SPEECH of HON. EDWARD DE V. MORRELL.

The House being in Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, and having under consideration the bill (H.R. 13860) making appropriations for the support of the Military Academy for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1905, and for other purposes--

Mr. MORRELL said:

Mr. CHAIRMAN: On the 27th 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 touching the right of the negro to vote, which seems to be the legitimate bequest of the slavery discussion. The resolutions referred to are as follows:

Resolved, That the Government be requested to instruct the district attorneys in the various States where an illegal suppression 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 evidence can be obtained to justify a submission of such case to the grand jury.

Resolved, (1) That Congress be requested and be respectfully urged to investigate with thoroughness and impartiality the charges of a suppression of votes contrary to the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and in every case where such restriction is accomplished by a limitation of the franchise for any reason the representation of such State in Congress be reduced, and also to see that the fifteenth amendment be in no way violated either directly or by subterfuge; and (2) 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 wish to congratulate the Democracy upon having at last found a champion to voice boldly and unflinchingly the sentiments 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 00034remarks of the gentleman from Georgia, for a discussion of the so--called "negro question," it should be on the lines of cooperation between all the States of the Union, North and South, East and West. uniting in an earnest desire to solve, if possible, this great problem--a problem which ought not to any longer separate northern feeling from southern feeling, as it is one concerning which all States and all sections should strive, as in all other great national question, for a wise solution, always, however, within the limits of the Constitution, which both North and South, 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 resolutions which he and others have introduced, were presented some years ago for argument and discussion under the heading of "Ought the negro to be disfranchised? Ought he to have been enfranchised?" This discussion was engaged in by eight gentlemen--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 Phillips, were gentlemen identified with the Democratic party and distinguished 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 prominent part in all legislation respecting negro suffrage. Mr. Wendell Phillips was neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but always reserved to himself the right to criticize and condemn either party. The other gentlemen who engaged in this discussion were the Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, United States Senator from Mississippi; Wade Hamption, 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 Administration.

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In the concluding article Mr. Blaine says: 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 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 any 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 as present when emancipation was decreed 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 distinguished officers are taking the other side.

It will be noticed that in the argument of Mr. Blaine he does not suppose possible the existence of conditions that confront us today. He says: The class of men whose views are thus hastily summarized do not contemplate 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 compassing that end. Under the Constitution, as it is now construed, the diminution 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 account 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 or 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 right against disfranchisement on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude as embodied in the fifteenth amendment of the Constitution 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 rendered 00056by Judge Snead, in which attention was called to the political debauchery and the purchasable 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 considering the expensiveness of the white purchasable vote declare the white primary is a failure, but this is a superficial view.

Negro voters may have been cheaper, but we paid a great deal more than money for them. We gave a prominence to worthless negro vagabonds, and white ward workers were compelled for nights in advance of the election to be corralled with negroes in bullpens in doling out cigars and whisky, serving barbecues, and permitting familiarities in speech and action from insolent blacks, who took advantage of the need for their votes to push themselves into social equality.

The elimination of the negro vote has retired the negro bully and blackguard from the election precinct, and we are also freed from the sight of 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 brazen manner, and it is declared we now have nearly 2,000 purchasable white voters.

The elimination of this evil is the next thing to which the citizens must address to themselves. There must be a sentiment created in the community against buying votes as well as to condemn the sellers. One is as reprehensible 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 office, or in an official having to spend two or three years' salary to retain his office.

This is a political bolt 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 another and 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 today than there were yesterday. Ten--dollar bills, five--dollar bills, but no small change, were strictly in evidence at every polling place yesterday. Politics may have a commercial tint, but there is no hypocrisy displayed. The coin is always on hand for buying voters and there is a large element ever ready to be purchased. It takes no delicate approaches to catch a floater, and the average floaters 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 himself 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 "Republican 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 in "bloody six hundred" are too honest to hide the fact that money is being used.

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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 condition 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 part of my remakes the argument of these distinguished gentlemen.

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 this arguments.

