224

GOVERNOR HAMILTON'S MESSAGE.

gress by thirty-three more members than an equal white population in the North; but if the negro was enfranchised and included in the basis of representation, the South would go back into the Union with thirteen more representatives than it had in the time of slavery. If the South should follow the example of Texas, refuse to enfranchise the negro and exclude him from the basis of representation, it would return to the Union with at least twenty members less in the House of Representatives than it had in 1860. Should Texas, by including the negro in the representation basis increase its political power as a State or diminish it by allowing one-half of its inhabitants to be unrepresented ?1

Governor Hamilton's message to the convention differed essentially on the negro question from that of any other provisional governor in the South. "If by the declaration that this is a white man's government, it is meant," said he, "that the black man is to be excluded from its benefits, and forever debarred from the exercise of political privileges in it, then I must respectfully take issue with the proposition." The election of the President of the United States might be determined by the votes of black men in the State of New York. If in the past black men had enjoyed civil rights and been admitted to the exercise of political privileges in the government of the United States, was it likely that after the act of emancipation, which, he said, was regarded by a majority of the Nation as a great and glorious event in the history of the human race, negroes would not in due time enjoy the rights and privileges of the white race? Exclusion merely on account of the accident of birth or color was unwise. Political privileges should depend upon rules of universal

1 In 1860 the white population of Texas was 421,294; the negro population was 182,921, of whom 355 were free persons.

application, and no man, who was qualified intellectually and morally,' should be deprived of voting.

To extend the right of suffrage to the freedmen, it was urged by a member, would elevate them in their own estimation, give them increased importance in the community, and effectually protect them against oppression. They would be taxed to support the government like other persons, and if ever the necessity arose, they would be required to shed their blood in defense of the common country. Why, then, deprive them of the rights of citizenship? The objection that they were ignorant was true of many white men, and, even if it held good at this time, it would apply with ever-diminishing force as time went on. But, it was said, the negro's vote would be controlled by his late master. Even if this were true, was the answer, as white men usually divide into political parties, so the colored vote would be divided. Who of the late slaveowners really believed that they could control the votes of their emancipated slaves?

But if the negro was enfranchised, would it not result in a war between the races, of which history gives many accounts, with injustice and oppression at the hands of the superior race? "Wrong and injustice," was the reply, "may be submitted to for a time, but the hour of retribution is certain to come; therefore, if we would live in peace and harmony with the colored race, from which we cannot be separated, and whose destiny is so indissolubly interwoven with our own, we must do them no wrong, practice no injustice upon them, but being a superior race protect them from all harm, and bestow upon them every right and privilege which their changed condition justly

1 Governor's Message, Journal, 25-26.

226

STATE OF THE COUNTRY: 1865.

demands." In the light of events this appeal for the extension of the suffrage was one of the most remarkable in our history; but it was in vain.

Four years passed before the legislature of Texas ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Meanwhile the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments had been ratified by three-fourths of the States, which practically gave the franchise to the freed-men.2

When the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted, the negro population of the United States numbered a little more than five millions, of whom about four and a half millions had shortly before been slaves.3 The half-million of the race, known to the law as "free persons of color," and scattered over the Union in varying numbers, from less than two hundred in Oregon, whose constitution excluded them, to more than ninety thousand in Maryland, where for many years efforts had been made to get rid of them, were forever relieved from their long haunting fear of being returned to slavery. Among this vast negro population, which was nearly twice as great as the entire population of the country in 1776, there were not above ten thousand persons who, by the letter of the law, might

1 Journal, pp. 81 and 91. This minority report of February 24th was submitted by Edward Degener of Bexar County.

2 February 18, 1870. For the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, see the Bulletin of the Bureau of Rolls and Library of the Department of State, No. 7, September 18, 1894, pp. 634635. (Doc. Hist. II.)

On this amendment, Texas was the twenty-ninth State to act, and on the day when it ratified the Thirteenth, it also ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth.

4,650,517 slaves in 1865; 518,468 free persons of color. The number is computed from the census returns of 1860, on the basis of increase given for the several States.

vote. Nearly nine thousand of these lived in New York, and the remainder in New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. It is not probable that of the ten thousand free negro men in the North, above the age of twenty-one, one in ten was suffered to vote, or ever went to the polls.2 Not one person of pure African blood, or of the fourth generation from a negro ancestor, held office, civil or military, in any State in the Union, or under the National Government. The general condition of the race was one of pitiful degradation. North and South have ever been notoriously unfriendly to the free negro and the recent slave was now stepping into the free negro's shoes.

North and South, it was the white man's government. The utterances of the South on white supremacy expressed, in these passionate days, a truth proclaimed and reiterated, in the speech of white men all over the land. The feelings of the white population of New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts toward the few negroes in their midst is not a true measure of public opinion in other free States at the time. New York tolerated the negro, but its recent overwhelming vote3 against removing electoral disqualifications against him indicated plainly the place in which it intended to keep him. The great West, though rejecting slavery, did not welcome free negroes. It excluded them from any participation in civil affairs. Unwritten law excluded the free negro from industrial,

1 The number of free persons of color in New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts was 12,043; in New York, 52,367, computed as above.

2 This statement is based on the condition of the free negro population of the State of New York, as portrayed in the debates of the Constitutional Conventions of 1846 and 1868. So much may be found in them to corroborate the statement, a general citation is all that is here necessary.

8 See note, p. 172.

228

THE SOUTH AND EMANCIPATION.

social and educational privileges nearly everywhere in the North. Yet there were compensations for emancipation. The burden of slavery would be rolled away. Immigration to the South would develop its almost untouched resources. Free labor would prove cheaper and more remunerative than slave. And to these advantages, freely pointed out, was added the prospect, however remote, of a gain of at least thirteen members in Congress in consequence of admitting the freedmen into the basis of repre

sentation.

Emancipation was forced upon the South. As repeatedly declared by its conventions, abolition had been effected by the United States in the exercise of the war power. The abolition acts of the former slave-holding States were merely an enforced registry of the fact. War had changed the old feelings of the whites toward the negroes. Georgia voiced the whole South when, in abolishing slavery, she declared that it would be better for the negro to remain in slavery. Yet he should have his rights of person and property duly guarded by the State. Let him work, let him make contracts, let him testify in court. But save the South from the evils of negro vagrancy; for every white man knew that even the ameliorating influences of slavery had not eliminated savagery from the African's breast. The stoutest heart might well tremble at the thought of four millions of negroes, born slaves and descended from slaves for ages, suddenly set loose amidst a white population not much greater in numbers.2

But in abolishing slavery, the Southern States were

1 For an account of the attitude of the North toward free negroes, see my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. I, Chap. xii, and Vol. II, Index "Negroes."

2 See pp. 88, 105, 238, 290, 344.