people of Mississippi unanimously 
 voted at the poUs in favor of ratifying the enfranchising amendment for which 
 Mr. Blaine voted in Congress, beUeving as they did that when once the negro 
 was made a free man, a property holder, and a taxpayer he could not be 
 excluded from the remaining privilege and duty of a citizen, the right and 
 obUgation to vote. And I think I can safely say for that people what Mr. 
 Blaine says for himself, that, if the question were again submitted to their 
 judgment, they "would vote for negro suffrage in the light of experience 
 with more confidence than they voted for it in the light of an experiment." 
 
 I concur also in the second proposition, that the ballot has been in the 
 hands of the negro both a defense and an education; and I am glad to find 
 this impoi-tant truth recognized so fully by Mr. Blaine. We might possibly 
 differ as to the extent to which the defense was needed or as to the progress 
 which has been made in the education. But enough would remain for sub- 
 stantial agreement. There can be no doubt that in the unaccustomed rela- 
 tion into which the white and colored people of the South were suddenly 
 forced there would have been a natural tendency on the part of the former 
 masters, still in possession of the land and of the intelligence of the country 
 and of its legislative power, to use an almost absolute authority and to de- 
 velop the new f reedman according to their own idea of what was good for him. 
 This would have resulted in a race distinction, with such inr-idents of the old 
 system as would have discontented the negro and dissatisfied the general 
 opinion and sentiment of the counti"y. If slavery was to be abolished, it 
 must, I think, be admitted that there could be nothing short of complete 
 abolition, free from any of the affinities of slavery; and this would not have 
 been effected so long as there existed any inequality before the law. The 
 ballot was, therefore, a protection of the negro against any such condition 
 and enabled him to force his interests upon the legislative consideration of 
 the South. 
 
 What I do not think Mr. Blaine fully realizes or makes due allowance for 
 Is that this sudden transformation, social and political, would necessarily pro- 
 duce some jar in its practical operation, and that Its successful working could 
 be effected only by experienced and conscientious men acting on both sides 
 with good sense and good temper. Conquest on either side only complicated 
 the problem. Its only solution was a sagacious and kindly cooperation of all 
 the social forces. The vote in the hands of the negro should have been genu 
 inely "a defense," not a weapon of attack. 
 
 The proper use of this defensive power and Its growth into a means of 
 wholesome and positive influence upon the character and interests of the 
 country could only be attained by the education of the negi'o. And I agree 
 fuUy with Mr. Blaine that his practical use of the ballot was an important 
 part of that education. I am willing to accept the present condition of the 
 South as the result of that practical education. Will he? I say that the negro 
 has been using this defense for ten years, that in this time hundreds of thou- 
 sands of negroes, born free, have gi-own to manhood under the experience of 
 a political life as open to them as to the old, white, governing race; and Mr. 
 Blaine himself asserts that education has been more generally diffused among 
 the youth of the colored race than among the poorer classes of the whites— 
 whether truly or erroneously we will not here discuss— and the result Is that 
 throughout the South the races vote together, that they have learned where 
 their mutual interest lies, and that whom God has joined all the politicians 
 have failed to keep asunder. 
 
 I have his essay before me. He denies that this is a legitimate result. He 
 insists that the facts pr<:i.ve that the negro vote has been cheated by fraud or
 
 33 
 
 defeated by force aud that the present condition of southern politics is an 
 unnatural result. I am willing to meet this issue on his own principles. I 
 will indulge in neither invective nor denunciation. I will simply take the 
 late government of South Carolina or of Louisiana, or of other States under 
 similar rule, and describe it in language that Mr. Blaine may himself select. 
 When he has told its history I will ask him whether he would willingly, as a 
 patriotic American, desire to see his own State, or any other of the free 
 States, reduced to such a level? I am not afraid of his answer or that of any 
 man who has been bred under the traditions of a virtuous civilization. 
 
 Then I will say to him: This, it is true, is a painful result; but when you put 
 the ballot in the hands of an ignorant negro majority a? a means of education 
 and progress you must be patient while they learn their lesson. We of the 
 South have borne all this because we knew that the reaction must come. It 
 has come. The results which you see to be so bad the negro has seen also. 
 He has come back to us with the same blind impulse with which a few years 
 ago he fled from us. He may be as ignorant a Democrat as he was an igno- 
 rant Ee:'ublican, but years must yetpass before the ballot will have educated 
 him fully into self-reliant, temperate citizenship; and what we of the South 
 have borne our friends of the North must bear with us, until the negro ha3 
 become what we both want to make him. This is part of his education. By 
 a system not one whit less a system of force or of f ravid than that alleged to 
 exist now he was taken away from his natural leaders at the South and held 
 to a compact Republican vote. Crranting— which I do not grant— that the 
 present methods are as bad as those then applied, the fault lies in the char- 
 acter of the vote. It is not educated to free action, and we must educate it 
 to what it ought to be. Take the history of the race, as stated by Mr. Blaine 
 himself, and is there not progress, astonishing progress, when the material 
 with which we are dealing is considered? Force and fraud have been freely 
 charged. Suppose it granted. Coiild anyone expect, did anyone expect, 
 that such a tremendous political and social change —the sudden clothing of 
 4,000,000 slaves with suffrage and with overruling political power— could be 
 made without violent disturbance and disorder? Had any such change ever 
 been made in any free State without convulsion? Was it to be expected that, 
 when the capital and character of a State were placed at the mercy of a nu- 
 merical majority of ignorant and poverty-stricken voters, it would present a 
 model of peace and order? 
 
 But all this while the ballot has been educating the negro. He has learned 
 that he was a power between Republican and Democrat. He is now learning 
 rapidly that at the South he is a power between Democrat and Democrat, 
 and in the late election he made that power felt in the result. I would have 
 preferred a much less costly tuition; but, such as it is, it has been paid for, 
 and if Mr. Blaine will patiently trust his own theory he will find the ballot 
 in the hands of the negro the best defense and the best educator. But, as the 
 South has been patient, so must he be patient. As the South has chafed in- 
 effectually when that vote was all against her white people, so will he chafe 
 ineffectually when it is now lai-gely for them. 
 
 In his perplexity over the sudden change in the vote of the negro Mr. Blaine 
 has forgotten that, at this stage of its progress, the negro vote can not in- 
 telligently direct itself. It must and will follow some leader. Now, up to 
 1876 the Republican party, armed with all the authority of the Federal Gov 
 ernment, supplied those leaders. They were strangers in the States they 
 governed. The moment that the compact vote upon which their power 
 rested was divided they abandoned their places, and in almost every case 
 left the State in which they had ruled. The great ma-ss of colored voters 
 was left without guides. In many of the largest counties, where their ma- 
 jority was absolute, they were not only not organized, but there was not 
 interest enough to print a Republican ticket. The weapon of defense which 
 5998 3'
 
 34 
 
 had been given to the negro was thrown away by his leaders in their flight, 
 and Mr. Blaine can scarcely compliin if it was picked up by the Demo- 
 crats. In saying this I do not wish to provoke or renew useless and irri- 
 tating controversies; but Mr. Blaine's position is that not only the negro 
 ought not to be disfranchised, but that such a question could never have sug- 
 gested itself but for an illegal control of the negro vote by southern Demo- 
 crats. My view is that while the enfranchisement of the negro was a politi- 
 cal necessity, it could not be effected without subjecting the country to such 
 dangerous political aberrations as we have experienced: that a wise man 
 would have foreseen them; and that, in fact, they have been less than could 
 reasonably have been anticipated: that the Lallot in the hands of the negro 
 has been a protection and an educator: that with it he has been stronger and 
 safer in all his rights than the Chinese have been in California without it, 
 and that the problems it raised are steadily and without danger solving 
 themselves through the process of local self-government. 
 
 When Mr. Blaine admits that disfranchisement is impossible and that the 
 ballot has been, in spite of all drawbacks, a benefit to the negi-o, he really 
 proves that there is no organic question affecting great national inter sts 
 but simply the subordinate question. How i apidly is the ballot fitting the 
 negi'o for the full enjoyment of his citizenship, and what influence does his 
 vote exercise upon the supremacy of one party or the other in national poli- 
 tics? This latter may be an interesting question, but not one which should 
 disturb either a sound national sentiment or great national interests. I do 
 not propose to discuss it. I am of opinion that to make the negro a free citi- 
 zen it was necessary first to take him from his master. Then it became nec- 
 essary to take him from the party -nhich claimed his vote as absolutely as 
 his master had claimed his labor. The next step will be to take him as a class 
 from either party and allow him to differ and divide just as white men do. 
 The difliculty so far has been that the Republican party desires to retain the 
 negro not as a voter, but as a Republican voter. Party politics have been di- 
 rect ed to keep him at the South in antagonism to the white race, with whom 
 all his material interests are identified. Whenever— and the time is not dis- 
 tant—whenever political issues arise which divide the white men of the South, 
 the negro will divide too. The time will then have come when he can not act 
 against the white race as a body or with the white race as a body. He will 
 have to choose for himself; and the white race, divided politically, will want 
 him to divide. The use of his vote will then be the exercise of his individual 
 intelligence, and he will find friends on all sides wilhng and anxious to en- 
 lighten and influence him, and to sustain him in his decisions. 
 
 The whole country has passed through a very painful experience in the 
 solution of this question, and no one can adequately describe the bitterness 
 of the trial of the South; but she has borne it, and it seems to me that a 
 statesman who loves this great country of which we are all citizens should 
 feel that the time has come when a kindly judgment of each other's difficul- 
 ties would bring us nearer to that unanimity of action which can alone aid 
 the s jlution of a grave social and political problem. I was born and bred a 
 slaveholder, born and bred among slaveholders; I have known slavery in its 
 kindestand most beneficent aspect. My associations with the past of menand 
 things are full of love and reverence. In all history never has a heavy duty 
 been discharged more faithfully, more conscientiously, more successfully, 
 than by the slaveholders of the South. But, if I know myself and those 
 whom I represent, we have accepted the change in the same spirit. No citi- 
 zen of this Republic more than the southerner can or does desire to see the 
 negro improved, elevated, civilized, made a useful and worthy element in our 
 political life. None more than they deplore and condemn all violence or other 
 means tending to hinder the enjoyment of his elective franchise. The South 
 took him, as he was sent to her, a wild and godless barbarian, and made him 
 5998
 
 35 
 
 such that the North has been able to give him citizenship mthout the destruc- 
 tion of our institutions. The progress which he made -ss'ith us as a slave will 
 not be arrested now that he is a freeman— unless partj passion and personal 
 ambition insist upon using him as an instrument for selfish ends. And I have 
 joined in this discussion because I regard it an honest effort to remove this 
 question from the heated atmosphere of political debate, and to ask the con- 
 scientious attention of thinking men to a problem the wise and peaceful solu- 
 tion of which will be one of the noblest achievements of democratic civili- 
 zation. 
 
 Mr. Blaine assumes that the Southern States as a whole— differing in de- 
 gree, but the same in effecl^-have through force and fraud so suppressed the 
 negro vote as to make negro suffrage as far as possible of none effect. The 
 statistics of election will show that the negro vote thi-oughout the South has 
 not been suppressed. That there have been instances of fraud and force I 
 admit and deplore, but they have been exceptional. Take them all in the re- 
 cent election and average them among a population of 12,000,000 people, and 
 to what do they amount? The President, in reviewing the whole subject after 
 these elections, did allege, and could only allege, that in all these States but 
 seven Congressional districts exhibited results which were altered by either 
 fraud or force. When we consider the fact that since the formation of the 
 Oovernment there have been but few Congresses, if any, in which there have 
 not been elections from all parts of the Union contested on these very grounds, 
 and then bear in mind that at no time in our history, and in no other part of 
 our country, has there ever been so keen and searching a scrutiny into the 
 facts of election as that to which the South has been subjected, these exag- 
 gerated statements of force and fraud must be reduced to their real pro- 
 portions. 
 
 But suppose the allegations which Mr. Blaine puts as the argument of those 
 who advocate disfranchisement be true, viz., that the present political con- 
 dition of the South is practically the rule, not of a numerical majority of the 
 whole people black and white, but of the whites as one unanimous class; and 
 let it be conceded fully that such a political condition, if it actually exists, is 
 an evil, what is the precise nature and extent of that evil? In the first place, 
 it is not pretended that any of these civil rights of person and property that 
 negro suffrage was intended to protect have been invaded or endangered. 
 Indeed, this seems to be impliedly admitted, though not explicitly stated by 
 Mr. Blaine's article. The object of the fif jeuth amendment is fully disclosed 
 by contemporaneous debates. It was to protect and establish free labor in 
 the South, in all its new relations of rights and interests, by giving to the 
 emancipated laborer the political means of maintaining those rights and in- 
 terests. Now, will anyone deny that this pui"pose has not achieved Its fullest 
 consummation under existing conditions? Is free labor anywhere on earth 
 more firmly established, more fully developsd, or more absolute in its de- 
 mands (even for exaggerated remuneration), and more secure and unre- 
 stricted in the enjoyment of its gains than in the South? In all respects, 
 negro freedom and negro equality before the law, security of person and 
 property, are ample and complete. To protect these, should they be invaded, 
 he has the franchise with which a freeman can maintain his rights. He may 
 no longer allow it to bo used as a tool for the rapacity of political adventurers; 
 but he is perfectly conscious of the fact which 'Mr. Blaine states, that his 
 right to vote is to himself and his race a shield and sword of dr^fense. 
 
 The question, then, recurs —conceding, for the sake of argument, that in 
 the South political rule represents not the will of mere numbers, but the intel- 
 lectual culture, the moral strength, the material interests, the skilled labor, 
 the useful capital of that entire section, as well as its political experience— is 
 not this result exactly what the intelligence, character, and property of the 
 country are striving to effect in evei-y Congi'essional district in the Union, and 
 5998
 
 36 
 
 is it not a perfectly legitimate result of placing the ballot in the hands of a 
 population unfamiliar with its use, and who are peculiarly susceptible to the 
 influences which property and brains have always exerted in popular govern- 
 ment? 
 