By the introduction of his resolutions for the repeal of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments the gentleman from Georgia admits the necessity of some action by Congress concerning these particular parts of the Constitution. The question at once arises, What is this necessity and what would be the effect if these amendments 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 amendments is to be feared by the Representatives from certain Southern States who have introduced these resolutions? Surely not that which provides that the right of suffrage shall not be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, for the manner in which these States have brought about the abridgment of the suffrage has been twice decided 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 of the repeal of the amendment referred to in the resolutions is the fear that the provisions which require that representation 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 historical 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 00078Northern 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 extending negro suffrage in the North. Many of the most conspicuous, fearless, and effective abolitionists that this country every 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, Grimké, Birney, Cassius M. Clay, and if we could call the roll a thousand brave and generous would answer.

Nor shall I claim Mr. Lincoln as an original antislavery man. When he was elected President he seemed to have been almost indifferent 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 existed, 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 almost 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 revenge. 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 amendment. 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 politically in the power of the former masters. Several of the Southern 00089States adopted legislative statutes and civic ordinances for the purpose of carrying out this policy and realizing this reestablished 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 employee 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 without the special written permission of his employer.

Regulations were also adopted compelling negroes, under penalty, 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 abolished free labor. It reestablished the overseer system. If these laws continued to exist, slavery was not abolished.

Mr. Lincoln has been quoted as saying that he was not in sympathy 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 by the victors of that most terrible of all terrible struggles--namely, the adoption 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 earnestness of purpose with which he waged the war for the preservation of the Union, even though it cost him as much or even more sorrow?

In this situation two alternatives presented themselves--indefinite 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 about President Johnson, including General Grant, his successor, and an earnest and prolonged conference was held. After much discussion it was decided that permanent military rule was too obnoxious to be seriously considered, and that remedy was rejected.

The majority of the Republican party did not consider the 000910enfranchisement of the negro an ideal solution of the vexing problem. But it seemed the best at hand, and was adopted as a great improvement upon anarchy.

If the army rule had been continued, with a regiment of Federal soldiers in every State, military rule would undoubtedly have produced, as it always does produce, enormous and terrible evils.

One of the ablest statesmen of that time, Carl 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 is 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, 1868, the Secretary of State, in pursuance of a concurrent 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 Supreme 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--eight Congress. The validity of the amendments has been sustained in every 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 27th 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 Northern 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 001011States 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 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, a hurricane, possibly an earthquake. The fourteenth amendment provides that when the right to vote for President, Representatives in Congress, or State officers is denied to citizens of the United States "except for participation in rebellion or other crimes, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens bears to the whole number of male citizens 21 years of age in said State."

And here the gentleman from Georgia raises his voice and exclaims:

If Congress should be unwise enough to elect to exercise the discretionary power vested in it by section 5 of Article XIV, it will not only be the most serious strain of the present cordial relations 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 that 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 rebellion or for other crimes, "the basis of representation in that State shall be reduced accordingly.

I admit the contention. That is what it means. He further claims that several of the Northern States 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 qualifications, or prepayment of taxes, or a specific religious belief, or nativity 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 001112Federal courts. If after due consideration they shall deliberately 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 decision without a murmur and modify their basis of apportionment 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 constituted 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 majority of the negroes of the South can neither read nor write. He says that the illiteracy of the southern negro has been rapidly reduced since he was made free; that negro illiteracy in those States was 77 percent in 1880, 63 percent in 1890, and 49 percent in 1900--in other words, that more than one--half the negroes of the South can now read and write, and that the number who can read and write today is 50 percent 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 criminality increased in more rapid ratio than his illiteracy decreased." This he tries to prove by adducing the alleged fact that the number of negroes arrested in the South has increased one--third during the last twenty years. On arriving at this datum my friend exclaims: "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.

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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 number 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 would not bring the inmates into social contact with one another, so that one imprisoned for a trifling offense would not be brought in contact 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 Francs 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 the 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 struggling to obtain one. In those already existing much labor and little instruction are the practice.

