Happily, this somewhat outworn view is not the view of the body of the American people who have any familiarity with the subject or of any portion of them who have had experience of the conditions which existed under the Negro régime.

A respectable element among the white Republicans of the South have given it up. One of the most distinguished and thoughtful Northern men in the country, a life-long Republican, a man of approved Republicanism, declared before the leading Republican club of the country not long ago, that the experiments entered on with so much enthusiasm had undoubtedly proved a failure.

Looking back on this period, it is impossible for the open-minded student not to see that whatever the motive, the result was disastrous to both races. The South was devastated and humiliated beyond belief; the Negroes were misled in matters where right direction was vitally necessary to their permanent progress. And the consequence was a riot of civic debauchery which brings shame to every honest man of the African race and will prove a bar to the possibility of Negro domination hereafter.

Whether it be recognized as yet or not, the whole country owes a debt to the Southern people who withstood to the end the policy of the misguided fanatics and politicians who would have put the South permanently under Negro domination. But for the resolution and constancy of the Southern whites, one-sixth of the then existing States of the Union would have become Negroized had the system obtained permanency, and we should possibly have had by this time several States of the Union substantially what San Domingo is to-day. As the realization is becoming more common that the "experiment" which was entered on with so much enthusiasm a generation ago, of arming the Negro with "the weapon" of the ballot, has proved a disastrous failure, it is also gradually being recognized that the kind of education on which so much money, both from public taxation and from private philanthropy, has been lavished, and so much care has been expended, has not only failed to bring about the results which had been expected, but has, so far as the great body of the race

Negroes at large and urinaires will not accept this, but it is recognized by those who know the Negro best and have sufficient breadth of knowledge to look at things as they are. The sanest and most broad-minded among the Negro leaders of to-day has recognized it, and the foundation of his success is his recognition of it— the recognition of it by him and the recognition of it by the whites of the South, who have, because of it, sustained him by their sympathy and their aid. It is because of this that he has become the best proof of what the Negro race at its best may produce, and is the most unanswerable argument adduced since the war of the value of Negro education.

He believes that the Negroes at large should be taught, first of all, to work; and that they should begin by being made trained laborers and skilled artisans, and that then they will develop themselves. This principle, though sound, is strongly attacked by a considerable element among the more advanced Negroes. And the riot in the Boston church in July last, when the Principal of Tuskegee spoke on the industrial training of the Negro, was precipitated by an educated element who believe in agitation rather than in Principal Washington's pacific and rational methods. The latter asserts that in the main, the education of the Negroes as hitherto conducted, has not been generally a success. Those who espouse the other view assert, on the contrary, that the education has been a success and that the Negro is the equal of the white. And to prove their case they use red pepper and razors.

The limits of this paper do not admit of even the most cursory discussion of the comparative equality of the two races. It may be stated, however, that notwithstanding exceptional instances, the case of the South rests frankly on the present inferiority of the Negro race to the white race. Its superiority is a dogma of the white race wherever it may have established itself, and without doubt it has been one of the sources of its strength.

Much injury has been done the Negro race by the misdirected zeal of those who continually preach about their right to equality with the Whites. In 1865, when the Negro was set free, he held without a

rival the entire field of industrial labor throughout the South. Ninety-five per cent. of all the industrial work of the Southern States was in his hands. And he was fully competent to do it. Every adult was either a skilled laborer or a trained mechanic. It was the fallacious teaching of equality which deluded him into dropping the substance for the shadow. To-day their wisest leader is trying to emulate his great teacher, Armstrong, and lead them back to the field which they so carelessly abandoned. Men who are the equals of others do not go about continually asserting it. They show their equality by the fruits of their intellect and character. Among the whites, the poor class are not always haranguing and adopting resolutions as to their equality with the other classes, any more than are the well-to-do class always insisting upon their equality with the wealthy class. They know that they are equal, if not superior, and do not feel continually called on to assert it offensively. The same may be said about the best educated, best behaved, and most worthy among the Negroes. It is the blatant demagogue and "mouthy" Negro-a term that was well known during the period of slavery-who is mainly heard. on this subject. Happily for the Negroes, the major portion of them have retired from the struggle for political power, and except when excited by agitators, live harmoniously enough with the whites; and the industrious element are saving, and building themselves homes.

While, however, the body of the Negro race are going about their business in goodhumored content, generally in good fellowship with the people on whose friendship they are most dependent, the so-called "leaders" and their so-called "friends" are spending their time in lurid resolutions, asserting their equality and calling on everybody outside of the South to help them prove it.