 I anticipate the answer. It is that the property and intelligence of the 
 other sections seek to control the votes of the masses by methods that are 
 legitimate and peaceful, while the Southern whites have achieved their power 
 by means which are unlawful and unjust. So far I have to some extent, for 
 the sake of argument, conceded the assumption that the negi-o vote has been 
 subjected to the forcible control of the white race, but that I deny. Refer- 
 ence has been made to the great change which the election returns show in 
 the negro vote throughout the South. The phenomenon is easily explained. 
 Let any intelligent northern man review the history of the State govern- 
 ments of the South for the last ten years under Republican rule— their gross 
 and shameless dishonesty, their exorbitant taxation, their reckless expend- 
 iture, their oppression of all native interests, the social agonies through 
 which they have forced all that was good and pure to pass as through a fiery 
 furnace; the character of the men— many of them— they have placed in 
 power; and then say if such a state of things in a Northern or Western State 
 would not have been a sure and natural precursor of a Republican defeat, so 
 absolute and complete that the very name of the party would have become 
 in that State a name of scorn and reproach. Then why should not that re- 
 sult have occurred in the South? Are we to assume that the black race have 
 neither instinct nor reason— have no sense, no intelligence, no conscience, no 
 independence; that in every Southern State the thralldom of the negro vote 
 to party leaders, even when abandoned by them, is so unquestioning and 
 abject that no amount of misrule can cut him loose from them or teach him 
 the advantage of a more natural and wholesome political alliance? To reason 
 thus is simply to say that the negro is unfit for suffrage, and to surrender 
 the argument to those who hold that he ought to be disfranchised. 
 
 But this is not true. There are many honest, intelligent, and independent 
 men among the negroes in every Southern State. There are thousands of 
 them who own property, who cultivate their own lands, who have taxes to 
 pay, and who appreciate their vital interests in good government. This 
 change in his political relations which has been the subject of so much in 
 credulous comment is the legitimate result of the experience through which 
 he has gone. 
 
 So far from proving his weak subordination to a hostile influence, it dem- 
 onstrates what Mr. Blaine says, that the ballot box indeed educated him to 
 understand his own interest, and that he has learned to use it as an instru- 
 ment to protect his own rights. To interfere with such a result because it 
 does not square with the necessities or the ambitions of this or that party 
 seems to me to be in direct contradiction to what has been suggested by Mr. 
 Blaine himself. He says, " The one sure mode to remand the State that re- 
 belled against the Union to their autonomy was to give suffrage to the negro," 
 leaving (I ventm-e to add) to self-government the evolution of the proper 
 remedies for whatever of evil or error may attend the working out of this 
 grave and critical experiment. 
 
 L. Q. C. Lamar. 
 
 Mr. Hampton: In discussing the questions upon which my views are asked, 
 the hmits prescribed me in the invitation prevent anything more than a mere 
 statement of opinion. Even were this otherwise, my pi'esent condition for- 
 bids me to enter into any extended or elaborate argiunent. Mine must be, 
 therefore, simply a presentation in crude form of the views I entertain, and 
 have entertained for some years, upon the grave questions submitted for 
 consideration. I shall endeavor to write in a spirit free from all partisanship 
 5998
 
 37 
 
 or sectionalism, with the sole purpose of promoting the cause of truth aud 
 the welfare of the whole country. 
 
 The first question is, " Shoiild the negro be disfranchised? " There has been 
 much agitation of this subject recently — chiefly at the North— and many who 
 have hitherto been the most eame^^t advocates of negro suffrage begin to 
 think that the bestowal of this privilege upon him has resulted in failure. 
 Those who thus think suppose that the withdrawal of the right of suffrage 
 would at once restore the ancient and normal condition of things in the 
 country; would reestablish friendly relations between the races of the South, 
 and in so far as it would diminish representation, would lessen the influence 
 of that section in national affairs. This latter argument, I regret to see, has 
 had most weight with a large class, though it is inconsistent with a true and 
 catholic patriotism — a patriotism which looks to the good of the whole Re- 
 public, and not to that of a limited section. 
 
 But whatever may be the motives of those who desire the disfranchise- 
 ment of the negro, the accomplishment of such a result has been rendered 
 impossible by the action of the national and State governments. Great and 
 startling as have been the political mutations of the last few years, the dis- 
 franchisement of the negro at this or any subsequent period would be more 
 surprising than any political event in our past history. The question, there- 
 fore, does not belong to practical politics, and is a mere speculative one. 
 Considering it in the latter aspect, I do not hesitate to answer in the negative. 
 Whatever may have been the policy of conferring the right of voting upon 
 the negro, ignorant and incompstent as he was to comprehend the high re- 
 sponsibility thrust upon him, and whatever may have been the reasons which 
 dictated this dangerous experiment, the deed has been done and is irrevo- 
 cable. It is now the part of true statesmanship to give it as far as possible 
 that direction which will be most beneficial or least hurtful to the body 
 politic. 
 
 How is this to be accomplished? 
 
 My answer would be, by educating the negro until he comprehends the 
 duties and responsibilities of citizenship. By "education " I do not mean the 
 mere acqiiisition of learning, but I apply the term in its broadest sense. The 
 posse.ssion of the rudiments of education— the mere mental training that this 
 implies— so far from being always beneficial to its possessor, is often'harm- 
 ful. Many of our lately enfranchised citizens make the first use of their 
 newly acquired ability to read and write by committing forgery, and here at 
 least they have manifested a wonderful aptitude. By educating them I mean 
 that their moral nature should be cultivated, pari passu, with their intellect. 
 This moral education is of far greater importance than an intellectual one. 
 A man is not necessarily a better citizen because he can read and write, nor 
 does the possession of these acquirements make him, as a matter of course, 
 more competent to understand and discharge the duties of citizenship. I 
 doubt whether the citizens of that State which makes its boast that more of 
 its people can read and write than in any other government are equal in art, 
 in culture, and in statesmanship to the Athenians in their palmiest days, who 
 were without these accomplishments the most intelligent and critical of po- 
 litical constituencies. 
 
 As the stability of our institutions depends on the intelligence ai/d virtue 
 of our citizens, it is the duty of every patriot to promote the cause of true 
 education. 
 
 Especially is this the case with regard to that unfortunate people who, 
 after centuries of servitude, were suddenly called to exercise the highest 
 duties of freemen. They came to the discharge of these duties utterly igno- 
 rant, with the pre.iudices, the habits, and the evils inculcated by a life of 
 slavery— merely children of a larger growth, and, like all children, full ol 
 credulity. It is not to be wondered at, then, that they were easily misled by 
 59'J8
 
 3S 
 
 the wicked and designing men who flocked to the Soiith when she was pros- 
 trate. But in spite of the evil advice they have so constantly received they 
 have on the whole behaved better than any other people similarly situated 
 would have done, and the whites of the South have no reason to chei-ishany 
 ill will toward the blacks— nor do they. And the time is rapidly approaching 
 when the colored people will find their best friends among the thoughtful 
 and considerate whites of the South— a class by no means small at present, 
 and which is growing larger and stronger every hour. But this digression 
 leads me from the discussion of the question under consideration; and my 
 purpose, as declared at the outset, was only to state my opinions, not to enter 
 into argument to establish them. 
 
 From the remarks already made, my answer to the first question sub- 
 mitted is easily anticipated: It would be almost impossible to disfranchise 
 the negro, and, if possible, it would not be carried into effect. The South does 
 not desire to see this done, and without her aid it can never be accomplished. 
 The negro contributes not only to the wealth of the South, but to her politi- 
 cal power, and she is indisposed to deprive herself of any of her advantages. 
 
 As the negro becomes more intelligent, he naturally allies himself with the 
 more conservative of the whites, for his observation and experience both 
 show him that his interests are identified with those of the white race here. 
 
 This is the inevitable tendency of things as they now stand at the South, 
 and no extraneous pressure can change a result which is as sure and fl.xed 
 as any other natural law. 
 
 The opinions which are announced above have not been hastily formed or 
 only recently entertained. They are the result of very earnest and long re- 
 flection, and as an evidence of this it may not be improper, evtn at the lisk 
 of appearing to touch too closely on personal matters, to state the position 
 that I have occupied in regard to these questions since the close of the war. 
 In 1865, even before I had received my parole, I spoke, and was the first man 
 at the South who did so, to a large audience of negroes upon the changed re- 
 lations between the two races, and I gave to them the same advice that I 
 have given from that day to this. In 186", in the city of Columbia, at the 
 earnest invitation of the colored psople themselves. I spoke to them again, 
 and upon that occasion advocated qualified suffrage. It must be borne in 
 mind that at the time this was done some of the most prominent leaders of 
 the Republican party had taken decided gi'ound again 5t giving the right of 
 suffrage to the negro. It is unnecessary to give all the reasons that induced 
 me to take this course; it is sufficient to say that I fully realized that when a 
 man had besn made a citizen of the United States he could not be debarred 
 the right of voting on account of his color. Such exclusion would be opposed 
 to the entire theory of republican institutions, and I foresaw that, unless the 
 States, while they had the right of regulating the elective franchise, pre- 
 scribed the qualifications of their voters, the National Government would in 
 tervene. and we should have universal suffrage forced upon us. 3Iy object, 
 then, was, by fixing an educational qualification as a prerequisite for voting, 
 to allow the most intelligent of the colored people to vote at once, and this 
 would have been an inducement to the rest of the race to endeavor to qualify 
 themselves for the attainment and exercise of this privilege by securing the 
 necessary education. The admission of the limited number who would thus 
 nave been allowed to vote at first would have produced no confusion in the 
 machinery of the State governments, and the relations bet ween the two races 
 would have been friendly and harmonious; but the course that I recom- 
 mended was not adopted, and we of the South have been subjected to all the 
 humiliation and crime brought about by reconstruction. As the negro is 
 now acquiring education and property, he is becoming more conservative, 
 and naturally desires to assist in the establishment and maintenance of good 
 government and home rule. I have endeavored— and I think not without 
 5998
 
 39 
 
 success— to teach him here how to use the vote for his owx good, and the 
 benefit of the political society in which he lives and with which his future 
 prosperity is identified. The result has been shown in the last two general 
 elections in this State, where thousands ot negroes voted with their white 
 friends; and if any doubt is entertained of the sincerity of these voters, and 
 any impartial visitor from the North will take the pains to inquire through- 
 out the State, I will venture the assertion that in every locality he will find 
 as earnest, as active, and as consistent Democrats among the colored people 
 as among the whites, and these colored Democrats are generally among the 
 more intelligent of their race. 
 
 Under these circumstances, as the negi'o is endeavoring very generally to 
 qualify himself for the duties of citizenship, the wi-ong of disfranchising him 
 would be as great as that inflicted upon us in the first instance, when uni- 
 versal suffrage was given to him while he was yet utterly unprepared to 
 exercise it. 
 
 The second question to which my attention has been invited Ls, "Ought 
 the negro to have been enfranchised?" It may seem inconsistent with the 
 views I have expressed in the first part of this article to say that I do not 
 think he should have been enfranchised at the time and in the manner in 
 which it was done. My first objection is that the mode that was pursued, if 
 not directly unconstitutional, was certainly extracoastitutional, and I am 
 utterly opposed to any violation, direct or indirect, ot that instrument. 
 Whenever a political party thinks it is necessary, in order to secure its su- 
 premacy, to act outside of the Constitution, and this is permitted by the 
 people without rebuke, we may be sure that we have entered upon that 
 downward plane which every previous republic has traveled to destruction. 
 The only hope of maintaining our institutions in their integrity is by a strict 
 observance of the Constitution, and no party should be allowed to remain a 
 moment in power which countenances in any manner any violation of its 
 sacred provisions. 
 
 My next objection to conferring suffrage on the negro immediately upon 
 his emancipation was that he was totally incompetent to exercise or even to 
 understand the rights conferred upon him. The injection of such a mass 
 of ignorant and untrained voters into the body politic was the most perilous 
 strain to which our institutions have ever been subjected, and the danger 
 arising from this experiment has not yet passed. It was a crime against the 
 whites of the South to disfranchise them in large part while enfranchising 
 the negro, and thus practically placing all the rights of the former at the 
 mercy of newly emancipated slaves. All these difficulties might have been 
 avoided had partial suffrage been adopted in the first instance and the 
 relations between the two races been allowed to adjust themselves by the 
 unimpeded action of natural laws. This course would have been infinitely 
 better for the negro himself, as it would gradually have trained him in the 
 exercise of the rights of freemen, and would have prevented that antagonism 
 between the two races which has resulted in so many instances to the injury 
 of the negro. 
 
 Those who assert that the negi-o should have been enfranchised have not 
 hesitated to declare that the Indian, the native freeman of America, and the 
 Chinese, who have sought our shores in such numbers, should be debarred 
 that right. There seems to be some inconsistency in these views, and the 
 advocates of negro enfranchisement should be callsd on to show why the 
 privilege should be granted to him, the newly emancipated slave, and yet 
 denied to men who have always been free and who pu.ssess more intelligence. 
 
 When the negro was made a citizen it followed as a logical consequence, 
 under the theory of our institutions, that he must become a voter. My ob- 
 jection to his enfranchisement, therefore, is confined to the time when and 
 the mode in which this privilege was conferred upon him. 
 5»98
 
 40 
 
 I have answered these questions with entire frankness, in the hope that 
 such a discussion, free from political acrimony and partisan misconceptions, 
 would encourage the calm and conscientious consideration of the whole 
 
 subject. 
 
 Wade Hampton. 
 
 Mr. Garfield: The editor of the Review has asked my opinion on the two 
 questions discussed by Mr. Blaine. Were these questions proposed to the two 
 Houses of Congress I have no doubt that it would be declared, with hardly a 
 dissenting vote, that the negro ought not to be disfranchised. On the second 
 question the formal vote might not be unanimous, but I have no doubt that 
 a large majority would declare that the negro ought to have been enfran- 
 chised. 
 
 If it shall appear on a new roll call in 1879 that none are in favor of disfran- 
 chising the negro and few are ready to declare that he ought not to have 
 been enfranchised, we may reasonably conclude tbat these measures are 
 gaining sti-ength and that their wisdom will finally be fully vindicated by the 
 popular judgment. 
 
 But a vote on these questions at this time by "ayes and noes" is mislead- 
 ing, for it does not disclose the real differences of opinion which prevail 
 among the people; nor does it reach the marrow of the controversy out of 
 which the questions themselves arise. In fact, both of the great parties are 
 influenced by the strongest political motives to maintain at least a profession 
 of friendship for the negro. Political interest will therefore prevent a direct 
 assault upon the constitutional amendments. It is practically impassible to 
 rescind them; and lb 'lieveit isan historical fact that no government based on 
 the national will has ever withdrawn the right of suffrage when once granted. 
 