Most of the advancement seen in Northern penal systems and laws is unknown. 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 organization 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 measures and preclude the study of the causes of crime. So long as a State's criminals bring it a net revenue of from $30,000 to $150,000 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 punishment of crime.

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Second. The dawning realization that the white man intends by indirection to annual 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 knowledge of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution as it stands today 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 into 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 consequent supposed refinement? We institute the stockade principle, where a man is worse than a slave; we prevent him by intimidation 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 capture we burn him alive, like the Indians did their captives 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 dept before the war, so no close comparisons are possible. Fourth, since 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 deterioration of the race, but it is one phase of its attempt to meet new conditions and external forces. In the North 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 criminality, carried out along lines some of which have been indicated in the preceding articles, would tend to lead to conclusions having this import:

1. Climate, soil, food, and economic and social conditions are essential elements in any study of criminality, and by "social conditions" are meant all environmental factors. Until these influences are estimated and measures 001415are based upon the recognition of them, no great reduction in the amount of crime can be anticipated. With reference to these the negro is more disadvantageously placed than is any other class in America.

2. The laws and penal institutions in the South are not conducted with a view to decreasing crime, but to care for the prisoner and secure revenue. Preventive measures, especially with reference to children, are just finding a place. Experience has shown that the institutional system is of great importance 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 opportunity for development and improvement. In no phase of negroes' life, domestic, social, industrial, political, or religious, does this appear to be the case.

Even if, as it is assumed, crime has increased among the negroes, why should education be blamed for this? Surely this is an unfair 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 12th of last February, 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 related to the solution of a problem no patriotic citizen should neglect, that I look upon every attempt to stimulate popular interest and activity in its behalf 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 education in any of our reputable institutions like Hampton, Tuskegee, Fiske, or Atlanta, who are imprisoned. The records of the South show that 90 per cent of the colored people imprisoned are without knowledge of trades and 61 percent are illiterate.

But it has been said that the negro proves economically valueless in proportion 001516as he is educated. Let us see. All will agree that the negro in Virginia, for example, began life forth years ago in complete poverty, scarcely owning clothing or a day's food. The reports of the State auditor show the negro today owns at least one twenty--sixth of the real estate in that Commonwealth exclusive of his holdings in towns and cities,and that in the counties east of the Blue Ridge Mountain 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, the negroes added last year $1,526,000 to their taxable property, making the total amount upon which they pay taxes in that State alone $16,700,000.

Few people realize under the most difficult and trying circumstances, during the last forty ears, it has been the educated negro who counseled patience, 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. Education will divide them and uplift them.

If it is true that, as a distinguished southern statesman has remarked, "A smart nigger is a bad nigger," we must change all our opinions of the value of an education. for such a conclusion 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 educated Member 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 Northern 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 inferior 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 court, presents our subjects, however, under one of its darkest aspects. It is hard for the negro to get justice. the evil is not easy of remedy, but southern men are working upon it, and 001617southern 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. F. 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 convictions 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 England 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 proportion of lunatics than his own State because it builds more lunatic asylums. In the sam way he would rove that the people of Massachusetts are more illiterate than the people of Georgia by showing that the people of Massachusetts 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 individual Anglo--Saxon, or those of other extraction, as to whether they will rise and become capable of assuming a place in the affairs of men rather than remain in oblivion.

Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, 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 reenforcement, voting, as I am to voting by the coconut--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 consistent, for, having conducted his campaign upon the platform of ceasing to educate the negro, he has during the past few days vetoed a bill carrying an appropriation for a negro school. We have 001718here 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 education. To obtain this education he must go to 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 demonstradum --disfranchisement.

Mr. Chairman, if I were a Southern born and bred, and felt toward the negro as Governor Vardaman and the gentleman from Georgia feel, I would be in favor of sacrificing some of the representation 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 representation based on his vote.

