promised the restoration of their civil rights and a renewal of their old federal relations. These were the conditions of abolition-bitter but inflexible. Kentucky and Delaware refused to emancipate and the National Government could not dictate to them as it could to the Gulf States. But another condition was implied in President Johnson's reconstruction policy; the ratification of the thirteenth amendment. It could not become a part of the Constitution without the concurrence of four States south of Virginia. Its ratification by South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia made it the law of the land. Mississippi refused to ratify, for fear of Congress. Might it not attempt to legislate on the political status of the negro? South Carolina and Alabama ratified, as did Florida later, with the understanding that such legislation should never be attempted. They considered abolition a sacrifice and a sufficient price for the restoration of Federal relations and the withdrawal of Federal troops. The solitary voice heard in the Texas convention for negro suffrage was the only appeal for an amendment "to provide for the prospective admission of the freedmen to the right." It might be thought that the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, by which slavery was forbidden throughout the land, would be the last instance of incorporation of an abolition clause in an American constitution. In becoming a part of the national instrument in 1865, it thereby became part of every State constitution then in existence, and all that were to come would find it a part of the supreme law of the land. But the momentum of a great organic act, embodying, as did this, an entire change in racial relations within the republic, later carried the provision into six State constitutions, and of these five were 1 Journal, Texas Convention, p. 91. 230 ATTITUDE OF KENTUCKY. of new States. Nebraska, in 1867 and again in 1875;1 Colorado in 1876;2 North Dakota3 and Montana1 in 1889, included the anti-slavery clause in their Declarations of Rights. This appears to have been done without debate or memorable objection.5 In none of these States was it a party measure; for the majority in the North Dakota convention were Republicans, and in the Montana, Democrats. Neither was the reason for the adoption of the provision, in these new States that which prevailed in Kentucky in 1890. When, in February, 1865, the legislature of this State, by a vote of nearly two to one, rejected the Thirteenth Amendment,7 and the State refused to abolish slavery by an act of its own, no man living imagined that the time would come when a Kentucky constitutional convention, in order to avoid antagonizing the negro vote in the State, would put an anti-slavery clause in a constitution-and do this a quarter of a century after slavery had been abolished, by an amendment which a Kentucky legislature had re1 Constitution of Nebraska, 1867, Article I, Section 2; 1875, Article I, Section 2. 2 Constitution of Colorado, Article II, Section 26. 3 Constitution of North Dakota, Article I, Section 17. 4 Constitution of Montana, Article III, Section 28. 5 Debates of North Dakota Convention, p. 537; Journal of North Dakota Convention, pp. 159, 167, 185, 220, 269. Adopted-57 yeas, no nays. The Proceedings of the Montana Convention as reported in the Helena Journal; the Helena Journal; the Helena Independent and the Morning Oregonian, indicate no discussion of the clause. 6 Recent Constitution-making in the United States. North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington. Philadelphia, 1891: American Academy of Political and Social Science, pp. 5-7. 7 February 22, 1865, in the Senate, 21 nays, 13 yeas; in the House, 56 nays, 28 yeas. Senate Journal, p. 391; House Journal, p. 579. For the attitude of Kentucky toward the question of Slavery, in 1849-1850, see the Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. II, Chaps. i, iv, v, vi. fused to ratify. Kentucky did not introduce slavery into her own domain, nor, by any act of hers, did she abolish it until 1890. "If you leave the clause out," said a member of the convention of that year, "there will be twentyfive thousand votes in this State against this constitution." But the clause was inserted, though not without protest from members, and also from colored citizens of the State who wished "to omit any reference whatever to the colored people as a class." A very significant reason was given, however, why the clause should be adopted. "At the time of the Paris Exposition of 1889," said a member, "the governors of the States in our Union were requested to send copies of their constitutions that they might be laid before the nationalities whence emigration came. The Governor of Kentucky refused because its constitution was in apparent conflict with the Constitution of the United States on the subject of slavery, and a long and difficult explanation would be necessary to make clear to the foreigner that the Constitution of the Nation over-rode that of Kentucky.' Industrial and political expediency led the State to conform at last, in the letter of its organic law, to a change made twenty-five years before and with which it had all these years been conforming in practice. Yet it was the dictates of industry and politics that compelled all the States to abolish slavery. Kentucky and Delaware could not be exceptions to a principle of civilization. This principle, expressed in 1776 in the familiar language of the Declaration of Independence, lay behind the action of 1 Debates of Convention of 1890, Vol. I, p. 442. 2 Id., 1019. (October 30.) 994 3 Id., 811-812. The protest from negroes was signed by teachers and clergymen of the race, 4 Id., 1017. FOPNY 232 A SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT PROPOSED. the States in 1865 in abolishing slavery, and in adopting the Thirteenth Amendment. The amendment declared the colored as free as the white race, but gave the colored race nothing more than freedom.1 The friends of the race were soon convinced that something more was needed; the negro should be recognized as a citizen of the United States; that he could protect himself. This meant the extension of political rights to him. The Republicans took up this solution of the problem and proposed it, as a Fourteenth Amendment, to the people of the States. 1 Bowlin vs. Commonwealth, 2 Bush, 5. |