 But below the formal questions which head this article lies this deeper 
 one: Will enfranchisement finally prove a blessing or a curse to the negro 
 and an element of weakness or of strength to oui* institutions? 
 
 Not long since a citizen of great ability and national prominence said to 
 me: "Your party has ruined the Government of our fathers. In carrying up 
 the walls of our national temple you have iised untempered mortar, and your 
 work will crumble and fall, involving in ruin the whole structure. The negro 
 belongs to an inferior race; is without intellectual stamina and without any 
 strong, enduring qualities of mind. Though he has been on our continent 
 but a few generations, he has wholly forgotten the religion, the language, 
 and even the traditions of his native country. He has no permanent individ- 
 uality of character. Like the c'aameleon, he takes the color of h?s sui'round- 
 ings; and as a voter he will forever be a source of weakness and danger to 
 our institutions." 
 
 This is perhaps the most powerful arraignment of the policy of enfran- 
 chisement which has bean made. In reply it should be said, in the outset, 
 that those who denounce the enfranchisement of the negro as unwise and 
 dangerous are bound to show a better adjxistment of his status. Even the 
 def'jnders of the old system will hardly deny that the continued existence 
 of chattel slavery was impossible. It was the sum of all injustice to the ne- 
 gro himself and a standing declaration of war against the public peace. Its 
 destruction did not arise from mere meddlesomeness on the part of the North; 
 the f eeUng against slavery was woi'ld-wide, and we were among the last of 
 modern nations to realize its infamy and remove it from our system. 
 
 Between slavery and full citizenship there was no safe middle gi-ound. 
 To strike the shackles from the negro's limbs, to declare by law that he 
 should not be bought or sold, scourged or branded at the will of Lis master, 
 and then to leave him with no means of defending his rights before the 
 courts and juries of the country— to arm him with no legal or political weaj)- 
 ons of defense — would have been an injustice hai'dly less cruel to him, and a 
 5S98
 
 41 
 
 policy even more dangerous to the public peace, than slavery itself. To 
 leave the defense of all the rights of person and property of the manumitted 
 slave to those who had just voted unanimously against his freedom would 
 have been alike dishonorable and cruel. Indeid, this experiment was at- 
 tempted soon after the close of the war. While the seceding States were 
 under military control, the white people of the South were invited to aid in 
 solving the difficulties of the negro problem by electing their own legisla- 
 tures and establishing provisional governments. The result was that in 1865, 
 1866, and a portion of 1867, their legislatures, notably those of Mississippi and 
 Louisiana, restricted the personal liberty of the n ^gro, prohibited him from 
 owning real estate, and enacted vagrant and peonage laws, whereby negroes 
 ■yere sold at auction for the payment of taxes or fines, and were vii'tually re- 
 duced to a slavery as real as that which existed before the war. 
 
 Congre.ss was, therefore, compelled to choose between a policy which 
 would have made the negro the permanent ward of the nation, and by con- 
 stant interference with the local laws of the States would protect his personal 
 and property rights, or to place in his own hands the legal and political means 
 of self-defense. It was a choice between perpetual interference with the 
 autonomy of the States— a policy at war with the fundamental principles of 
 our Government and intolerable to the vrhite population of the South— and 
 the risk of admitting to the suifi-age 4,()IX),(X)0 people who were, as yet, in 
 a large measure unfitted for its wise and intelligent exercise. In review- 
 ing the situation as it existed from 1867 to 1869, 1 can not conceive on what 
 grounds the wisdom of the choice then made can be denied. Possibly a plan 
 of granting suffrage gradually as the negro became more intelligent would 
 have been wiser; but the practical difficulties of such a plan would have been 
 very great, and its discu.ssion at this time can have no pi-actical value. 
 
 The ballot was given to the negro not so much to enable him to govern 
 others as to prevent others from misgoverning him. Suffrage is the sword 
 and shield of our law, the best armament that libsrty offers to the citizen. 
 
 It would be strange indeed if the negro should always use this weapon 
 with wisdom and honesty. That he would sometimes be influenced by cor- 
 rupt leaders was inevitable; but that, in spite of all drawbacks, the suffrage 
 has done and is doing much for his protection and elevation is evident from 
 the anxiety shown by all political parties to prove themselves his friend. 
 
 His progress under liberty may have disappointed some uf his oversanguine 
 friends, but in a still more marked way it has disappointed the expectations 
 of those who opposed his freedom. 
 
 Dullness of intellect, a low state of morals, a want of thrift and foresiglit— 
 all these were the inevitable results of generations of slavery, which afforded 
 no incentive to the development of those qualities that make citizens inde- 
 pendent, intelligent, and self-reliant. If the negro3s had lost the passion for 
 acquiring property, if they had shown themselves unwilling to work, neither 
 liberty nor suffrage could have saved them. They would finally disappear, 
 aa the Indians are disappearing, and for the same reasons. But the evidences 
 are increasmg on every hand that they are successfully solving the problem 
 of their own future by a commendable degree of industry and by vei-y earn- 
 est efforts to educate their children. In these efforts they are outstripping 
 the class known in the days of slavery as " the poor whites." While they and 
 their political friends had the control of legislation in the Southern States 
 vigorous measures were adopted t/i ostablisti and maintain jjublic schools, 
 and thougn these efforts Iiave been greatly discouraged by recent State legis- 
 lation, tneir thirst for knowledge has not been qur-nched. There is every in- 
 dication that in the next generation they will show a marked advance in 
 intelligence. 
 
 They are acquiring property far more rapidly than their white neighbors 
 expected. In the Freedman's Saving Bank alone, the failure of which was so 
 5998
 
 42 
 
 calamitotis, they had deposited surplus earnings to the amount of $3,000,000. 
 They are gradually becoming owners of real estate and of comfortable homes. 
 In one county of South Carolina they are now paying .*300,000 of taxes per an- 
 num, and this is neither an isolated nor an exaggerated example. In short, 
 they are gradually gaining those two elements of power, "intelligence and 
 wealth," which Senator Thurman says wiU in the long run control the poli- 
 tics of a community. 
 
 As an example of what the negro can do under more favorable circum- 
 stances than those which have existed in the South, I refer to the settlement 
 of the Virginia Military Eeserve in Ohio between the Scioto and Miami 
 rivers. Late in the last and early in the present century many Virginia sol- 
 diers of the war of independence removed to their lands in Ohio. Most of 
 them were antislavery men by conviction, and brought their slaves with 
 them for the purpose of manumission. These negroes settled near their late 
 masters, enjoyed their friendship and counsel, and did not encounter the 
 prejudices of race and color which they might have met among men of north- 
 ern birth. Under such conditions they have lived for two or three genera- 
 tions. There has been scarcely any admixture of blood and no serious colli- 
 sion of interests, and to-day in central and southern Ohio their descendants, 
 to the number of several thousand families, rank fairly with other intelli- 
 gent, respectable, and well-to-do citizens of the State, and are in all respects 
 greatly superior to their Virginia ancestors. 
 
 Much as the negroes of the South have accomplished since emancipation, 
 their most unfriendly critics will hardly venture to assert that they have 
 had a fair chance to test the influences of freedom and citizenship. Our the- 
 ory of government is based upon the belief that the suffrage carries with it 
 individual responsibility, stimulates the activity, and promotes the intelli- 
 gence and self-respect of the voter. To accomplish these results, the voter 
 must be allowed to exercise his rights freely and without restraint. 
 
 Doubtless the mere property rights of the southern negroes are every year 
 being more and more fully recognized by their white neighbors, but in many 
 parts of the South it is the merest mockery to pretend that the suffrage has 
 been free. The spirit of domination which slavery engendered has led a 
 large portion of the white population to consider the efifort of the negro to 
 cast his ballot in his own way as an act of intolerable impertinence. Open 
 violence, concealed fraud, and threatened loss of employment in many parts 
 of the South have virtually destroyed the suffrage and deprived the negro of 
 all the benefits which it was intended to confer. 
 
 Hitherto these outrages have been justified or excused on the gi'ound that 
 they were provoked by the interference of the national authorities with local 
 self-government in the South, but during the past two years there has been 
 no ground even for this poor excuse. And now we have a new ground of jus- 
 tification. A leading politician of Louisiana, testifying before the Teller 
 committee a few days ago, declared that the murders and other acts of vio- 
 lence which attended the late election in that State were provoked by "in- 
 cendiary speeches" of Republican leaders. In his cross-examination this 
 witness favored us with his definition of political incendiarism. When a*ked 
 to give examples, he cited the fact that a certain campaign orator '• had re- 
 ferred to the old days of slavery, saying that old men who had been slave- 
 holders and whose ideas were fixed in the past would not be as likely to 
 respect the rights and advance the interests of the blacks as younger men, 
 who had grown up under the new condition of affairs." Also, in discussing 
 the industrial relation of the negroes to their employers, the incendiary oi-a- 
 tor told the negroes that "they were paying too high rent for land, often as 
 much each year as the land would sell for." Such discussion the witness con- 
 sidered so dangerous as to justify the wrath and violence of the white popu- 
 lation against the Republican party. 
 5^93
 
 43 
 
 Until there is one acknowledged law of liberty for white and black men 
 alike, it is idle to claim that the amendments of the Constitution are obeyed, 
 either in spirit or letter, or that enfranchisement has had a fair trial. 
 
 The plea of " incendiary speeches " will not be accepted by a liberty-loving 
 nation as a justification of murder, violence, or any invasion of the rights of 
 citizens, however humble, however black. The wisdom of enfranchisement 
 can not be impeached by prophesying in advance that it will prove a disas- 
 trous failure, and then endeavoring per fas aut nefas to make it a failure. 
 
 If the Democratic party does not disclaim and effectively resist such out- 
 rages and invasions of constitutional rights, we shall again witness the de- 
 plorable spectacle of parties— divided by geographical lines, a solid South and 
 a united North— arrayed in political opposition. 
 
 Such a conflict will not only retard the advancement of the negro and de- 
 lay the restoration of national harmony, but it will inflict immeasurable 
 injury upon the social and business prosperity of the South itself. Emigra- 
 tion follows the path of liberty. Free and independent Americans will not 
 voluntarily become citizens of a State in which full liberty of debate and of 
 the ballot is not assured. 
 
 Since the war, it is probable that more emigrants from the North and 
 from Europe have settled in Texas than in all the other Gulf States com- 
 bined. And this is because the traditions and sentiments of the Texan peo- 
 ple have been regarded as more favorable to freedom of personal opinion 
 and political action than those of the people of neighboring Southern States. 
 
 If the policy of repression and exclusion, which unhappily prevails in most 
 of the late slaveholding States, shall be maintained, each new census will dis- 
 close such a relative loss of population and wealth as will prove every way 
 disastrous to their political influence and commercial prosperity. But par- 
 ties will not always divide on the color line. I have no doubt that enlight- 
 ened self-interest will ere long lead the people of the South to seek prosperity 
 by making the suffrage in fact, as it already is in law, free and safe to 11 on 
 whom the Constitution has conferred it. When that day c:mes, we shall 
 enjoy a national unity which slavery would have made forever impossible; 
 and the wisdom of enfranchisement will be fully vindicated. Beneficent as 
 its results have already been, they are destined to be still more fruitful of 
 good in the future. 
 
 In conclusion. I answer these questions by saying that on every ground of 
 private right, of public justice, and national safety, the negro oiight to have 
 been enfranchised. For the same reasons, strengthened and confirmed by 
 our experience, he ought not to be disfranohi.sed. Reviewing the elements 
 of the larger problem, I do not doubt that enfranchisement will, in the long 
 run, greatly promote the intellectual, moral, and industrial welfare of the 
 negro race in America; and, instead of imperiling the safety of our institu- 
 tions, wiU remove from them the gi'eatest danger which has ever threatened 
 
 them. 
 
 James A. Garfield. 
 
 Mr. Stephens: The questions submitted for inquiry and consideration in 
 the paper now presented involve problems of the gravest and most interest- 
 ing character that ever engaged the attention of philanthropists or states- 
 men. 
 
 It is not the purpose of the undersigned, in taking part in the discussion 
 or in connecting himself with it, to .enter at this time into a consideration of 
 the merits in the abstract of either of these questions. 
 
 The great problem involved in the first is now in a state of solution, and it 
 does not seem to be at all practicaV>le or advisable, in the midst of this proc- 
 ess, to be mooting or answering the reasons which led originally to the policy 
 on which it was founded, or the propi-iety of its adoption. 
 5: OS
 
 44 
 
 The matter, according to Mr. Blaine's own assumption, has been settled 
 beyond tlie power ol even constitutional remedy. No arguments drawn ab 
 incouvenienti are allowable; they are precluded by conclusions drawn ab 
 impossibili This is the announcement. Then why agitate or disturb if? 
 Should it not, rather, be the object of all good citizens, of all parties, and all 
 friends of humanity, whether originally favoring that policy or not, to give 
 it a fair trial, with an earnest and hopeful effort for its success, leaving the 
 future in this matter, as in other like problems, to take care of itself? 
 
 The discussion of these questions now, therefore, seems to be quite as 
 irrelevant as impracticable. The undersigned, however, wUl avail himself 
 of the occasion thus presented to make a few general observations upon the 
 paper submitted: 
 
 1. Mr. Blaine, after thus setting forth the perfect inviolability of the right 
 of suffrage, constitutionally secured to the colored man, uses these very nota- 
 ble words: 
 
 "In the meanwhile, seeing no mode of legally or equitably depriving the 
 negro of his suffrage, except with unwelcome penalties to themselves, the 
 Southern States as a whole— differing in degree, but the same in effect— have 
 striven to achieve by indirect and unlawful means what they can not achieve 
 directly and lawfully. They have, so far as possible, made negro suffrage of 
 none effect. They have done this against law and against justice." 
 
 These are grave assertions. Where is the evidence to support them? On 
 them issue is directly joined. 
 
 The charge in substance is that the Southern States as a whole, with com- 
 mon design, have striven to deprive the colored man of his right to vote by 
 indirect and unlawful means. Wherein have "the Southern States as a 
 whole," or a single one of them, done, or attempted to do, any such thing? 
 States act by their legislatures, courts, and executives. Has it been by legis- 
 lative acts, or executive acts, or judicial decisions? If so, the production of 
 these high-handed usui-pations is invoked. 
 