A question has been raised as to a possible social equality between 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 t 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 are 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 locality, 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.001819And 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 such position, 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 fit them.Nor 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 correct, 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 believe in higher education for whites or blacks, except where exceptional cases are found. I think that the three R's--"reading, 'rating, and 'rithmetic"--as the old schoolmaster used to say, together with geography, United States history, and a good manual training, would make us a stronger nation. Instead of the compulsory 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 Harvard University, that it is not to be denied that the task of developing 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 great 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, otherwise 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, carpenter, 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 ho would befriend him among the whites will step in and protect him if he commits a crime. On the other hand, the whites must not impose unjust restrictions, unjust laws, and unjust sentences upon the negro simply because he is a negro. To do so is 001920undemocratic, un--American, and in direct opposition to the principles 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 own 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 advocated 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 establishment of a greater 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 reverse a judgment of conviction for a disregard of such rules, notwithstanding 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 judgment of conviction of criminal cases in our Federal courts and no review except 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 England 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 lynching 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 will 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 certainly receive the punishment be deserves, and receive it soon, the eagerness 002021for 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 resorted 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 limitations of a race scarcely three hundred years from savagery; protecting 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 don for it--no matter what its sufferings 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 civilization. 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 the 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 classes of foreigners who come to our shores, ignorant of our laws, ignorant of our language, ignorant 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 property interests of those affected by the amendments the gentleman would annual, which I shall print: and in this connection let me 002122suggest another thought. By repealing the fourteenth and fifteenth 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. Talcott 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 disfranchise 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 representation without representation, "and there can be no representation without the right to exercise the franchise. Direct representation of those governed in the governing body is the keystone of our democratic institutions. If our Government is not a representative 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 legislation is national in its effect,a nd, therefore, must at once become the object of concern to all sections of the country.

One word in regard to the fourteenth amendment. In the fourteenth amendment the very use of the word "shall," in prescribing 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 citizenship 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 002223States 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 resolution of my friend from Georgia is that certain States have done through legislative enactment that which the statesmen of 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 contrary to the direct mandates of the Constitution of the United States.

As I remember, the gentlemen representing their several States, like 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 office 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 002324upon God to witness, we intended to convey that we subscribe absolutely 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 eloquently defended by the gentlemen 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 official estimate which I have just received from the Record and Pension Office, 2,200,000 northern and southern 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 Constitution 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, particularly the gentlemen who gave their personal services during that great struggle, find ourselves in the position of the young Napoleon 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 wars? Would not we from Pennsylvania, 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 002425Carolina, 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 sacrificed and suffered is so easily to be undone?

APPENDIX.

The census of 1990 contains a bundant and indisputable evidence of the great progress in material prosperity by the negro agriculturists during the past few years. The act of Congress providing for the previous census--the census of 1890--directed that statistics concerning the negro farmers should be included 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 on 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, afford 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 all 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, according 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: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 farmers actually constituted more than one-half the total number of farmers.

002526

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 grain farms, 4.1 per cent live--stock farms, and 2.6 per cent tobacco farms.

No other race in the United States has so large a proportion of its farmers devoted to a single staple as 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 values of the products of the negro farms of the United States (exclusive of the products fed to live stock), we find that 34.1 per cent of these farms realized between $250 and $500 worth of such products in 1899; 33.1 per cent realized between $100 and $250; 12.8 per cent realized between $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 tenants, 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 owners. 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 cent; 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 reasonably 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 450,541 were conducted either by farmers who owned the whole or a part 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 farmers 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 inheritance nor inherited money with which to buy land. Of the 371,414 white farmers added since 1860, very many were the children of landowners and came into the possession of farm land, or the wherewithal to purchase the 002627same, 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 proportions.

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 $499,943,734. 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 livestock, $229,907,702. The value of the negro farms was about 24 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 proportions are greatly increased. In round numbers the values of all the farm property in those States, and of the negro farm property, were in 1900 as follows: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 proportion would be over 20 per cent.

The figures in regard to the relative values of farm products at the South are still more striking:Here the proportion of the products of negro farms, as compared with the total farm products of the ten States, is seen to be nearly 25 per cent, or, taking out Texas, nearly 30 per cent.

002728

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 1900 was in the South Central States, of the whites had but about 28 per cent.