The phrase usually employed is that the Negro is "robbed of his vote," this formula being equally applied whether he is restrained from voting by the unlawful act of one or more individuals or by the most solemn act that a people can perform the provision of a duly ordained constitution.

It may be well, at the outset, to call attention to a fact somewhat generally overlooked: that the right to vote is not an in

herent right. It is a privilege conferred by positive enactment on those citizens possessed of certain specified qualifications.

Further, the right to determine the qualification for the suffrage-that is, to declare on what condition a citizen shall exercise the suffrage-rests with the several States; the only limitation to this being the restrictions contained in the Constitution of the United States bearing on the subject. Where a State duly enacts a law it stands until changed by law or is declared invalid by the proper court of competent jurisdiction. Its provisions are the law.

It is not necessary to go largely into the history of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. They were the offspring of ignorance and passion. They were adopted partly to punish the South, partly to arm the Negroes with a weapon which would enable them to hold their own against the whites, and partly to perpetuate the ascendency of the radical wing of the Republican Party. Prior to, and even for some time subsequent to the war, the idea of endowing the Negro race with the ballot had not been seriously entertained by any considerable portion of the American people.

Mr. Lincoln again and again, during his debates with Douglas, declared his opposition to the idea. He said in one of his speeches: "I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office or intermarry with the white people; and I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which, I believe, will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

This he reiterated in a speech delivered at Columbus. The furthest he ever went was when, on March 13, 1864, in his letter to his provisional governor in Louisiana, Governor Hahn, he said, "I barely suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in: as, for instance, the very intelligent and especially those who have fought so gallantly in our ranks."

Of the thirty-four States which formed. the Union in January, 1861, thirty excluded Negroes from the franchise by Constitu

tional provision; while in the four States whose constitutions contained no such provision-New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire-owing to the small number of Negroes among their population, and the property and educational qualifications, the Negro vote was so small as to be a negligible quantity.*

The opposition to universal Negro suffrage was so great throughout the North during the agitation of the question which was subsequently embodied in the Fifteenth Amendment, that, excluding the enforced acquiescence of the Southern States, it was when submitted to the people defeated in every State except Iowa and Minnesota. (See Notes 1, 2 and 3, following.)

It is probable that, had the South not been so intractable in matters relating to the Negroes, the admission of the Negroes to the suffrage would have been along the line suggested by Mr. Lincoln to Governor Hahn. But at that time it was deemed necessary to quell the South though the heavens fell. Moreover, there was grave danger that the South might again hold the balance of power in the National Assembly. With stern and reckless determination the implacable leaders of the radical wing of the dominant party created what one of them termed a force of "perpetual allies." Having been drilled by years of slavery to follow the lead of their masters, and being reasonably apt at imitation, these

*In 1860 there were, of Negro men of voting age in New Hampshire, 149; in Vermont, 194; in Massachusetts, 2512, and in New York, 12,989. In New York alone, prior to 1868, was a Negro allowed by express provision to vote; but a Negro voter was subject to a property qualification of $250 not applicable to the white voter.-Thorp's Const. Hist. of the U. S., p. 226-7.

Everett

NOTE 1.-See "The Fifteenth Amendment. An Account of its Enactment, p. 5. A. Caperton Braxton." Waddy Co., Richmond, Va.

NOTE 2.-The Reconstruction Act forced through Congress in August, 1864, by the radical wing of the Republican Party and vetoed by Mr. Lincoln by a pocket veto, expressly limited the franchise to adult whites. The platform of the Republican Party on which Lincoln was renominated and re-elected in November, 1864, made no reference to Negro suffrage. During this year (1864) the Union people adopted new or amended old constitutions in Arkansas, Connecticut, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia, but no mention was made of Negro suffrage except to exclude it. See Id.

NOTE 3.-The following is taken from the valuable account of the enactment of "the Fifteenth Amendment,' written by Hon. A. Caperton Braxton, of Staunton, Virginia: "In December, 1865, when the question of the establishment of Negro suffrage in the District of Columbia was submitted to the voters there, the vote stood, in Georgetown, I vote for and 812 votes against the measure and in Washington, 35 votes for and 6521 votes against the measure. Id.,

allies followed slavishly the direction of their new leaders. It was perfectly natural that they should at that time have given themselves unreservedly to the representatives of the agencies which had emancipated them, which stood for them, and which held out to them such glittering rewards as complete equality with, and finally domination over, their former masters. Possibly, it was not unnatural that they should have followed with unexceptional credulity the most unprincipled among those representatives who steadily held out to them greater and greater rewards. However it was, this was the history of the exercise of the suffrage. With the weapon of the ballot, the Negro soon exceeded the expectation of the most sanguine advocate of Negro suffrage. Only the supreme constancy of the Southern whites saved the Southern States.