 The undersigned speaks mainly of his own State, Georgia. That wrongs, 
 and great wrongs, have been committed by individuals at the polls in that 
 State and in many of the Southern States, or perhaps all of them, he does 
 not question— wrongs to whites as well as blacks; but he does question if 
 greater wrongs have been pei-petrated in the Southern States in this respect 
 than in the Northern States. " The world is a school of wrong," and skilled 
 proficients "swarm about" everywhere. But that the Southei-n States, in 
 whole or in part, in any way in which States can act, have ever arrayed 
 themselves against their own constitutions and laws, to say nothing of Fed- 
 eral obligations, in an effort to deprive the colored man of the right to vote 
 is utterly denied. It is true in Georgia, and perhaps in other States, the 
 constitutional requirement of a poll tax of a dollar for school pui^Doses does 
 practically keep several thousand colored voters from the polls; but it is a 
 provision wise and just in its objects, and applies equally to white and black. 
 The constitutional provision, also, making conviction of felony a forfeiture 
 of the franchise, is likely in its workings to exclude a much larger number 
 of colored voters from the polls than whites; but no one questions the justice 
 of such exclusion either of whites or blacks. 
 
 The constitution of Georgia, before the fifteenth amendment was even 
 proposed, secured the right of suffrage to coloi'ed and white alike; and it has 
 been the object of the State government in all its branches to maintain this 
 franchise, in its purity and integrity, from that day to this. It was but yes- 
 terday the undersigned saw in the Augusta Evening News the charge of 
 Judge Snead, of that judicial circuit, upon this very subject, an extract from 
 which may not be deemed impertinent or irrelevant in this connection. It 
 shows to what full, free, and even abusive extent the right of suffrage is 
 carried in that State by the colored people. Here is the extract: 
 5998
 
 45 
 
 "After treating of general subjects prescribed by law, the judge gave the 
 following strong points in reference to the freedom of the ballot at the recent 
 elections. He said: ' Outside of all these, I desire to direct your attention to 
 one section of the penal code, which was intended to guard the freedom of 
 the elective franchise and the purity of the ballot box. It is section 4569, and 
 is in these words: " If any person shall hereafter buy or sell, or offer to buy 
 or sell, or be concerned in buying or selling a vote, or shall unlawfully vote 
 at any election which may be held in any county of this State, such person 
 shall be indicted for misdemeanor, and, on con-s-iction, shall be punished by 
 imprisonment and labor in the penitentiary for a term of not less than one 
 nor more than four years." 
 
 ■"In this connection I read for your consideration extracts from our city 
 papers, which profess to portray certain scenes at the last municipal election 
 in Augusta: 
 
 " ' " Money was freely exhibited and offered for votes, and as freely and as 
 openly taken. The price of a vote ranged from 10 cents to |5, according to 
 the desire of the purchaser to obtain the vote and the estimate put by the 
 seller upon the value of the franchise. Hundreds of votes were thus openly 
 disposed of in plain view of everybody. In some instances the voter held 
 the ballot at arm's length with one hand and held out the other for the 
 money which was to pay for his vote." (Chronicle and Constitutionalist.) 
 
 " ' " The election day has passed, and with it a day has gone to record that 
 will stand as a foul stain upon the fair name and reputation of a city grown 
 old in honor, and up to yesterday unsullied by the bold hand of barefaced 
 bribery and opsn corruption. Votes were openly bought and sold with 
 money and whisky as a price — one hand holding the vote and the other 
 stretched out for the reward." (Evening Xews.) 
 
 " ' I know not whether this is true, but it has been published as a part of the 
 history of this our day and generation. It could not have escaped the obser- 
 vation, and must have excited the salicitude, of many good citizens. If true, 
 it is a sad commentary upon the corruption of the times, when the purity of 
 the ballot box is thus violated in the broad light of day; when the elective 
 franchise is made a purchasable commodity, and voters are bought and sold 
 as so many herds of cattle. The whole theory of our Government is in the 
 opposite direction. It rests upon the free consent of the governed. This, at 
 least, should be the practice in every department, from the Federal head at 
 Washington, through the various ramifications in the States, down to the 
 humblest municipality. The liberty of the citizen, the security of property — 
 aye, the whole fabric of society rests for its base upon the free, unbought suf- 
 frages of the people. * * * Present aU parties implicated, whether high 
 or low. * * * Let your investigation be strictly impartial— not confined 
 to one, but extend to all sides— and if your sword, like that which flamed at 
 Eden's gate, turns a double edge, let the great blow fall.' " 
 
 This record of one of our judges truly exhibits the tone of the judiciary 
 throughout the State of Georgia. It is needless to add, perhaps, that the 
 votes which were so openly sold in the market were chiefly, if not entirely, 
 those of the lowest class of the colored race. The same is true of the elec- 
 tions held near the same time in Atlanta, Macon, and other parts of the 
 State, according to newspaper accounts. 
 
 2. Mr. Blaine clearly intimates his own belief , as well as thatof other orig- 
 inal advocates of the enfranchisement of the colored race, that " negro suf- 
 frage has failed to attain the ends hoped for when the franchise was con- 
 ferred * * * failed to achieve anything except to increase the political 
 weight and influence of those against whom and in spite of whom his en- 
 franchisement was secured." 
 
 Pray, what were the ends thus hoped foi"? Without extended comment 
 on these sentences, as to the character of the motives actuating some, at 
 6998
 
 46 
 
 least, of the original advocates of " negro suffrage," which are very apparent 
 from the entire passage, it may b3 pardonable to say that psrhap j the pres- 
 ent gravamen with them is that the colored man does not vote as they ex- 
 pected him to vote; perhaps they may also see from the exhibitions referred 
 to in Augusta, Atlanta, Macon, and in other places, that their votes are much 
 more easily controlled by money than they supposed they would be. If this 
 be intimidation and depriving the colored people of the inestimable right of 
 voting, then it must be admitted that it is carried to a lamentable extent in 
 Georgia, if not in other States, and can only be prevented by such enforce- 
 ment of our State laws as Judge Snead invokes. It can not be remedied, as 
 far as the undersigned sees, by any proper action of Congress. 
 
 3. Mr. Blaine says: 
 
 "The fourteenth amendment was designed to prevent this [that is, the 
 increased representation of the Southern States in Congi-ess, on the emanci- 
 pation of those at the South who previously owed service for life], and, if it 
 does not succeed in preventing it, it is because of evasion and violation of its 
 clear provisions and of its plain intent. Those who erected the Confederate 
 government may be in exclusive possession of power throughout the South; 
 but they are not so fairly and legally; and they will not be parmitted to con- 
 tinue in the enjoyment of political power unjustly seized— and seized in dero- 
 gation and in defiance of the rights not merely of the negro, but of the 
 whites in all other sections of the country." 
 
 What is really meant here by the reference to the intent of the fourteenth 
 amendment and the enjoyment of "poUtical power unjustly seized— seized 
 in derogation and defiance of the rights not merely of the negro but of the 
 whites, in all other sections of the country," by no means clearly appears. 
 Explanation is wanted. 
 
 "When and where has any Southern State unjustly seized any power or ex- 
 ercised any which is not clearly reserved to it in the Constitution? The real 
 trouble seems to be this: 
 
 After all the clamor against the slave power, so called, under the Consti- 
 tution, before the wcr, growing out of the three-fifths basis of representa- 
 tion, it was found that, on the adoption of the thirteenth amendment abol- 
 ishing slaveiy, thirty-five Representatives were thereby added to the South 
 1:1 Congress; and that, so far from the three-fifths feature of the Constitu- 
 tion being an augmentation of the political power of the South, it was actu- 
 ally a diminution of that power to the extent of two-fifths of their colored 
 population. It was then that an attempt was made, by the fourteenth 
 amendment, to deprive the Southern States of this increase of political power, 
 which they by no means seized or attempted to seize, but which came to 
 them rightfully under the Constitution. This attempt, as has been stated, 
 failed of its object by the Southern States putting suffrage upon an equal 
 footing between the blacks and whites. 
 
 Mr. Blaine says that the clear intent and express provisions of the four- 
 teenth amendment have been evaded and violated by the Southern States. 
 
 Where is the prcof to sustain this assertion? Is not the constitutional 
 right of voting secured as amply to the colored people in the Southern States 
 as in the Northern? If not, let proofs to the contrary be adduced. The 
 question is not as to the wisdom of such policy, but as to the existence of the 
 fact. 
 
 The public mind seems to be somewhat in a cloud upon this subject of 
 representation, and the grounds upon which the colored population were 
 rated in the Federal basis, as five blacks to three whites, or what is known as 
 the ''three-fifths basis." 
 
 Before the war the idea seemed to be industriously inculcated in certain 
 sections of the country that it was a grant to the South of property repre- 
 sentation in their slaves. No greater error ever existed in the popular mind. 
 This three-fifths principle was first agreed on in Congress under the old At-
 
 47 
 
 tides of Union of the States, known as the first Constitution, in 1783. The 
 history of it is this: There was not any power under the Constitution as it 
 then existed to collect taxes by impost or by any direct means, and the quota 
 of each of the States was apportioned first upon land valuation in the respec- 
 tive States. This was found to work unjustly, and it was afterwards deter- 
 mined that the best basis of taxation was popu-ation. But it was insisted 
 that the black population was not so efficient in the production of wealth, 
 which should be the criterion in taxation, as the whites, and it would be un- 
 just to make the basis of the quota of each State upon its population, without 
 considering the character of its population. Some maintained that one white 
 man's labor was more productive than that of four blacks, some three, some 
 two. It was eventually agreed, on the motion of Mr. Madison, that three- 
 fifths should be the ratio, thus cutting off two-fifths of the black population. 
 This feature, thiis originating in the Congi-e.ss under the old Constitution, 
 was incorpoi-ated into the new one, formed in 1787. It was then thought that 
 the revenue wo\\ld coutiuiie to be chiefly derived from direct taxation, as it 
 had been under the old organization. This feature was thus retained at that 
 time upon the principle that taxation and representation should go together 
 Very soon, however, the revenues were chiefiy raised from imposts, and 
 hence the Soxithern States, for all practical purposes, lost that power in leg- 
 islation to which they would have been justly entitled upon the jn-inciple of 
 representation in accordance with population. 
 
 After emancipation, in 1863, the two-fifths restriction ceased to exist, as a 
 necessary result. The entire iwpulation of the Southern States then entered 
 into the count for apportionment, as well as the entire popiilation of the 
 North. The Southern State? therefore came into the enjoyment of this in- 
 creased political power not by seizure, but by constitutional right, and they 
 can not be deprived of it except by a wrong not less atrocious than the most 
 wanton and illegal seizure could be. 
 
 4. Mr. Blaine seems to maintain that it was the main object of the fifteenth 
 amendment to secure the right of suffrage to the colored race. 
 
 To a great extent this may be gi'anted as true, and yet not to the extent 
 which he would seem to argue. That amendment conferred no right of any 
 kind. It was only intended to restrain the States and the United States 
 from denying or abridging the right of suffrage on account of "race, color, 
 or previous condition of servitude." The words are: "The rights of citizens 
 of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United 
 States, or by any State, on account of i-acs, color, or previous condition of 
 servitude." This is but an additional covenant between the States, imposing 
 restraints and obligations upon them.selves, and of course takes its place 
 alongside other similar constitutional provisions re.3training the power of 
 the States. No State, under this provision of the Constitution, can make any 
 discrimination as to the right of suffrage within its limits "on account of 
 race, color, or previous condition of servitude," nor has any State, South or 
 North, within the knowledge of the undersigned, made any such discrimi- 
 nation. 
 
 If there have been violations of the right of suffrage on the part of indi- 
 viduals by intimidation, force, violence, or bribery (which is by no means 
 denied), the remedy under the Constitution is a plain one, and the under- 
 signed believes that the remedy through the courts would be as strongly en- 
 forced in the South as in the North. In elections to Congress each House is 
 the sole judge of the election and returns of its own members. 
 
 If a State were to pas.s a law making a discrimination, the State courts, as 
 well as the Federal courts, would of -cour.se hold such a law to be unconstitu- 
 tional. This prohibition against discrimination by any State in the )natt<'r 
 of suffrage is analogous to the prohibitions against any State passing ox post 
 facto laws or laws impairing the obligation of contracts, etc. 
 
 The remedy in all such cases is through the courts. The position of Mr 
 5998
 
 48 
 
 Blaine, that Congress, under its power of "appropriate legislation" to carry 
 out all the provisions of the Constitution, can take jurisdiction of this claixse 
 of the Constitution in any way different from what is proper in the other 
 prohibitions against the States, can not be successfully maintained. The 
 true remedy for all these evils, wherever they exist, North or South, is in 
 the courts, under such laws as Congress may find it necessary to pass for the 
 protection of rights, within its limited jurisdiction and specified powers. 
 
 Alexander H. Stephens. 
 
 Mr. Phillips: Negro suffrage has not been a failure. Only the merest 
 surface j udgment would so consider it. Though his voting has been crippled 
 and curtailed throughout a large part of the South during half the time he 
 has been entitled to vote, the negro has given the best evidence of his fitness 
 for suffrage by valuing it at its full worth. Every investigation of southern 
 fraud has shown him less purchasable than the white man. He has wielded 
 his vote with as much honor and honesty— to claim the very least — as any 
 class of southern whites; even of those intellectually his superiors. For nine 
 fearful years he has clung to the Republican party (which at least promised 
 to protect him) as no white class, North or South, would have done. Want 
 and starvation he has manfully defied, and asserted his rights till shot down 
 in their very exercise. Where to-day is the northern white class that would 
 have clung to a party or principle in such peril or at such sacrifice? If any 
 man knows of such, let hiwi testify. I have known northern politics reason- 
 ably well for forty years, and my experience has shown me no such northern 
 politicians. 
 
 In lawmaking the negro has nothing to fear when compared with the 
 whites. Taking away the laws which white cunning and hate have foisted 
 into the statute book, the legislation of the South since the rebellion may 
 challenge comparison with that of any previous period. This is aU due to 
 the negro. The educated white Southerner skulked his responsibility. Either 
 the negro himself devised those laws, or he was wise enough to seek and take 
 the good advice of his friends. When some one told Sully that Elizabeth was 
 not able, but only chose able advisers, ''Is not that proof of the greatest wis- 
 dom," said the sagacious minister of Henry IV. They say negro legislatures 
 doubled the taxes. Well, there were double the number of children to be 
 educated and double the number of men (one-half of them previously things) 
 to be governed and cared for. 
 