The total acreage 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. CCLXVIII, March, 1879] I. OUGHT THE NEGRO TO BE DISFRANCHISED? -- OUGHT HE TO HAVE BEEN ENFRANCHISED?[James G. Blaine. L. Q. C. Lamar, Wade Hampton, James A. Garfield, Alexander H. Stephens, Wendell Phillips, Montgomery Blair, Thomas A. Hendricks, 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 questions 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, indeed, to achieve anything except to increase the political weight and influence 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 relations with the white race; that the excitement incident to its free enjoyment hinders him from progress in the rudimentary and essential branches of education; that his advance in material weather is thus delayed and obstructed; and that obstacles, which would not otherwise exist, are continually accumulating in his path, rendering his progress impossible and his oppression inevitable. In other words, that suffrage in the hands of the negro is a challenge 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, restore kindly relations between the races, place the whites on their proper and honorable responsibility, and assure to each race the largest prosperity attainable under a government where both are compelled to live.

The class of men whose views are thus hastily summarized do not contemplate 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 compassing that end. Under the Constitution, as it is now construed, the diminution 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 account of this 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 002829masters at the South to endure any phase or form of equality on the part of the negro. Instinct governs reason and with the mass of Southern people the aversion to equality is instinctive and ineradicable. The general conclusion with this class would be to deprive the negro of voting if it could be done without impairing the representation of their States, but not to make any move in that direction so long as 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 effect. They have done this against law and against justice.

Having stated the position of both classes on this question, I venture now to give my own views in a series of statements in which I shall endeavor to embody both argument and conclusion:

First, The tow classes I have named, contemplating the possible or desirable 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 more unfit for it every day from the time the first backward step should be 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 today, imperfectly enjoyed as it is by the negro, this freedom unjustly and illegally curtained, 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 alleviations of the old slave system, whose destruction carried with it the shedding of so much innocent blood.

The second class is wrong in anticipating even the remote possibility of securing the legal disfranchisement of the negro without a reduction of representation. Both sides have fenced for position on this question. But for the clause regulating representation in the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution we should to day have the South wholly under the control, and legally under the control, of those who rebelled against the Union and sought to erect the Confederate government--enjoying full representation by reason 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 is because of evasion and violation of its express provisions and of its clear in tent. 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 permitted t 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 public opinion, 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 must be still more cogent and conclusions still more decisive when drawn ab impossibili. The negro is secure against disfranchisement by two constitutional amendments, and he can not be remanded 002930to the nonvoting class until both these amendments are 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 affirmative vote approve, the annulment. 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 safeguards 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 guaranteed 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 regard to the rights of the negro as expressed in the last three amendments to the Constitution of the United States. In 1805 Congress submitted the thirteenth amendment, which merely gave the negro freedom, without suffrage, civil rights, or citizenship. In 1866 the fourteenth amendment was submitted, 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 exclusion of make citizen 21 years of age from the right to vote, except for rebellion or other crime.