From this, every question became a race question, until to-day no question can arise which is not regarded by the Negroes from a racial standpoint. It may be asserted that this is quite natural. But the fact that it is so is the best argument for the Southern view.

It is a somewhat curious if not pertinent fact that in the place where Negro suffrage was first established by Act of Congress, the District of Columbia (where it was established by the Act of January 8, 1867), which has always been under the direct

proposition for Negro suffrage in Ohio was voted down by over 50,000 majority. In November of that year the people of Kansas and Minnesota "voted it down by large majorities." Id., p. 29.

In November, 1868, the people of Iowa voted to strike out the word "white" from the Constitution. In this State by the census of 1870 there were 289,162 whites and 1542 blacks. The vote, however, on this measure was 22,000 less than that for the Republican ticket. Id., p. 39, citing Tribune Almanac for 1869, p. 75.

In November, 1868, the people of Minnesota once more voted on the measure, and this time it was carried through by only about three-fifths of the majority given the Republican ticket. By the census of 1870 there were 114,344 adult white men and 246 adult Negro men. Id., p. 40.

In 1868, in Missouri, the measure was voted down by 18,000 majority. Ib.

In Michigan, in 1868, when the Republican Party carried the State by nearly 32,000 majority, the question of Negro suffrage was voted down by nearly 39.000 majority. Ib.

In 1869 the people of New York defeated the proposed measure by over 32,000 majority, and the Legislature of that State rescinded a former act of the previous Legislature, which had, by a majority of two, ratified the Fifteenth Amendment. Id., p. 65.

On the 4th of March, 1869, in Indiana, seventeen senators and thirty-six representatives resigned from the Legislature to break a quorum and prevent the ratification of the Amendment. Every one of these, with a single exception, was subsequently re-elected by the people. Id., p. 66-7.

Meantime, under the "Reconstruction Acts," the Amendment was forced on the South. Seven of the Southern States ratified it by the Negro vote, the whites being generally disfranchised, while in three of them-Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas-ratification was assented to as a condition of readmission to the Union. Ib.

control of National Government, subsequent conditions became so insupportable that it was deemed necessary to do away with the ballot altogether.

In all the years that have passed the same unhappy condition has continued. The Negroes remained solidly banded against the whites. To meet this condition, one method after another was resorted to. At times, force was openly resorted to to prevent the recurrence of conditions that rendered life unbearable; at times shifts came into vogue that no one pretended to excuse except by the argument of necessitysuch, for example, as the system of having separate ballot-boxes for each candidate, with a view to shifting them about; the system of "understanding-clauses" unequally applied; the system of ballot-box stuffing; the system of bribery, whether of leaders or of individuals.

In some places the question was seriously debated whether it was worse to use force or fraud, the necessity for one or the other being simply assumed. In others, some Negroes substantially auctioned off their votes.*

The result of such conditions was the retirement of many of the best men in the South from all part in public affairs, the withdrawal of the South from due participation in all other questions of the national life, the menace of the debauchery of public morals.

In this state of affairs the Southern people resolved to eliminate by law, as far as possible, the ignorant Negro vote. How universal the conviction was of its necessity may be judged from the fact that it has been attempted in nearly every State in the South. How legal it may be is a question for the Supreme Court of the United States. The new movement is being followed by stringent laws striking at all debauchery of the ballot.

It has been proposed to cut down the representation of the Southern States in Congress, and resolutions have been introduced in Congress to carry out this idea. Possibly the movement has not been as serious as it has appeared.

This proposition, which is intended to be partly monitory and partly punitive, is warmly advocated by most if not all of the Negro leaders and their doctrinaire friends.

*For such an instance see Dr. H. M. Field's "Sunny Skies and Dark Shadows."

It would undoubtedly be strongly opposed by the majority of the white people of the South, and possibly by some of the more far-sighted friends of the Negro race outside of the South, who, looking a little beyond the immediate disfranchisement of ignorant Negroes, see that the ultimate effect will be to establish a general and impartial electoral system, based on the disfranchisement of ignorance and vice.

Before the proposal is carried into effect, it might be well for its advocates to consider certain facts.