 The South owes to negro labor and to legislation under negro rule all the 
 prosperity she now enjoy.s— prosperity secured in spite of white ignorance 
 and hate. The negro is to-day less ignorant, superstitious, and helpless than 
 the same class of southern white men; yes, than a class of whites supposed 
 to be immeasurably his superiors. 
 
 The South would not have disfranchised the negro if his stiff rage had been 
 a failure. Its success is what she fears and hates. When lawless and violent 
 men attack any element of law and civilization, and can only succ eed by de- 
 stroying it, does not that very assault prove the value and efl[iciency of that 
 obstacle to their lawless ptirpose? 
 
 Negro suffrage gave the helm to the Republican party when it represented 
 a principle— that was intelligent. It stood firmer against bribery than other 
 Southerners — that was honest. It vindicated the negro's fitness for legisla- 
 tion — that scattered the fogs about negro inferiority. It educated the negro 
 more and more every day, and was fast bringing him to a level with the 
 whites of the best class— that was death^to southern dreams of future rule 
 and treason. 
 
 In those States where either circumstances or the nation have secured the 
 negro anything like fair play, his suffrage has been a marked success. 
 
 If negro suffrage has been in any particular or respect a failure, it has not 
 been the negro's fault, nor in consequence of any want or lack in him. If it 
 5998
 
 49 
 
 has failed to secure all the good it might have produced, this has been because 
 of cowardice, selfishness, and want of statesmanship on the part of the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States. While squabbling over the loaves and fishes 
 of office, we have allowed our only friends and aUies to face the fearful dan- 
 gers of their situation— into which we called them in order to save the Union — 
 without the protection of public opinion, or of the arm of the Gove: ument 
 itself. We have believed every lie against them; fraternized with unrepent- 
 ant rebels: and on the Senate floor clasped hands dripping with the negro's 
 blood — blood shed because, without sympathy or siipport from us, the negro 
 wielded his vote so bravely and intelligently as to make the enemies of the 
 Union tremble. Does any man imagine that Senator Hamburg Butler shoots 
 negro voters because he fears they will not rule South Carolina intelligently? 
 
 Negro suffrage has not, therefore, been a failure, even in any trivial de 
 gree, from any lack of courage, intelligence, or honesty on his part. And let 
 it be remembered how early the Ku-klux assaulted him; how incessant have 
 been the attacks upon him all these years; how brave and unquailing has 
 been his resistance. Let it be kept in mind also that, meanwhile, one-half 
 of the journals of these forty States have been against him, and seventh-tenths 
 of the Federal officers and the whole organized power of the white South. 
 All this while the negro has accumulated property, risen in position, advanced 
 marvelously in education, outrunning the white man in this race. He has 
 proved himself equal to any post he has gained. On the floor of Congress the 
 southern white has more than once quailed before negro logic, sarcasm, and 
 power of retort. Nothing has checked his progress or put him down but a 
 hundred lawless armed men as.sailing at midnight single men unarmed and at 
 disadvantage. And let it be also kept in mind that this same lawlessness has 
 shut up courts, silenced white Republicans, scattered their conventions, sujv 
 pressed jom-nals, and driven mei-chants from southern cities; so that yield- 
 ing to it argues no cowardice in the negi'o, since the white of every profes- 
 sion, class, and grade shares in the same humiliation. 
 
 Does any man advise the disfranchisement of the white Republican be- 
 cause his voting is (to quote Mr. Blaine's picture) "a challenge to the Demo- 
 crats in which he is sure to be overmatched, ai:d his disfranchisement would 
 remove all conflict and restore kindly relations between the two political 
 parties!" 
 
 These considerations show the negro's fitness for the vote, and therefore 
 that he ought to have been enfranchised. 
 
 Every consideration of policy and statesmanship demanded his enfran- 
 chisement, the negro being the nation's only ally in an enemy's country. 
 Everything, therefore, that helps him strengthens the Union. Equality of 
 condition breeds self-respect. Responsibility is God"s method of educating 
 men, making them sagacious, prudent, calm, and brave. Power insures con- 
 sideration to its possessor. When a vote in the House of Commons added 
 half a million to the number of British voters. Lord John Russell sprang to 
 his feet and exclaimed, "Now the first anxiety of every Englishman is to 
 educate the masses!" It was their having the vote, and so endangering the 
 State, which awakened that anxiety. 
 
 Then, again, while the negro remained without the suffrage it was a log- 
 ical inconsistency under our Constitution. The popular mind frets at any 
 such inconsistency. It was such intellectual and moral fretting against a 
 logical inconsistency— slavery— that provoked the antislavery movement and 
 gave it strength. To have prolonged such a state of things after the war 
 ended would have been sure to have stirred angry debate. It was therefore 
 wise and necessary to avoid this danger. Finally, the exercise of suffrage is 
 the only sufficient preparation for it. You might as well postpone going Into 
 water until one has learned to swim as to put off granting suffrage until all 
 the world agrees that a man is fit for it. 
 
 When the North, therefore, gave the negro the vote it did all liiwcoulddoto 
 
 £998 4
 
 50 
 
 close the war between the two civilizations, the barbarism of the South and 
 the industrial and equal civil polity of the North Of course this was the 
 highest wisdom as well as simple justice. 
 
 After the negro has used his vote as honestly and intelligently as the aver- 
 age Northerner, and more bravely, shall we withdraw it because the caste 
 prejudice, that hates him and dreads it, lives " unharmoniously " in its sight? 
 And surely it would be absurd and a foul disgrace to take it from him for 
 the single reason that this present Administration of our Government can 
 not protect him in its exercise: "Would you break up a good locomotive 
 merely because one raw and blundering engineer proved himself incapable 
 of running it? 
 
 Every man sees now what a few men saw ten years ago (and I am glad I was 
 one of those few, ridiculed as we then were), that to enfranchise the negro, 
 without doing all the nation could to insure his independence, was a wrong 
 to him and disastrous to us. 
 
 Treason should have been punished by confiscating its landed property. 
 We aU see now that magnanimity went as far as it safely could when it 
 granted the traitor his life. His land should have been taken from him; and, 
 before Andrew Johnson's treachery, every traitor would have been only too 
 glad to have been let off so easily; that land should have been divided among 
 the negroes, forty acres to each family, and tools— poor pay for the unpaid toil 
 of six generations on that very soil. Mere emancipation without any com- 
 pensation to the victim was pitiful atonement for ages of wrong. Planted on 
 his own land, sure of bread— instead of being merely a wage-slave — the negrro's 
 suffrage would have been a very different experiment. 
 
 Then, again, those States should have been held as Territories (which United 
 States authority could enter and rule directly, and without troublesome 
 questions) until a different mood of mind among the whites, and the immi- 
 gration of northern men, wealth, and ideas made it safe to trust that section 
 with State governments. In his last years the late Vice-President, Henry 
 Wilson, confessed to me that this was the great mistake in that national set- 
 tlement. His only excuse was that the Republican party did not dare to risk 
 any other course in the face of Democratic opposition, which only means that 
 the nation was not ready for the statesmanship the time demanded. But 
 this surely was not the negro's fault, and he should neither be blamed nor 
 visited with disfranchisement because we were unready, cowardly, and in- 
 comjsetent. 
 
 But there is no need even now of bating one jot of hope. The United 
 States Government is amply able to protect its own citizens. Put a man into 
 the Executive chair and there will be peace at the South— not as now, the 
 despot's peace, when "order reigns in Warsaw," but quiet homes, streets 
 free from bloodshed, and each man safe and unmolested while he exercises 
 all a citizen's rights. 
 
 Mr. Blaine has made it clear that no right in this country is more com- 
 pletely guaranteed than the negro's right to vote. It is hard to imagine any 
 eclipse of public honor so dark as to make his disfranchisement possible. 
 But men who have seen the Dred Scott decision and slave hunts in northern 
 cities— defended and welcomed by journals and pulpits— who have seen Web- 
 ster bow his majestic fame, and Clay try to barter his early good record for 
 infamous success, may weU hesitate to say that any baseness or sycophancy 
 in a matter touching the negro is impossible. The South will probably 
 never, by law, disfranchise the negro while she remains in the Union. But 
 the South does not, practically, disfranchise him now from petty spite. It is 
 a weU-matured plan. She purposes to rule this nation or break it. In her 
 present mood union between her and the North is as impossible as between 
 Germany and Prance or Austria and Italy. Until northern men, capital, 
 and ideas permeate the South that mood will perpetuate itself.
 
 51 
 
 But right is stronger than wrong. Barbarism melts and crnmbles before 
 civilization. The South can build no wall high enoiigh, she can enact no law 
 bitter enough, to bar out the nineteenth century. Even isolated Cuba has 
 no tariff rigid enough to keep out justice. The Indian, with right on his 
 side, and so alert that he makes it cost the United States $1,000,000 to kill an 
 Indian in war, can not resist the wave of civilization. Equally impotent is 
 the South. Whether under our flag or outside of it, she will, in time, recog- 
 nize the laws of industrial civilization, ana accept justice as a good bargain 
 long before she is virtuous enough to see its righteousness. 
 
 Wendell Phillips. 
 
 Mr. Blair: The negro ought to have been g^iven the franchise if capable 
 by nature of exercising it. If not, it ought not to have been confeiTed, and 
 ought to be withdrawn. Hence the two questions presented are but one in 
 substance. It ought to surprise no one that this question is likely to occupy 
 the public attention again. The subject of the abolition of slavery occupied 
 the public mind during many years, and was thoroughly discussed before it 
 was acted upon; and no one now denies the wisdom of the decision made upon 
 it. But the question of negro suffrage was discussed very little before the 
 people prior to its decision; and neither the Congress which proposed nor 
 the legislatures which adopted the amendment were elected with reference 
 to the question. And this is equally true of the Congress which passed the 
 reconstruction act, by which negro suffrage was imposed upon the Confed- 
 erate States, and by which the adoption of both the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 amendments was seciired. 
 
 It is certainly proper for the people to reconsider a measure adopted so pre- 
 cipitately for the puiT)ose of enabling one section of the country to hold the 
 other in subjection, in violation of the Constitution and of the fundamental 
 principle of local self-government, and whicn has never had the sanction 
 even of the northern people in any form, for the power to accomplish it 
 was obtained from them by denying that any such action was contemplated. 
 
 Having been accomplished according to the forms of law, it is the Consti- 
 tution, and can only be revoked by observing the same forms; but>if negro 
 suffrage is pernicious to the public welfare, degrades suffrage, fosters cor- 
 ruption, defeats responsibility, strengthens the money power, and endan- 
 gers the liberty of the race which established representative government, 
 and so far alone has shown capacity to maintain it, that capacity itself gives 
 absolute assurance that it will be revoked. 
 
 Nor will it be ong before the subject may be properly considered. The 
 escape of the Southern States from the thralldom which negro suffrage was 
 devised to impose upon them has defeated the object for which it was de- 
 vised, and its authors now find that, instead of being an instrument to per- 
 pettiate their power, it serves only to increase that of their adversaries. 
 They still clamor about outrages upon it; but this is only to arouse the jeal- 
 ousy of the North to consolidate it against the power they have strengthened 
 at the South. If defeated in this, the sectional issue will be eliminated from 
 our politics, and the subject of negro suffrage will cease to have any relation 
 to sectional power and national politics, and will probably be allowed to be 
 considered upon its merits by the communities affected by it. In that event, 
 the only advocates of negro suffrage will be the representatives of the plant- 
 ers and other possessors of wealth, who will control their labor and their 
 votes. They alone will have any political interest to promote by maintain- 
 ing it. 
 
 Our fathers. North and South, were all emancipationi.sts, and refused to 
 put the word "slave" in the Constitution, not wishing a trace uf it to aj)i)i'iir 
 in that insti-ument; but not a man among them contemplated making the 
 negro a voter. Mr. Jefferson, who predicted that slavery would go out in
 
 52 
 
 blood unless provision was made for emancipation, saw also that the races 
 could not live together as equals. " Nothing is more certainly written in the 
 book of fate," he said, "than that these people are to be free; nor is it less 
 certain that the two races, equally free, can not live in the same government. 
 Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between 
 them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and de- 
 portation, and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear oft insensibly, 
 and their places be filled up, pari passu, by free white laborers. If, on the 
 contrary, it is left to torce itself on, human nature must shudder at the pros- 
 pect held up.'' Prior to the war, Jefferson was the recognized exponent of 
 the true principles of our Government, in theory and practice. He had ex- 
 tinguished the opposing party, and every succeeding Administration pro- 
 fessed to be guided by his principles. And his counsel would have been fol- 
 lowed with respect to slavery, as it had been upon other important subjects, 
 but that a new prophet arose in the South, who, by firing the hearts of its 
 politicians with a fatal ambition in connection with it, so changed the morale 
 of Jefferson's party as to make slavery its most powerful element, and his 
 teachings on the subject to be pronounced " folly and delusion," and slavery, 
 instead of being " a moral and political evil," as he had taught, and as hitherto 
 universally held at the South, became "the most safe and stable basis for 
 free government in the world." We know the result. 
 
 Is there any better reason for accepting the new revelation declaring it 
 to be "folly and delusion" to say that nature has drawn such indelible 
 lines of distinction between the black and white races that they can not Live 
 as equals in the same government, if that government is to be a free govern- 
 ment? It was inspired by the lust of sectional power, and relies for success 
 upon the triumph of military over civil institutions. It was established by 
 the sword, in violation of the Constitution. More than half the white people 
 were disfranchised, and all their leading men and the blacks, numbering 
 4,000,000, were given more votes than the whites, numbering about 8,000,000— 
 the official returns ol registration in nine ot the States giving the blacks 
 631,746 votes and the whites 585,769. General Grant, under whose direction 
 the work was done, reported that the combined negro vote was indispen- 
 sable; that the negroes were incapable of making that combination of them- 
 selves, and that the whites sent there from the North to direct that combi- 
 nation could not remain there for that purpose unless supported by the Army. 
 The military became the governing power. The part of the neg:ro was that 
 of "dummy" in the game. They were beaten at all points without regard 
 to numbers, except where the military and United States deputy marshals 
 took charge and voted them. Negro sufifragj has, in fact, never existed. It 
 has been only an expensive process of registering and supervision by the 
 military to have pieces ot paper put in their hands and deposited as directed 
 by the white men sent down to combine and lead them. 
 
