and in the reconstruction acts should be incorporated in the new constitution, and this would exclude nearly every intelligent white man in the State from holding office.1

The minority protested against this prospective negro domination, and, in an elaborate report, appealed for support to the teachings of the fathers, to the practice of the Commonwealth and to the incapacity of the negro to perform civil duties by reason of his lack of intelligence and moral culture. The granting of universal suffrage to the negro, so concluded their expostulation, and the sweeping disfranchisement of the whites, would sow the seeds of dissension, strife and war in the State.2

But the minority were powerless.3 An ordinance was passed that the election, for the ratification of the constitution, should be held on the second of June, 1868, but the ordinance was not carried out; the constitution was not acted upon and Virginia continued under military govern

ment.

Six days after the assembling of the Virginia convention, that of Georgia met at Atlanta. The registration of

1 See the report of the Committee, Documents Nos. 29 and 34. 2 Document No. 37. For a brief account of the outrages in Virginia in 1869, see Executive Document No. 95, House of Representatives, 40th Congress, Third Session.

3 The Constitution was adopted as a whole by the delegates on the 17th of April, 1868, by a vote of 61 to 36.

4 Journal, p. 377.

5 See the Journal of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the People of Georgia, held in the city of Atlanta, in the month of December, 1867, and January, February and March, 1868, and the Ordinances and Resolutions adopted. Augusta, Georgia: E. M. Pughe, printer; 1868, 636 pages. Of the members of this convention 79 were natives of Georgia, 19 of South Carolina, 12 of North Carolina, 7 of Virginia, 5 each of New York, Pennsylvania and Maine, 4 of Vermont, 3 each of Massachusetts and Tennessee, and 2 each of New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, Ireland and Scotland, and 1 each of Connecticut, Maryland and Alabama. Journal, pp. 611-613.

voters was nearly equal for the two races.1 The vote for a convention was almost unanimous, but nearly half the white electors abstained from voting. Thirty-three of the one hundred and sixty-six delegates chosen were negroes. Many of the delegates wished to treat the State as a territory, though the suggestion called forth vigorous protests,* but others would have the convention act as a sovereign body and promulgate a constitution. A few spoke of Georgia as a conquered province. Propositions of little practical importance, save as straws in the wind, were submitted: as to repudiate the obligations of the State incurred in aid of the Confederacy; to exclude from the right of holding office negroes and all persons who could not read the Bible and the State constitution. However, the reconstruction acts were a ballast which kept the convention steady in its course. The hope of the minority lay largely in securing an educational qualification for voters, as it would practically exclude all the blacks and many of the poor whites. But no disqualification of the kind could be adopted, and the article on the franchise and elections which made no discrimination between the races, differed from that in the constitutions of Alabama, Louisiana and Virginia, only in being less severe on the whites who had been in any way identified with the Confederacy. But the Georgia constitution had yet to receive

6

1 September 19, 1867; 188,671 voters, of whom 98,323, a small majority, were whites.

2 At the election October 29-November 2, 102,283 votes were cast for a convention and 4,127 against it.

3 Journal, 49.

4 Journal, p. 175.

5 Journal, 681.

6 Journal, p. 279.

At the election in April, the majority for the Constitution was 17,982; see Executive Document No. 300, House of Representatives, 40th Congress, Second Session.

the approval of Congress. It provided that the debts due before the first of June, 1865, as well with loyal as disloyal men, should be null and void,1 and it might well be questioned whether this article would not endanger the whole constitution.

The registration of voters in Arkansas closed on the last day of August with a total of nearly sixty-seven thousand, of whom one-half were whites.2 The question of holding a convention was decided on the second of November, by a majority of fourteen thousand votes. Nearly all the seventy-five delegates chosen were of the Radical party; eight were negroes, and only nine were natives of Arkansas. They assembled at Little Rock on the seventh of January.* The membership was even more composite than that of the California convention of 1849, and, in their nativities, the members represented twenty-one States and countries." From the beginning of the session a vigorous and highly

1 Article V, Section 17, adopted March 2, 1868; 73 yeas to 37 nays. Journal, pp. 446-459.

2 Official Returns, 66,805 registered; whites, 33,047. See Appendix to Debates and Proceedings of the Arkansas Constitutional Convention, p. 769.