In the first place, it is a grave question whether the section of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, on which such action must be based, is now valid or whether it was not repealed by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits disfranchisement on account of race, color, etc. The latter view was taken and was ably argued in the recent notable address delivered in Albany in June last, by Charles A. Gardiner, Esq., of New York, before the Forty-first Annual Convocation of the University of the State of New York. He maintains that "a State can discriminate against Negro suffrage only by an organic or statutory law," and that before Congress can penalize a State such a law must be adopted and it must be a valid law. But (he argues) since the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, no law which violated its provision could be valid. It would not merely be voidable, but void ab initio. "And a void law is no law."

But even assuming that the Congress might have the authority to cut down the representation under the present law, it is a question whether the disfranchising clauses of the New Constitution in the Southern States afford any basis for such an attempt at reduction in their representation.

The qualifications for voting in the various States of the South would not seem to be in any way improper on the face of their constitutions. The impropriety charged against them is based wholly on the fact that they disfranchise more of one class of citizens than of others.

According to the tabulation of the "Qualifications for Voting in each State in the Union," published in the World Al*1 Cr. 137; 118 U. S. Rep. 142.

manac for 1904, and "communicated to it" and corrected to date "by the Attorneys General of the respective States," all the States except the two Carolinas have the 'Australian Ballot Law," or a modification of it in force, and all the States require that the "Voters shall be citizens of the State or of the United States, or an alien who has declared intention to become naturalized"; and all the States except Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire and Vermont, exclude from the right of suffrage those convicted of felony or infamous crime, unless pardoned.

Besides these, paupers and persons non compos mentis are generally excluded. These provisions are general.

Arkansas, however, excludes from the right to the suffrage those who have failed to pay the poll-tax. California excludes every one unable to read the constitution in English and to write his name. Connecticut requires for citizenship that a man shall be a citizen of the United States who can read the English language. Delaware requires the payment of a registration fee of $1; Georgia requires the payment of all taxes since 1877. Louisiana admits only those able to read and write, or who own $300 worth of property assessed in their names, or whose father or grandfather was entitled to vote on January 1, 1867. (This last is the celebrated "Squaw Clause.") Massachusetts admits only those who can read and write. Mississippi admits only those who can read or understand the constitution when read to them. Missouri requires voters to have paid their poll-taxes for the current year. Pennsylvania requires a voter, if twenty-two years of age or more, to have paid taxes within two years. South Carolina requires that a voter shall have paid six months prior to the election any poll-taxes then due, and be able to read and write any section of the State Constitution, or to show that he owns and has paid the previous year all taxes on property in the State assessed at $300 or more.

Tennessee requires that a voter shall have paid his poll-tax for the preceding year. Vermont excludes from the suffrage "those who have not obtained the approbation of the local board of civil authority." Virginia's qualification for registration is as follows, until 1904: "First, a person who, prior to the adoption of the constitu

tion, served in time of war in the army or navy of the United States or the Confederate States, or of any State of the United States or of the Confederate States; or, second, a son of any such person; or, third, a person who owns property upon which in the year next preceding that in which he offers to register, State taxes aggregating at least $1 have been paid; or, fourth, a person able to read any section of this constitution submitted to him by the officers of registration, and to give a reasonable explanation of the same, or if unable to read such section, able to understand and give a reasonable explanation thereof when read to him by the officers." Those registering prior to 1904 form a permanent roll. After 1904 the soldier's-son clause and the understanding clause are done away with, and a poll-tax must be paid.

Thus, it will be seen that Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina and Tennessee require the prepayment of a poll-tax, while Delaware requires the payment of a registration fee of $1; that Georgia and Pennsylvania require the prepayment of taxes, while South Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia require the payment of taxes in the alternative, another alternative being that the voter must, in South Carolina and Louisiana, as in California, be able to read and write, while in Virginia, as in Mississippi, he is required only to be able to read or understand the constitution when read to him, though in Virginia this last requirement was only for two years; and after two years the voter must be able to read and write.

Louisiana excepts those whose father or grandfather was entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, and Virginia excepts until 1904 those who were soldiers or seamen or whose fathers served as soldiers or seamen in time of war.

Vermont, on the other hand, has the singular requirement that the voter must "obtain the approbation of the local board of civil authority"-a requirement which would seem to place the qualification wholly at the mercy of the party in power.

Though the representation in Congress of the Southern States would appear at present to be greater than the recorded vote of those States would entitle them to, the inequality is by no means so real as it appears, and is not greater than that which