 These were, necessarily, persons of the worst class; and the result was the 
 most disgraceful chapter in our history. The votes of the blacks, which 
 made the Republican candidate President, installed these harpies in the gov- 
 ernment of the States; they loaded the States with $300,000,00(J of debt, while 
 exacting the most exorbitant taxes from the impoverished people, and gave 
 entire immunity to crime. The demoralization thus infused into our system 
 infected the Federal Government. The enormous expenditure during 
 Grant's two terms — being, exclusive of all payments growing out of the war, 
 greater than the expenditure from 1789 to 1861, including that on account of 
 the war of 1812, the Algerine war, the Mexican war, all our Indian wars, and 
 the purchase money of Louisiana and Florida — is traceable to the irrespon- 
 sible government thus established. And so is the corruption which has per- 
 vaded the Government, not yet fully exposed, but which the whisky ring.
 
 53 
 
 tbe Indian ring, and the multitude of sinailar blotches accidentally brought 
 to the surface show to have permeated all Departments. 
 
 The British Government learned from the Amei-ican Revolution what, in 
 their eagerness for power, our Republican politicians lost sight of— that it 
 was " neither possible nor desirable "to govern the English-speaking race 
 against their will. And hence, instead of suppressing representative govern- 
 ment in Canada after the rebellion, as our rulers did in the South, Earl Grey, 
 In hi'i instructions to Lord Elgin, the Governor-General, said that "it could 
 not be too distinctly understood that it is neither possible nor desirable to 
 carry on the government of any of the British provinces in North America 
 in opposition to the opinion of its inhabitants." To shame the great Repub- 
 lic and to foment discord in it, the blacks in Jamaica were also enfranchised 
 to elect a Parliament, while aU the workingmen in England were denied that 
 privilege; but the incapacity of the negro for that function was so fully dem- 
 onstrated that it had to be withdrawn. This fact ought to silence those 
 among us who, for mere party objects, have lately echoed the ruUng class in 
 England in attributing the universal repugnance of our people. North and 
 South, before the war, to mere pride of race. Having tried the experiment 
 themselves where there was no race conflict, and found it a lamentable fail- 
 ure, they have themselves vindicated the wisdom of our fathers and the good 
 sense of our people. 
 
 Many honest and true men have been persuaded that it was necessary to 
 give the ballot to the negro to secure him his freedom. They assumed that 
 he could acquh'e the knowledge and character which qualified him to use it. 
 Knowledge sufficient he might acquire, but not the independence and the 
 self-reliance. It was for want of these qualities that he was for centuries an 
 nereditary bondman in America, and did not himself strike the blow which 
 made him free. Indeed, all the acts passed to make him a voter, from the 
 reconstruction to the enforcement act. and all the speeches of their advo- 
 cates, recognize his want of every essential quality of a voter by treating him 
 as not fit to be the master, but only to be the ward of the Government. On 
 this theory the Freedman's Bureau was established to remove him from the 
 influence of the white race, General Grant empowered to sustain the men 
 sent to mass them against the white people, and for this reason it is assumed 
 that the Repubhcans can not be legally beaten where the negroes are in the 
 majority. The Republicans knew that the race which takes so largely the 
 direction of public affairs of this continent would control the negro unless the 
 Government interposed to prevent it. And the recovery of political power 
 in all the Southern States, in spite of this interposition, shows that he is more 
 feeble than he was accounted. 
 
 And the fact that Wade Hampton had 5,000 blacks, uniformed with red 
 shirts, marching in procession during his canvass for governor in 1876, re- 
 ceived all the votes for that office in 1878, and all but two for Senator in 1879, 
 will satisfy any mind open to the truth that this is not due to intimidation. 
 
 Hampton is the type of a class to whom the nej^ro naturally gives fealty; 
 and enfranchisement will, for a time at least, be a grant of vast politica 
 power to them when the northern politicians shall discontinue the attempt 
 to use him as the instrument of their power, and make it possible for the 
 local politicians to avail themselves of his aid. Hampton, the boldest of this 
 class, long ago avowed his pleasure at the grant, and has availed himself 
 of it. Others will soon foUow his example. 
 
 As it is manifest that, as followers of this class, the negro can bo better 
 protected than as the instrument of northern dominion over the people of 
 the South, it ought to be the policy of all who have any true feeling for him 
 to discountenance the new crusade which the northern politicians nro pre- 
 paring to preach in 1880. But while under the guidance of a class of leaders 
 who are responsible to pubhc opinion, they could be trained, if it were possl- 
 5998
 
 54 
 
 ble to train them at all, to the exercise of government, no such result can be 
 expected. It would be as reasonable to expect them to develop -wings by 
 training. The negro is not of a self-govei-ning nature. He is of the Tropics, 
 where, as Montesquieu observes, despotism has prevailed in all ages. His 
 nature, of which this form of government is the outgrowth, is not changed 
 by transplanting, more than that of the orange or the banana. Hence, to in- 
 corporate him in our system is to subvert it. His nominal enfranchisement 
 is but a mode of disfranchising the white man, and makes them equals in- 
 deed, but only as the subjects of irresponsible power. For this reason Mr. 
 Jefferson believed it would not be submitted to. "We have seen that he un- 
 derstood the American people better than Mr. Calhoun. It remains to be 
 seen whether he knew them better than Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. 
 
 Montgomery Blair. 
 
 Mr. Hendricks: The editor of the North American Review has asked me 
 to express some views upon Mr. Blaine"s article on the questions, " Ought the 
 negro to be disf i-anchised? Ought he to have been enfranchised?" and also 
 my views upon the questions themselves. It is almost impossible for me to 
 comply with this request. I am in Washington for a few days only, and my 
 engagements will not allow me to attempt a review of Mr. Blaine's article. 
 Upon the two questions I can only express my opinions, without much argu- 
 ment or illustration. 
 
 It is not yet ten years since the right to vote was conferred upon the negro 
 by constitutional provision. That period is too short to allow such test of the 
 wisdom of the measure as would justify its abrogation. The constitutional 
 amendment is supposed to have been the deliberate and well-considered act 
 of the people. It must not be regarded as an ordinary legislative measure, 
 to be repealed or modified " for light and transient causes." To make such 
 a change of the Constitution because an election in one section of the country 
 has not resulted as some might have desired or expected is to treat the most 
 solemn act of the people with contempt, and to weaken the force and impair 
 the authority of the Constitution itself. Opposition to negro enfranchise- 
 ment ten years ago does not now require an effort to strike the fifteenth 
 amendment from the Constitution. Any provision of the Constitution should 
 be regarded as fixed and permanent, and not to be disturbed except upon 
 the test of such experience as would justify a change of Government itself 
 because of great and permanent evils. It was not reasonable to suppose that 
 the two races would at once and without discord adjust themselves to the 
 new relations pi'escribed and fixed by the constitutional amendments. In 
 the establishment of civil and political changes so radical and extended, strife 
 and discord for a time were inevitable. 
 
 The experiment by which the negro is now being judged has not been a 
 fair one. When enfranchised, he was made to feel that he owed servitude to 
 a party; through the agency of United States officials and of the Freedmen's 
 Bureau, and by means of secret leagues, the entire negro vote was consoli- 
 dated into a party inspired by a distrust of, if not hostility to, the white race. 
 The color line was distinctly drawn. They were taught to distrust every 
 suggestion made by their former masters for their political welfare, and to 
 give their utmost confidence and support to a class of men who most un- 
 scrupulously used the power so acquired to promote their own selfish ends. 
 The result was the introduction in many Southern States of the most objec- 
 tionable practices. Bribery and corruption fastened themselves upon the 
 public service. The Staie governments became the worst possible. The 
 increase of State indebtedness was frightful. Taxation threatened to swallow 
 up not only the earnings, but also the accumulations of the people. Men 
 contemplated approaching ruin with horror. Judged by these results, negi'O 
 enfranchisement was worse than a failure, it was a gigantic evU. 
 
 In that condition of the country excesses and abuses did unquestionably 
 occur. No foresight, no patience, no policy could have averted them. Tho
 
 55 
 
 fierceness of the struggle for better government was necessarily proportioned 
 to the enormities that were practiced upon the people. The efforts of the 
 people to promote their own welfare soon passed from personal conflict and 
 neighborhood struggle to the adoption of measures and policies of safety and 
 reform. The colored people were appealed to. They were told that their 
 own welfare, as well as that of the white race, required economy and reform; 
 that the value of the products of their labor depended upon measures that 
 would reduce taxation. These appeals were heard and heeded. In great 
 numbers, by their influence and their votes, they contributed to the changes 
 in men and measures that experience has shown were essential to the welfare 
 of all classes, especially of producers. 
 
 Perhaps in this connection it is proper to refer to the State of South Caro- 
 lina as an illustration. Next to that of Louisiana, her government was the 
 worst and the condition of her people the most intolerable. Her present able 
 chief executive, in his canvass for the office, addressed the colored voters in 
 the language of argument and of patriotic appeal. He and his cause proved 
 stronger than pai'ty control. They came to his support. They contributed , 
 to his election. Without their help, no change could have occurred. The re- 
 form that followed was complete. The men who had ruled and ruined the 
 State, and who had oppressed all her industries, met their just punishment 
 in prison or sought safety in flight. Honesty took the place of fraud, and 
 economy displaced profligate expenditure. 
 
 Judged by such results, negro enfranchisement is not altogether a failure. 
 The results in Georgia are equally instructive. The evil influences that con- 
 trolled the negro vote in other localities were never so strong in that State, 
 and at an earlier day legitimate and good authority prevailed. A beautiful 
 illustration of the harmony that has come to exist between the races oc- 
 curred in one of the cities of that State but a week since. The hegro vote 
 had contributed to the election of an able Representative in Congress. Ho 
 died, and. when his remains were taken home for interment, they who had 
 helped to elect helped also to bury him. They appeared in the funeral pro- 
 cession in organized companies of the militia, in full uniform, and carrying the 
 arms of the State. At the polls and at the grave the races united in the ex- 
 pression of confldence and in tributes of respect toward one whose family 
 was connected with the history of the State. It is a pleasing reflection that 
 when thus restored to its proper condition society lias become relieved, in a 
 great degree, of the strife and bloodshed that attended the government of 
 the people of the States by outside power. 
 
 It is but recently that we have heard the demand for the withdrawal of 
 the right to vote from the negro, and for a reduction of the representation 
 allowed to the Southern States. The demand comes only from those who re- 
 lied upon then* power to control him as a political machine. It can not be 
 said that his late independent action in harmony with that of the white peo- 
 ple is wrong. Beyond dispute it was well for all the people of South Caro- 
 lina, both white and black, and for the people of the whole country, that 
 Governor Hampton was successful, and that the corrupt power was over- 
 thrown. Peace is assured. Labor is secure and encouraged. Calmly, quietly, 
 and intelligently a large body of the negi-oes have joined the whites to correct 
 intolerable evils. This was fully and well stated by a late colored United 
 States Senator from Mississippi, in a letter written to the President shortly 
 after the bad government had been overthrown in that State. The "Solid 
 South" is ihe result of the union and harmony of the races, and of their 
 united effort for economy and reform. 
 
 I am not able to see why the .subject of negro suffrage should be discussed. 
 It must be known to all that the late amendments will not be, can not be, re- 
 pealed. There is but the duty upon all to make the political power now held 
 by the enfranchised race the cause of the least evil, and of the greatest possi- 
 ble good, to the country. The negro is now free, and is the equal of the 
 5998
 
 56 
 
 white man in respect to his civil and political rights. He must now make hla 
 own contest for position and power. By his own conduct and success he will 
 be judged. It will be unfortunate for him if he shall rely upon political sym- 
 pathy for position, rather than upon duties well and intelligently discharged. 
 Every whei'e the white race should help him, but his reliance must mainly be 
 upon himself. 
 
 Thomas A. Hendricks. 
 
 [Conclusion.] 
 
 Mr. BiiAiNK At the instance of the editor of the North American Review, 
 and not by request or desire of mine, the brief article which I wrote in re- 
 gard to negro suffrage was submitted to the gentlemen who have replied to 
 it, and in turn their articles have been submitted to me. I have now the 
 privilege of rejoinder, and the whole series of papers thus assumes the phase 
 of a connected discussion. 
 
 With the exception of Mr. "Wendell Phillips and General Garfield, the re- 
 plies are from gentlemen identified with the Democratic party, and distin- 
 guished and influential in its councils. General Garfield is a Republican, and 
 has taken prominent and honorable part in all the legislation respecting 
 negro suffrage. His views are so entirely in harmony with my own that 
 nothing is left me but to commend his admirable stiitement of the case. Mr. 
 Phillips is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but reserves to himself the 
 right — a right most freely exercised— to criticise and condemn either party 
 with unsparing severity, generally bestowing his most caustic denunciation 
 upon the party to which he most inclines. It is by this sign that we feel oc- 
 casionally comforted with the reflection that Mr. PhiUips still has sympa- 
 thies with the Republican party, and still indulges aspirations for its ulti- 
 mate success. 
 
 The arraignment of the Republicans at this late day by Mr. Phillips, be- 
 cause they did not reduce the Confederate States to Territories and govern 
 them by direct exercise of Federal power, is causeless and unjust; and it can 
 not certainly influence the judgment of any man whose memory goes back 
 to 1866-67. For I assume that if anything, not capable of demonstration, is 
 yet an absolute certainty, it is that such an attempt by the Republican party 
 would have led to its utter overthrow at the initial point of its reconstruc- 
 tion policy. 
 
 The overthrow of the Republican party at that time would have restored 
 the Confederate States to fuU power in the Union without the imposition of 
 a single condition, without the exaction of a single guaranty. All the ines- 
 timable provisions of the fourteenth amendment would have been lost; its 
 broad and comprehensive basis of citizenship; its clause regulating represen- 
 tation in Congress and coercing the States into granting suffrage to the negro; 
 its guaranty of the validity of the war debt of the Union and of pensions to 
 its soldiers and their widows and orphans; its inhibition of any tax by general 
 or State government for debts incurred in aid of the rebellion or for the 
 emancipation of any slave. These great achievements for liberty, in addition 
 to the fifteenth amendment, would have been put to hazard and probably 
 lost, could Mr. Phillips have had his way, in a vain struggle to reduce eleven 
 States— four of them belonging to the original thirteen— to the condition of 
 Territories; thus committing the General Government to a policy as arbitrary 
 and as sure to lead to coiTuption and tyranny as the proconsular system of 
 Rome. 
 