3 For the convention, 27,576; against it, 13,558; Id. p. 77.

4 See Debates and Proceedings of the Convention which assembled at Little Rock, January 7, 1868, under the provisions of the act of Congress of March 2, 1867, and the acts of March 23 and July 19, 1867, supplementary thereto, to form a Constitution for the State of Arkansas. Officially, John G. Price, Secretary, Little Rock: J. G. Price, Printer to the Convention, 1868; octavo, 985 pages. This is perhaps the best edited report of a Constitutional Convention extant.

5 Nine were natives of Arkansas; 13 of Tennessee; 6 of Alabama; 6 of North Carolina; 4 of Ohio; 3 each of Pennsylvania, New York and Kentucky; 2 each of Indiana and New Jersey; 1 each of Massachusetts, Illinois, Iowa, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina, District of Columbia, Canada, England and Scotland; the nativity of 16 is unknown. By occupation, 22 members were farmers, 19 lawyers, 9 physicians, 9 ministers, 4 mer

352

CONDITION OF THE NEGRO.

intelligent minority opposed the extension of the suffrage to the negro. To this end they wished to continue the constitution of 1864 and to submit it to the people for ratification. It granted civil rights to the African and he, they asserted, was not qualified to enjoy more. But a negro delegate, speaking for his race, demanded for it all the rights of citizens who had "stood by the Government and the old flag in times of trouble, when the Republic trembled with the throes of civil war." The rights of citizenship recognized by the reconstruction acts of Congress must be engrafted on the organic law of Arkansas. Its constitution of 1864, he said, did not secure a republican form of government. The assertion that the negro could not become a citizen was contradicted by the history of the franchise in every State in the Union except South Carolina.

At the time of the recognition of the independence of the United States, British subjects had become American citizens, and the negro was then a British subject. The constitution, which the Conservative members wished to adopt, forbade negroes or mulattoes to come within the limits of the State except by military authority. For every negro voter registered there was a white man who

chants, a mechanic, a laborer, an engineer, a manufacturer, one negro (postmaster); 3 of the negro members were farmers and 4 ministers. The delegates who were natives of the Northern States had resided in Arkansas from three to five years. Among the most efficient members was Clifford Stanley Sims, a native of Pennsylvania, a delegate from Desha county. He was a member of all the principal committees, and was chairman of the committee on the legislative department. The arrangement and phraseology of the Constitution adopted were largely due to him. At the time of his death, in 1895, he was a Judge of the Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

1 An ordinance to this effect was rejected by a vote of 53 to 10; Debates, p. 157.

could neither read nor write, and, as compared with the same number of whites throughout the South, were not the negroes equally qualified to exercise the suffrage? The judicial decisions which had excluded the negro from citizenship were "outside of the constitution." Their mistakes had been remedied by the war. The strenuous opposition of the white race to the black had its parallel in the antipathy of the Cavaliers of England to the Yeomanry who followed Oliver Cromwell. The negro in possession of the franchise could protect his own. The right was demanded as an incentive to industry and education and the new constitution must recognize it as the price of restoration of the State to the Union.1

It was something of a novelty in Arkansas to have negro delegates in a constitutional convention, and the local papers, expressing ultra-conservative sentiments, referred to the convention as "the menagerie." After a few days of parliamentary altercation and preliminary adjustment, the delegates settled down to work. The majority were resolved on securing equal political rights for all; the minority were equally resolved to prevent this catastrophy, whether by parliamentary obstruction or otherwise. But the state of parties in Arkansas was conditioned by the acts of Congress, and the conclusion of the whole matter was practically forestalled. The long debate on the suffrage question remains the most complete register of Southern opinion on the subject at the time; but as the means to a predestined end it was quite superfluous. The negro was told that no republican form of government had ever been established

1 William H. Gray, a minister, and a native of the District of Columbia, and representing Phillips county. He was the ablest negro member of the convention.

2 Debates, p. 100.