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that, whilst under the existing circumstances we have done well by the Negro, still the people of the South, worried, antagonized, and humiliated by the question of Negro control, have not had that regard for their own interests which they should have had in affording absolute and earnest protection to the Negro under all circumstances. The South is being injured by this class of crime, and it should be mercilessly stamped out. We have done well, I admit, under the circumstances, but it is our bounden duty to increase this protection in the future.

In order that what I may say may not appear treasonable, I will say that these views as to the restriction of the Negro vote to an intelligence basis were the views of the wisest men in the Emancipation era.

Mr. Lincoln in his letter to Governor Hahn says: "Now, you are about to have a convention which, among other things, will probably define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration whether some of the colored people may not be allowed in, as for instance the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks."

Mr. Sumner believed in Negro suffrage only for the reason that "their votes are needed in the North as well as at the South. There are Northern States where the good cause can be made safe by their votes beyond question. There are other States where the vote will be like the last preponderating weight in a nicely balanced scales. Let them vote in New York

and the scales which hang so doubtful will incline toward the Republican cause."

Mr. Stevens, in February, 1867, and the President endeavored to carry out a plan by giving a suffrage to all male citizens who could read and write and owned $250 worth of property. In 1866, Mr. Stevens introduced a bill to reconstruct North Carolina upon a basis giving the franchise to males able to read and write. President Grant in his message, December 7, 1875, used the following language :

"Make education compulsory so as to deprive all persons who can not read and write from becoming voters after the year 1890, disfranchising none, however, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the time this amendment takes effect."

President Johnson, in his veto of the District of Columbia Suffrage Bill, on January 5, 1867, uses the language, which is extremely appropriate to the subject under discussion: "Possessing these advantages but a limited time, the greater number, perhaps, having entered the District of Columbia during the latter years of the war, or since its termination, one may well pause to inquire whether after so brief a probation they are, as a class, capable of intelligent exercise of the right of suffrage and qualified to discharge the duties of official position. Clothed with the elective franchise, their numbers, already in excess of the demand for labor, would soon increase by an influx from the adjoining States. Drawn from fields where

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employment is abundant, they would in vain seek it here, and so add to the embarrassment already experienced from the large class of idle persons congregated in the District. Hardly yet capable of forming correct judgments upon the important questions that often make the issues of a political contest, they could readily be made subservient to the purpose of designing persons. . . It is within their power to come into the District in such numbers as to have supreme control of the white race and to govern them by their own officers, and by the exercise of all the municipal authority, among the rest, of the power of taxation over property in which they have no interest."

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His statement was borne out by the fact that when Negro suffrage was found in the District of Columbia to be entirely and utterly out of keeping with the Negro's educational qualifications, the suffrage in the District of Columbia was wiped out by act of Congress.

The restriction of the ballot-box to the intelligence basis is not a new proposition in this country. In the North the idea first had its origin, and it has been successfully carried out. Connecticut in 1885, and Maine in 1892, adopted provisions of law limiting the suffrage to an intelligence basis, and a distinguished statesman of Rhode Island, in relating the restrictions placed upon the ignorant foreign vote, emulates the language of an orator from the "Black Belt" of the South. He says: "These men, thus transformed into American citizens in violation of the plainest provisions of law,

ignorant of our institutions, unacquainted with our forms of government, embittered against all government, and ready with little solicitude to become the instruments of demagogues, are sufficiently dangerous when absorbed in the great agricultural States where healthy American sentiment pervades; but they are a menace to the public qualifications and the stability of legislation and orderly government when precipitated in overwhelming numbers upon a small country like Rhode Island."

In the South there have been various methods adopted for the suppression of the ignorant vote. They are summarized in the following: The payment of taxes before voting, centralizing the vote by the use of a number of ballot-boxes and the complication of the election laws, and recently by an express educational qualification. All of these systems, except the last, are vitally defective. This has been shown in practice. The great defect of all the Southern systems, except the educational basis, has been that the exercise of the ballot has no uplifting effect upon the Negro. The causing him to get rid of his tax receipts, the arrangement to centralize the vote and thus take from him that which the Negro thinks he has a right to, and the system of complicating the ballot-boxes, are all detrimental to the white as well as irritating to the Negro. There is no hope either for the white man or the Negro under such a system. It is hurtful to the whole body of voters, white and black, and every

intelligent man in the South recognizes that as soon as possible both races should escape from the anomalous position in which they have been placed. The white man of the South desires to be fair. His object is to be honest with the Negro. It is only compulsion which makes him adopt any system which is unfair to the Negroes. In every State in which the intelligence basis has been adopted it has been successful. The elections have been orderly. The acute questions are eliminated. In Louisiana, in the by-election since the adoption of the intelligence basis, the elections have been quiet and orderly and entirely fair. In Mississippi and South Carolina, the Race Question has been largely eliminated. From every section of the State in which this basis has been adopted, there comes the report of the success in the practice of the statute confining the ballot to the intelligence basis. There is no intention to disfranchise the Negro as a class. It is not intended to violate the provision as to discrimination on account of the "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," but it is intended to do away with any questions as to the fairness of the elections in the South, and to place the highest exercise of citizenship in the hands of those best qualified to exercise its provisions. As the citizens of the country, white or black, become qualified, they should be and will be admitted absolutely impartially in the exercise of the ballot. From a somewhat intimate knowledge of the South and of the men who are in control of its affairs, I believe that there is no possible

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