 And as if the Territorial policy were not enough to have destroyed the Re- 
 publican party at that time, Mr. Phillips would have plunged us into the wild, 
 visionary, and unconstitutional scheme of confiscating the land of the rebels 
 and giving it to the freed men. Confiscation laws were passed by Congress 
 during the hottest period of the war; but even then, when passions were at 
 the highest, no enactment was proDosed which did not recognize the express 
 5998
 
 57 
 
 limitation of the Constitution that in punishing treason there should be no 
 " forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted." The Republican 
 party has been flippantly accused by its opponents of disregarding the Con- 
 stitution, but I venture to say that there is no parallel in the world to so strict 
 an observance of written law during a critical and mighty war as was shown 
 by the Republicans throughout the protracted and bloody struggle that in- 
 volved the fate of free government on this continent. It is impossible, there- 
 fore, that the Republican pai-ty could have adopted the policy which Mr. 
 Phillips commends; and impossible that it could have succeeded if the at- 
 tempt had been made. 
 
 Of the replies made by the other gentlemen, identified as they have been 
 and are with the Democratic party, it is noteworthy that, with the exception 
 of Mr. Blair, they agree that the negro ought not to be disfranchised. As all 
 of these gentlemen were hostile to the enfranchisement of the race, their 
 present position must be taken as a great step forward, and as an attestation 
 of the wisdom and courage of the Republican party at the time they were 
 violently opposing its measures. This general expression leaves Mr. Blair to 
 be treated as an exception, and for many of his averments the best answer is 
 to be found in the suggestions and concessions of his Democratic associates. I 
 need not make an elaborate reply to Mr. Blair, when he is answered with such 
 significance and such point by those of his own political household. It is one 
 of the curious developments of political history that a man who sat in the 
 Cabinet of Abraham Lincoln and was present when emancipation was de- 
 creed should live to write a paper against the enfranchisement of the negro, 
 when the vice-president of the rebel confederacy and two of its most distin- 
 guished oflicers are taking the other sidel 
 
 Of Governor Hampton's paper it is fair to say that it seems to have been 
 written to cover a case; its theory and application being adapted to the lati- 
 tude of South Carolina and to his own political course. Mr. Hampton is a 
 man of strong parts, possessing courage and executive force, but he has been 
 in the thick of the fight, and has had personal ambitions to gratify which may 
 not place him in history as an impartial witness. His personality protrudes 
 at evei-y point, and his conception of what should be done and what should be 
 undone at the South is precisely what is included in his own career. "When 
 Mirabeau was describing all the great qualities that should distinguish a pop- 
 ular leader, the keenest of French wits said he " had forgotten to add that he 
 should be pockmarked." 
 
 Mr. Lamar offers a contrast to Governor Hampton. He generalizes and 
 philosophizes with great ability, and presents the strange combination of a 
 "refined speculatist," and a trustful optimist— embodying some of the char- 
 acteristics of Mr. Calhoun, whom he devoutly followed, and of Mr. Seward, 
 whom he always opposed. Mr. Lamar is the only man in public life who can 
 be praised in New England for a warm eulogy of Charles Sumner, and imme- 
 diately afterwards elected to the Senate as the repi'esentative of the whito- 
 line Democrats of Mississippi. And yet, inconsistent as these positions are, 
 it is the dream of Mr. Lamar's life to reconcile them. He is intensely devoted 
 to the South; he has generous aspirations for the Union of the States; he is 
 shackled with the narrowing dogma of State rights, and yet withal has bound- 
 less hopes for an imperial republic whose power shall lead and direct the civil- 
 ization of the world. Hedged in by opposing theories, embarrassed by forces 
 that seem irreconcilable, Mr. Lamar, probably more than any other man of 
 the Democratic party, gives anxious and inquiring thought to the future. 
 
 Of Mr. Stephens and Mr. Hendrick.s it may be said that in their treatment 
 of the question, one aims to vindicate the course of his native Georgia; the 
 other to gain some advantage for the Democratic party of the nation. Mr. 
 Stephens has the mind of a metaphysician, led astray sometimes in his logic 
 and sometimes in his facts, but aiming always to promote the interest of the 
 State to which he is devoted. Mr. Hendricks is an accomplished politiail
 
 58 
 
 leader, with large experience, possessed of tact and address, and instinctively 
 viewing every public question from its relation to the fate and fortune of his 
 party. Mr. Stephens argues from the standpoint of Georgia; Mr. Hendricks 
 has in view the Democracy of the nation. 
 
 These Democratic leaders unite in upholding the suffrage of the negro un- 
 der existing circumstances, but each with an obvious feeling that some con- 
 tradiction is to be reconciled, some record to be amended, some consistency 
 to be vindicated. They all unite, however, on the common groimd of de- 
 nouncing the men who controlled the negro vote at the outset in the interest 
 of the Republican party; and the underlying conclusion, not expressed but 
 implied, is that if the military force had been absent and the persuasion of 
 the Freedmen's Bureau had not been applied, the negroes would have flocked, 
 as doves to their windows, to the outstretched and protecting arms of the 
 Democratic party. This seems to me to be sheer recklessness of assumption; 
 the very bravado of argument. Why should the negro have been disposed 
 to vote with the Dem^ocratic party? Mr. Hendricks says he was made to feel 
 that " he owed servitude to a party through the agency of United States offi- 
 cials and the Freedmen's Bureau." But can Mr. Hendricks give any possible 
 reason why the negro should have voted with the Democratic party at that 
 time? Does not the record of Mr. Hendricks himself, as the leader of the 
 Democratic party in the Senate, show the most conclusive reasonswhy the 
 negi'o should have voted with the Republicans? 
 
 Mr. Hendricks argued and voted in the Senate against emancipating the 
 negro from helpless slavei*y; when made free, Mr. Hendricks argued and 
 voted against making him a citizen; citizenship conferred, Mr. Hendricks ar- 
 gued and voted against bestowing suffrage; and he argued and voted against 
 conferring upon the negro the most ordinary civil rights, even inveighing in 
 the Senate against giving to colored men who were eligible to seats in Con- 
 gress the simple privilege of a seat in the horse cars of Washington in com- 
 mon with white men. Conceding to the negro the ordinary instincts and 
 prejudices of human nature, it must have required the combined and ener- 
 getic action of the United States Army, the Federal officers, and the Freed- 
 men's Bureau, to hold him back from his impulsive and irrepressible desire 
 to vote with Mr. Hendricks and the Democratic party; 
 
 I do not use this argumentum ad hominem in any personal or offensive 
 sense toward Mr. Hendricks. His position was not different from his asso- 
 ciates and his followers in the Democratic party on all the questions where I 
 have referred to his votes and his speeches. Mr. Lamar occupied the same 
 ground, practically, and so did Mr. Stephens and Governor Hampton. In- 
 deed, the entire Democratic party opposed legislation for the amelioration of 
 the negro's condition at every step, and opposed it not with the mere registry 
 of negative votes, but with an energetic hostility that too often assumed the 
 phase of auger and acrimony. Emancipation from slavery, grant of citizen- 
 ship and civil rights, conferring of suffrage, were all carried for the negro 
 by the Republicans against a protesting and resisting Democracy. Demo- 
 cratic Senators and Representatives in Congress foiight all these measures 
 with unflagging zeal. In State legislatures, on the stump, in the partisan 
 press, through all the agencies that influence and direct public opinion, the 
 Democrats showed implacable hostility to each and evei-y step that was taken 
 toward elevating the negro to a better condition. So that it was inevitable 
 that the negro who had sense enough to feel that he was free, who had per- 
 ception enough to know that he was a citizen, who had pride enough to real- 
 ize that he was a voter, felt and knew and realized that these gi"eat enfran- 
 chisements had been conferred upon him by the persistent energy of the 
 Republican party, and in spite uf the efforts of an embittered and united 
 Democracy. Is further statement necessary to explain why the negro should 
 have cast his vote for the Republican party when a free bailjt was in his 
 hands? It can be readUy understood why he may now cast a vote for the
 
 59 
 
 Democratic party when he is no longer allowed freedom of choice, when he 
 is no longer master of his own ballot. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that the Republicans were urged and hastened 
 to measures of amelioration for the negro by very dangerous developments 
 in the Southern States looking to his reenslavement, in fact, if not in 
 form. The year that followed the accession of Andrew Johnson to the Pres- 
 idency was full of anxiety and of warning to all the lovers of justice, to 
 all who hoped for " a more perfect Union " of the States. In nearly every 
 one of the Confederate States the white inhabitants assumed that they were 
 to be restored to the Union with their State governments precisely as they 
 were when they seceded in 1861, and that the organic change created by the 
 thirteenth amendment might be practically set aside by State legislation. 
 In this belief they exhibited their policy toward the negro. Considering all 
 the circumstances, it would be hard to find in history a more causeless 
 and cruel oppression of a whole race than was embodied in the legislation of 
 those revived and unrecongtructed State governments. Their membership 
 was composed wholly of the "ruling class," as they termed it, and in no 
 small degree of Confederate ofllcers below the rank of brigadier-general, who 
 sat in the legislature in the very uniforms which had distinguished them as 
 enemies of the Union upon the battlefield. Limited space forbids my tran- 
 scribing the black code wherewith they loaded their statute books. In Mr. 
 Lamar's State the negroes were forbidden, under very severe penalties, ■' to 
 keep firearms of any kind;" they were apprenticed, if minors, to labor, pref- 
 erence being given by the statute to their " former owners." Grown men 
 and women were compelled to let their labor by contract, the decision of 
 whose terms was wholly in the hands of the whites; and those who failed to 
 contract were to be seized as "vagrants," heavily fined, and their laborsold 
 by the sheriff at public outcry to the highest bidder. The terms " master " 
 and "mistress" continually recur in the statutes, and the slavery that was 
 thus instituted was a far more degrading, merciless, and mercenary type 
 than that which was blotted out by the thirtaenth amendment. 
 
 South Carolina, whose moderation and justice are so highly praised by 
 Governor Hampton, enacted a code still more cruel than that I have quoted 
 from Mississippi. Firearms were forbidden to the negro, and any violation 
 of the statute was punished by "a fine equal to twice the value of the weapon 
 so unlawfully kep t," and "if that be not immediately paid, by corporeal pun- 
 ishment." It was further provided that "no person of color shall pursue or 
 practice the art, trade, or business of an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper, or 
 any other trade or employment (besides that of husbandry or that of a serv- 
 ant under contract for labor), until he shall have olitained a license from the 
 judge of the district court, which license shall be good for one year only." 
 If the license was granted to the negro to be a shopkeeper or peddler he was 
 compelled to pay $Ml per annum for it, and if he pursued the rudest mechan- 
 ical calling he could do so only by the payment of a license fee of $10 per an- 
 num. No such fees were exacted of the whites, and no such fee of free 
 blacks during the era of slavery. The negro was thus hedged in on all sides; 
 he was down, and he waste be kept down, and thechivalric race that denied 
 him a fair and honest competition in the humblest mechanical pursuits were 
 loud in their assertions of his inferiority and his incompetency. 
 
 But it was reserved for Louisiana to outdo both South Carolina and Missis- 
 sippi in this horrible legislation. In that State all agricultural laborers wore 
 compelled to make labor contracts during the first ton days of January for 
 the next year. The contract once made, the laborer was not to be allowed to 
 leave his place of employment during the year except upon conditions not 
 likely to happen and easily prevented. The master was allowed to make de- 
 ductions of the servants' wages for "injuries done to animals and agricul- 
 tural implements committed to his care," thus making the negroes reHpon- 
 Bible for wear and tear. Deductions were to be made for "bad or negligent 
 .5998
 
 60 
 
 work," the master beingthe judge. For every act of " disobedience " a fine 
 of $1 was imposed on the offender, disobedience being a technical term made 
 to include, besides "neglect of duty" and "leaving home without permis- 
 sion," such fearful offenses as " impudence," or "swearing," or "indecent 
 language in the presence of the employer, his family, or agent," or "quarrel- 
 ing or fighting with one another." The master or his agent might assail 
 every ear with profaneness aimed at the negro men, and outrage every sen- 
 timent of decency in the foul language addressed to the negro women; but if 
 one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, 
 should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, 
 or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of $1 for 
 every outburst. The " agent " referred to in the statute is the well-known 
 overseer of the cotton region, and the care with which the lawmakers of 
 Louisiana provided that his delicate ears and sensitive nerves should not be 
 offended with an oath or an indecent word from a negro will be appreciated 
 by all who have heard the crack of the whip on a southern plantation. 
 
 It is impossible to quote all the hideous provisions of these statutes, under 
 whose operation the negro would have relapsed gradually and surely into 
 actual and admitted slavery. Kindred legislation was attempted in a large 
 majority of the Confederate States, and it is not uncharitable or illogical to 
 asf;.ame that the ultimate reenslavement of the race was the fixed design of 
 tho.*e who framed the laws and of those who attempted to enforce them. 
 
 I am not speculating as to what would have been done or might have been 
 done in the Southern States if the National Government had not intervened. 
 I have quoted what actually was done by legislatures under the control of 
 southern Democrats, and I am only recalling history when I say that those 
 outrages against human nature were upheld by the Democratic party of the 
 country. All the Democrats whose articles I am reviewing were in various 
 degrees, active or passive, principal or indorser, parties to this legislation; 
 and the fixed determination of the Republican party to thwart it and destroy 
 it called down upon its head aU the anathemas of Democratic wrath. But it 
 was just at that point in our history when the Republican party was com- 
 pelled to decide whether the emancipated slave should be protected by na- 
 tional power or handed over to his late master to be dealt with in the spirit 
 of the enactments I have quoted. 
 