In 1869 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 grasping 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 provided in the fourteenth amendment as the result of the denial or abridgment of suffrage by State authority. In this stately progression of organic enactments 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 authority of law. There will be no step backward, but under the provision which specifically confers on Congress the power to enforce each amendment 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 still 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 course, a still greater number of negroes of the same ages who could not read or write; but in the nine years that have intervened since the census was taken there has been a much greater advance in the education of the negroes than in the education of the poor whites of the South; and today on an educational qualification 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 003031be 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 qualification 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, "Ought the 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 light 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 compared to that which would have been required if 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 skill at their market value was to be restrained by apprentice laws; and the slavery that was abolished by the Constitution of a nation was to be revived by the enactment of a State. To counteract 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 possibly 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 suffrage to the negro; and that autonomy will be complete, absolute, and unquestioned whenever the rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic shall be enjoyed in every State--as the administration of justice 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 premised and the unimpassioned spirit in which he draws his conclusions render the discussion which he proposes both possible and profitable. His statement itself deprives 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 general 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 influence or consideration who believes that the disfranchisement of the negro on account of race, color, or former condition of servitude is a political possibility. I am not now discussing the propriety or wisdom of universal suffrage, or whether, in the interests of wise, safe, and orderly government, all suffrage ought not to be qualified. What 003132I 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 polls in favor of ratifying the refranchising amendment for which Mr. Blaine voted in Congress, believing 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 obligation 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 important 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 substantial agreement. There can be no doubt that in the unaccustomed relation 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 develop the new freedman according to their own idea of what was good for him. This would have resulted in a race distinction, with such incidents of the old system as would have discontented the negro and dissatisfied the general opinion and sentiment of the country. 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 produce 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 genuinely "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 negro. And I agree fully 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 suing this defense for ten years, that in this time hundreds of thousands of negroes, born free, have grown 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 prove that the negro vote has been cheated by fraud or 003233defeated by force and 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 tradition 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 as 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 been 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 ignorant Republican, but years must yet pass 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 has 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 fraud than that alleged to exist now he was taken away from his natural leaders at the South and held to a compact Republican vote. Granting--which I do not grant--that the present methods are as bad as those then applied, the fault lies in the character 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. Could 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 numerical 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 ineffectually when that vote was all against her white people, so will he chafe ineffectually when it is now largely 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 intelligently direct itself. It must and will follow some leader. Now, up to 1876 the Republican party, armed with all the authority of the Federal Government 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 mass of colored voters was left without guides. in many of the largest counties, where their majority was absolute, they were not only not organized, but there was not interest enough to print a Republican ticket. The weapon of defense which 003334had been given to the negro was thrown away by his leaders in their flight, and Mr. Blaine can scarcely complain if it was picked up by the Democrats. In saying this I do not wish to provoke or renew useless and irritating 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 suggested itself but for an illegal control of the negro vote by southern Democrats. My view is that while the enfranchisement of the negro was a political 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 ballot 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 negro, he rally proves that there is no organic question affecting great national interests but simply the subordinate question, How rapidly is the ballot fitting the negro 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 politics? 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 citizen it was necessary first to take him from his master. Then it became necessary to take him from the party which 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 difficulty 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 directed 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 distant--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 willing and anxious to enlighten and influence him, and to sustain him in this 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 difficulties would bring us nearer to that unanimity of action which can alone aid the solution 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 kindest and most beneficent aspect. My associations with the past of men and 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 citizen 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 003435such that the North has been able to give him citizenship without the destruction of our institutions. The progress which he made with us as a slave will not be arrested now that he is a freeman--unless party 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 conscientious attention of thinking men to a problem the wise and peaceful solution of which will be one of the noblest achievements of democratic civilization.

Mr. Blaine assumes that the Souther States as a whole--differing in degree, but the same in effect--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 throughout 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 recent 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 Government 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 exaggerated statements of force and fraud must be reduced to their real proportions.

But suppose the allegations which Mr. Blaine puts as the argument of those who advocate disfranchisement be true, viz., that the present political condition 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 nay 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 fifteenth amendments 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 interests. Now, will anyone deny that this purpose has not achieved its fullest consummation under existing condition? Is free labor anywhere on earth more firmly established, more fully developed, or more absolute in its demands (even for exaggerated remuneration), and more secure and unrestricted 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 be 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 defense.

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 intellectual 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 every Congressional district in the Union, and 003536is 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 government?

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 negro vote has been subjected to the forcible control of the white race, but that I deny. Reference 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 governments of the South for the last ten years under Republican rule--their gross and shameless dishonesty, their exorbitant taxation, their reckless expenditure, 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 flery 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 result 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 demonstrates 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 instrument 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 rebelled against the Union to their autonomy was to give suffrage to the negro," leaving (I venture 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 limits prescribed me in the invitation prevent anything more than a mere statement of opinion. Even were this otherwise, my present condition forbids me to enter into any extended or elaborate argument. 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 003637or sectionalism, with the sole purpose of promoting the cause of truth and the welfare of the whole country.