 To restore the Union on a safe foundation, to reestablish law and promote 
 order, to Insure justice and equal rights to aU, the Republican party was 
 forced to its reconstruction policy. To nesitate in its adoption was to invite 
 and confirm the statutes of wrong and cruelty to which I have referred. 
 The first step taken was to submit the fourteentn amendment, giving citizen- 
 ship and civil rights to the negro and forbidding that he be counted in the 
 basis of representation unless he should be reckoned among the voters. The 
 Southern States could have been readily readmitted to all their powers and 
 privileges in the Union by accepting the fourteenth amendment, and negrro 
 suffrage would not have been forced upon them. The gradual and conserva- 
 tive method of training the negroes for franchise, as suggested and approved 
 by Governor Hampton, had many advocates among Republicans in the North ; 
 and, though m my judgment it would have proved delusive and impractica- 
 ble, it was quite within the power of the South to secure its adoption or at 
 least its trial. 
 
 But the States lately in insurrection rejected the fourteenth amendment 
 with apparent scorn and defiance. In the legislatures of Louisiana, Missis- 
 sippi, and Florida it did not receive a single vote; in South Carolina, only one 
 vote; in Virginia, only one; in Texas, five votes; in Arkansas, two votes; in 
 Alabama, ten; in North Carolina, eleven, and in Georgia, where Mr. Stephens 
 boasts that they gave the negro suffrage in advance of the fifteenth amend- 
 ment, only two votes could be found in favor of making the negro even a 
 ■citizen. It would have been more candid in Mr. Stephens if he had stated
 
 61 
 
 that it was the legislature assembled under the reconstruction act that gave 
 suffrage to the negro in Georgia, and that the unreconstructod legislatu' e. 
 which had his indorsement and sympathies and which elected him to the 
 United States Senate, not only refused suffrage to the negro, but loaded him 
 with grievous disabilities and passed a criminal code of barbarous severity 
 for his punishment. 
 
 It is necessary to a clear apprehension of the needful facts in this disc is- 
 sion to remember events in the proper order of time. The fourteenth ameid- 
 ment was submitted to the States June 13, 1866. In the autumn of that year, 
 or very early in 1867, the legislatures of all the insurrectionary States except 
 Tennessee had rejected it. Thus and then the question was forced upon us, 
 whether the Congress of the United States, composed wholly of men who had 
 been loyal to the Government, or the legislatures of the rebel States, com- 
 posed wholly of men who had been disloyal to the Government, should de- 
 termine the basis on which their relations to the Union should be resumed. 
 In such a crisis the Republican party could not hesitate; to halt, indeed, 
 would have been an abandonment of the pi-inciples on which the war had 
 been fought; to surrender to the rebel legislatures would have been cowardly 
 desertion of its loyal friends and a base betrayal of the Union cause. 
 
 And thus, in March, 1867, after and because of the rejection of the four- 
 teenth amendment by southern legislatures, Congress passed the reconstruc- 
 tion act. This was the origin of negro suffrage. The southern whites know- 
 ingly and willfully brought it upon themselves. The reconstruction act 
 would never have been demanded had the Southern States accepted the four- 
 teenth amendment in good faith. But that amendment contained so many 
 provisions demanded by considerations of great national policy that its adop- 
 tion became an absolute necessity. Those who controlled the Federal Gov- 
 ernment would have been recreant to their plainest duty had they permitted 
 the power of these States to be wielded by disloyal hands against the meas- 
 iires deemed essential to the security of the Union. To have destroyed the 
 rebellion on the battlefield and then permit it to seize the power of eleven 
 States and cry check on all changes in the organic law necessary to prevent 
 future rebellions would have been a weak and wicked conclusion to the 
 grandest contest ever waged for human rights and for constitutional liberty. 
 
 Negro suffrage being thus made a necessity by the obduracy of those who 
 were in control of the South, it became a subsequent necessity to adopt tlie 
 fifteenth amendment. Nothing could have been more despicable than to use 
 the negroes to secure the adoption of the fourteenth amendment and thin 
 leave them exposed to the hazard of losing suffrage whenever those who had 
 attempted to reenslave them should regain political power in their States. 
 Hence the fifteenth amendment, which never pretended to guarantee uni- 
 versal suffrage, but simply forbade that any man should lose his vote because 
 he had once been a slave, or because his face might be black, or because his 
 remote ancestors came from Africa. 
 
 It is matter of sincere congratulation that after all the contests of the 
 past thirteen years four eminent leaders of the Democratic party should 
 unite in approving negro suffrage. It will not, I trust, be considered cynical, 
 certainly not offensive, if I venture to suggest that this Democratic harmony 
 on the Republican side of a long contest has been developed just at the time 
 when many causes have conspired to render negi'o suffrage in the South 
 powerless against the Democratic party. Even in districts where the negro 
 vote is four to one, compared with the whites, the Democrats readily elect 
 the Representatives to Congress. I do not recall any warm approval of negro 
 suffrage by a Democratic leader so long as the negro was able to elect one of 
 his own race or a white Republican. But when his numbers have Ijeen over- 
 borne by violence, when his white friends have been driven into oxilo, when 
 murder has been just frequent enough to intimidate the voting majority, and 
 when negro suffrage as a political power has been destroyed, we find loading
 
 62 
 
 minds in the Democratic party applauding and upholding it. So lately as 
 February 19, 1872, years after negro suffrage was adopted and while it was 
 still a power in the Southern States, such influential and prominent Demo- 
 crats as Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, and Mr. Beck, of Kentucky, united in an 
 oflicial report to Congress, wherein they declared, regarding negro suffrage, 
 that "there can be no permanent partition of power nor any peaceable joint 
 exercise of power among such discordant bodies of men. One or the other 
 must have all or none. * * * Pseudo-philanthropists," continued Mr. 
 Bayard and Mr. Beck, " may talk never so loudly about ' equality before the 
 law,' where equality is not found in the great natural law of race ordained 
 by the Creator." Mr. BeckandMr. Bayard made this report when fresh from 
 protracted intercourse with southern Democratic leaders, and it will not be 
 denied that in their expressions they fully represented the opinions of their 
 party at that time. "Will it be offensive if I again ask what has changed the 
 views of Democrats except the overthrow of free suffrage? So long as the 
 negro can furnish thirty-flve Representatives and thirty -five electors to the 
 South, his suffrage will be upheld in name, and so long as the Democratic 
 party is dominant it will be destroyed in fact. 
 
 Mr. Hendricks is a conspicuous convert. The negro is washed and made 
 white in his eyes as soon as he votes the Democratic ticket. He is greatly 
 affected by the fact that negroes "helped to bury a Democratic Congressman 
 whom they had helped to elect." In this simple incident Mr. Hendricks finds 
 great evidence of restored kindliness between the races. Was there ever a 
 time when the colored people refused to show respect to the whites, living 
 or dead? The evidence would have been stronger if an instance had been 
 quoted of white men paying respect to a deceased negro. But, unhappily, if 
 funeral incidents are to be cited, Mr. Hendricks will find more than he cares 
 to quote. Almost at the moment of his writing testimony was given before 
 a Senate committee in Louisiana not only of the murder of two negroes for 
 the sin of being Republicans, but of their being left without sepulture and 
 actually devoured by hogs on the highway! Their remains— the phrase is 
 doubly significant in this case — were finally covered with earth by some 
 negro women, the negro men having all fled from their white persecutors. 
 
 Mr. Hendricks's high praise of the governments of South Carolina and 
 Louisiana, since they feU under Democratic control, is not justified by the 
 facts. Where he speaks of Republicans connected with the government of 
 South Carolina " meeting their punishment in prison and seeking their safety 
 in flight," he provokes an easy retort. One of these men, an ex-Congressman, 
 was sent to prison on disgi-acefully insuflicient evidence, the judge delivering 
 a bitter partisan harangue when he charged the jury to convict. Governor 
 Hampton, to his credit be it said, pardoned him, and it would have been still 
 more to his credit had he pardoned him more promptly. In another case the 
 executive of a great Commonwealth refused Governor Hampton's requisi- 
 tion on the ground that the man was not wanted for the cause and the crime 
 alleged. These criminal charges have, in many cases, borne the appearance 
 of mere political persecutions, in which the victims are not the persons most 
 dishonored. 
 
 On the other hand, when South Carolinians by the hundred were indicted 
 for interfering with the freedom of elections in killing negroes by the score, 
 it was found impossible to convict one of them. Against the clearest and 
 most overwhelming evidence these murderers were allowed to go free, and 
 the prosecutions were abandoned. South CaroUna courts appear to be " or- 
 ganized to convict" when a Republican is on trial, and South Carolina juries 
 impaneled to acquit when Democrats are charged with crime. 
 
 In the opinion of Mr. Hendricks, Louisiana under Republican control was 
 the very worst of aU the southern governments. A change was made in April, 
 1877, and since then the Democratic party has held undisputed power in that 
 State. When the Republicans surrendered the State there was a surplus of
 
 63 
 
 t300,0fX) in its treasury; taxes were collected, credit maintained, and interest 
 on its public securities promptly and faithfully paid. To-day, after twenty- 
 one months of Democratic government, according to public and undenied 
 report, the State is bankrupt, its taxes uncollected, its treasury empty, nearly 
 half a million overdrawn on its fiscal agent, the interest on its public debt 
 unpaid, and its most sacred obligations protested and dishonored. Had such 
 decadence happened in a State under Republican rule, succeeding a prosper- 
 ous Democratic administration, the denunciations of Mr. Hendricks might 
 have been fittingly applied. 
 
 My conclusions on the topic under discussion are: 
 
 First. Slavery having been constitutionally abolished by the adoption of 
 the thirteenth amendment, the question of suffrage was unsettled. But it 
 may be safely affirmed that the Republicans had no original design of inter- 
 fering with the control which the States had always exercised on that ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Second. The loyal men who had conducted the war to a victorious end were 
 not willing that those who had rebelled against the Union should come back 
 with pohtical power vastly increased beyond that which they had wielded 
 In the days of proslavery domination, and hence they proposed the fourteenth 
 amendment, practically basing representation in Congress upon the voting 
 population — the same for North and South. 
 
 Third. Instead of accepting the fourteenth amendment, the insurrection- 
 ary States scornfully rejected it, and claimed the right to settle for them- 
 selves the terms on which they would resume relations with the Union. And 
 they forthwith proceeded to nullify the thirteenth amendment by adopting 
 a series of black laws which remanded the negro to a worse servitude than 
 that from which he had been emancipated. 
 
 Fourth. When the Government, administered by loyal hands, found it im- 
 possible to secm-e the necessary guaranties for future safety from the " rul- 
 ing" or rebel class of the South, they demanded and enforced a reconstruc- 
 tion in which loyalty should assert its rights. Hence the negro was admitted 
 to suffrage. 
 
 Fifth. The negro having aided by loyal votes in securing the grreat guar- 
 anties of the fourteenth amendment, the Republicans declared that he should 
 not afterwards be deprived of stiff rage on account of race or color. Hence the 
 fifteenth amendment. 
 
 Sixth. So long as the negro vote was effective in the South in defeating the 
 Democracy, the leaders of that party denounced and opposed it. They with- 
 draw their opposition just at the moment when, by fraud, intimidation, vio- 
 lence, and murder, free suffrage on the part of the negro in the South is 
 fatally impaired; by which I mean that the negro is not allowed to vote freely 
 where his vote can defeat and elect. As a minority voter in Democratic dis- 
 tricts he is not disturbed. 
 
 Seventh. The answer so often made, that, compared with the whole num- 
 ber of Congressional districts in the South, only a smaU number are disturbed, 
 is not apposite and does not convey the truth. For it is only in the districts 
 where the negroes make a strong and united effort that violence is needed, 
 and there it is generally found. Thus it is said that only in a comparatively 
 few parishes of Louisiana was there any disturbance at the late election. 
 But the Democrats contrived to have a disturbance at the points whore it 
 was necessary to overcome a large Republican vote, and of course had none 
 where there was no resistance. It will generally be found that the violence 
 occurs in the districts where the Republicans have a rightful majority. 
 
 Eighth. As the matter stands, all violence in the South inures to the bene- 
 fit of one political party; and that party is counting upon its accession to 
 power and its rule over the country for a series of years by reason of the 
 great number of electoral votes which it wrongfully gains. Financial credit, 
 commercial enterprises, manufacturing industries, may all possibly pass
 
 64 
 
 under the control of the Democratic party by reason of its unlawful seizure 
 of political power in the South. Our institutions have been tried by the fiery 
 test of war and have survived. It remains to be seen whether the attempt 
 to govern the country by the power of a " Solid South," unlawfully consoli- 
 dated, can be successful. 
 
 No thoughtful man can consider these questions without deep concern. 
 The mighty power of a Eepublic of 50,000,000 people— with a continent for 
 their possession— can only be wielded permanently by being wielded hon- 
 estly. In a fair and generous struggle for partisan power let us not forget 
 those issues and those ends which are above party. Organized wrong will 
 ultimately be met by organized resistance. The sensitive and dangerous 
 point is in the casting and the counting of free ballots. Impartial suffrage is our 
 theory. It must become our practice. Any party of American citizens can 
 bear to be defeated. No party of American citizens wiU bear to be defrauded. 
 The men who are interested in a dishonest count are units. The men who 
 are interested in an honest count are millions. I wish to speak for the mil- 
 lions of all political parties, and in their name to declare that the Republic 
 must be strong enough, and shall be strong enough, to protect the weakest 
 of its citizens in all their rights. To this simple and sublime principle let us, 
 in the lofty language of Burke, "attest the retiring generations, let us at- 
 test the advancing generations, between which, as a link in the great chain 
 of eternal order, we standi " 
 
 James G. Blaine. 
 
 xin. 
 
 Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punish- 
 ment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist 
 within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 
 
 Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate 
 legislation. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Section 1. AU persons bom or naturalized in the United States are subject 
 to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State 
 wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall 
 abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor 
 shall any State deprive any pereon of life, liberty, or property without due 
 process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal pro- 
 tection of the laws. 
 
 Sec. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States ac- 
 cording to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in 
 each State, exclud ng Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any 
 election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the 
 United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial oflS- 
 cers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof is denied to any of 
 the male inhabitants of such State being 21 years of age and citizens of the 
 United States, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion 
 or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced to the 
 proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole 
 number of male citizens 21 years of age in such State. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Sec. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation 
 the provisions of this article. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Section 1. The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not 
 be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of 
 race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 
 
 Sec. 2. The Congress shall ha ve power to enforce this article by appropriate 
 legislation. 
 
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