The first question is, "Should 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 earnest 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 Republic, and not to that of a limited section.

But whatever may be the motives of those who desire the disfranchisement 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 disfranchisement of the negro at this or any subsequent period would be more surprising than any political event in our past history. The question, therefore, 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 incompetent as he was to comprehend the high responsibility thrust upon him, and whatever may have been the reasons which dictated this dangerous experiment, the deed has been done and is irrevocable. 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 acquisition of learning, but I apply the term in its broadest sense. The possession of the rudiments of education--the mere mental training that this implies--so far from being always beneficial to its possessor, is often harmful. Many of our lately enfranchise 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 the 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 political constituencies.

As the stability of our institutions depends on the intelligence and 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 ignorant, with the prejudices, the habits, and the evils inculcated by a life of slavery-- merely children of a larger growth, and, like all children, full of credulity. It is not to be wondered at, then, that they were easily misled by 003738the wicked and designing men who flocked to the South when she was prostrate. 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 cherish any 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 submitted 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 contribute not only to the wealth of the South, but to her political 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 fixed 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 reflection, and as an evidence of this it may not be improper, even at the risk 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 1867, 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 relations between the two races, and I gave to them the same advice that I have given from that day to this. in 1867, in the city of Columbia, at the earnest invitation of the colored people 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 ground against 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 been 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, prescribed the qualifications of their voters, the National Government would intervene, and we should have universal suffrage forced upon us. My 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 have been allowed to vote at first would have produced no confusion in the machinery of the State government, and the relations between the two races would have been friendly and harmonious; but the course that I recommended 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 003839success--to teach him here how to use the vote for his own 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 the State, where thousands of 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 throughout the State, I will venture the assertion that in every locality he will find as earnest, as active, and as consistent Democrats are generally among the more intelligent of their race.

Under these circumstances, as the negro is endeavoring very generally to qualify himself for the duties of citizenship, the wrong of disfranchising him would be as great as that inflicted upon us in the first instance, when universal suffrage was given to his while he was yet utterly unprepared to exercise it.

The second question to which my attention has been invited is, "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 extraconstitutional, and I am utterly opposed to any violation, direct or indirect, of that instrument. Whenever a political party thinks it is necessary, in order to secure its supremacy, 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 negro 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 called 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 possess 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 objection to his enfranchisement, therefore, is confined to the time when and the mode in which this privilege was conferred upon him.

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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 enfranchised.

If it shall appear on a new roll call in 1879 that none are in favor of disfranchising the negro and few are ready to declare that he ought not to have been enfranchised, we may reasonably conclude that these measures are gaining strength 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 misleading,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 impossible to rescind them; and I believe it is an 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 our 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 used 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 individuality of character. Like the chameleon, he takes the color of his surroundings; 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 enfranchisement which has been 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 adjustment of his status. Even the defenders 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 negro 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 feeling against slavery was world--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 ground. 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 his 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 weapons of defense--would have been an injustice hardly less cruel to him, and a 004041policy 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. Indeed, this experiment was attempted soon after the close of the war. While the seceding States wee 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 legislatures 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 negro, prohibited him from owning real estate, and enacted vagrant and peonage laws, whereby negroes were sold at auction for the payment of taxes or fines, and were virtually reduced to a slavery as real as that which existed before the war.

Congress was, therefore, compelled to choose between a policy which would have made the negro the permanent ward of the nation, and by constant 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 mens 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 white population of the South--and the risk of admitting to the suffrage 4,000,000 people who were, as yet,in a large measure unfitted for its wise and intelligent exercise. In reviewing the situation as it existed from 1867 to 1869, I 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 discussion at this time can have no practical 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 liberty 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 corrupt 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 of 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 foresight--all these were the inevitable results of generations of slavery, which afforded no incentive to the development of those qualities that make citizens independent, intelligent, and self--reliant. if the negroes 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, as the Indians are disappearing, and for the same reasons. But the evidences are increasing on every hand that they are successfully solving the problem of their own future by a commendable degree of industry and by very earnest 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 measur