CHAPTER XLVIII.

[BY THE EDITOR.]

IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE ESTABLISHED.

§1969. THE fifteenth article of the amendments, and the last which hitherto has been deemed important in adapting the Constitution to the new conditions following the emancipation of the slaves, declares that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged, by the United States or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servi tude," and that "the Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." 2

1 Mr. Sumner in the senate raised the question of the value of this amendment, and disputed the right of any State to deny suffrage on account of color. "I raise,” he said, no question of the power of the States to regulate suffrage; I go into the question of the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and I insist that, under that, you cannot, without falsifying every rule of interpretation which will be found in any book of jurisprudence, without falsifying every sentiment of the heart, say that under the power to regulate you can disfranchise a race. Every presumption is to be in favor of human rights. Some of the bravest sentiments of English jurisprudence have all gone in that direction, even to the extent of saying that that man is impious and cruel who does not favor human rights. There I stand in every interpretation of the Constitution; in the construction of every word and phrase in it, I give to it a meaning in favor of human rights; and when I am asked what is meant by the term to regulate, I say, to determine the manner of elections; not to disfranchise a race. When I am asked what may be qualifications, I say clearly, those things which may be acquired, those things which are attainable to human effort; not those things which, by the providence of God, are unattainable. Sir, it is an insult to God and to humanity to say that such a thing can be a qualification." Debate of Feb. 3, 1869. Mr. Senator Edmunds, in the same debate, argued that the elective franchise was assured by the fourteenth amendment. "I am one of those," he said, "who believe that the fourteenth amendment, which we have already adopted, has undertaken to secure to citizens of the United States all the privileges and immunities that belong to citizens as such, including, of course, and compre

2 Adopted in Congress, February 26, 1869, and published as ratified by the requisite three-fourths of the States, March 30, 1870. Very stringent acts "to enforce the rights of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of this Union" were passed May 31, 1870, and February 28, 1871.

§ 1970. Previous to the emancipation of the slaves, the great majority of the States did not admit persons of African descent, even though freemen, to the exercise of the elective franchise,1 and those which did assumed the general inferiority of the race, and required some special evidence of fitness; such, for instance, as might be afforded by the ownership of freehold property to a certain amount or value. It was natural, and perhaps inevitable, so long as the general condition of colored persons was one of dependence, servitude, and ignorance, that their unfitness to parhending all belonging to the class. There is no qualification or limitation; but words the most comprehensive possible in a statute or in a constitution are used. I believe that every citizen of the United States, in respect to whom political rights can be asserted at all, is entitled now to exercise political privileges; and, therefore, if there is any man in the United States who was before that amendment entitled to exercise political privileges, that amendment extended to all the citizens similarly situated, without arbitrary and mere fanciful distinctions, such as color, nativity, education, or of religion, an equal right; because, if there is any vitality at all in that article, which was so much studied here, and which at last has commanded the assent of three-fourths of the States, it is that it gave the great and comprehensive word 'privileges' to all citizens alike, and that it made secure to them the privileges that belonged to the highest class of community." But these views did not command the assent of Congress, nor, probably, of any large portion of the public.

1 The terms of exclusion were different in different States, but an examination of the laws and judicial decisions will show that there was always more or less difficulty in determining whether particular classes of persons of mixed blood should be ranged on one side or the other of a proper dividing line between the European and African races. Sometimes this was sought to be settled by the State legislation; in other cases the legislation only introduced confusion. Thus, by an early statute in Virginia, a person not of pure negro blood, but having one-fourth part or more, was deemed a mulatto. 4 Randolph, 631. The Indiana statutes adopted the same rule. But in Massachusetts (Medway v. Natick, 7 Mass. 88) and Alabama (Thurman v. State, 18 Ala. 276) it is decided that a mulatto is a person begotten between a white and a black; and one having a fourth only of negro blood is not a mulatto. In South Carolina persons tinged with negro blood were held not to be whites. State v. Hayes, 1 Bailey, 275; State v. Davis, 2 Bailey, 558. In Michigan, where statutes had always spoken of negroes, mulattoes, and other colored persons, it was held that these terms were satisfied by the three classes of negroes, mulattoes, and quadroons, and all having less than one-fourth negro blood should be regarded as white. People v. Dean, 14 Mich. 406. See also Dean v. Commonwealth, 4 Grat. 541; Gentry v. McMinnis, 3 Dana, 385; Johnson v. Norwich, 29 Conn. 407, which afford more or less support to the same view. In Georgia, persons having less than one-eighth negro blood were held to be white. Bryan v. Walton, 20 Geo. 480; while in North Carolina, one having a sixteenth negro blood was decided not to be. State v. Charon, 5 Jones Law, 11. In Ohio, quadroons were held to be "white." Gray v. State, 4 Ohio, 354; Thacker v. Hawk, 11 Ohio, 376; Jeffries v. Aukeny, 11 Ohio, 372; Lane v. Baker, 12 Ohio, 237; though the correctness of this ruling was questioned in Van Camp v. Board of Education, 9 Ohio, N. S. 406, and was denied in Smith v. Oliver, 31 Ala. 39. These references will sufficiently illustrate the diversity of opinion on this subject.

ticipate in the government should be taken as unquestionable; and it could not be expected that this impression would be removed immediately by the mere act of elevating them to the condition of freemen. Freedom could not immediately make them wise, it could not give them political knowledge, it could not instruct them in the institutions of the country; and for a time, at least, they must be wanting in a due sense of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of freemen, in the habit of selfcontrol, and in the broad views essential to a proper exercise of an elector's privileges. Moreover, it was not unreasonable to expect that something of the feelings, sentiments, and passions begotten of slavery would linger after its overthrow, and preclude the freedmen coming at once into harmonious and satisfactory relations with the lately dominant race as fellow-citizens.

§ 1971. Important as these considerations were, they were not believed sufficient to justify the exclusion of the colored people. from the polls. To continue against them discriminations based upon color was to perpetuate a feeling of degradation, which could not fail to constitute a serious impediment to the very preparation for the elective franchise, the want of which was now the principal reason for denying it. Moreover, to leave them without political privileges was to place them at a serious disadvantage wherever and in whatsoever manner they came in competition with others; and the sentiment from the first was strong, and soon came to prevail among the people, that the ballot was absolutely essential to their protection against oppression and wrong in a thousand forms where the general law would be powerless, and that it must constitute the chief incitement to the efforts needed in the direction of intellectual and moral improvement. And there were not wanting abundant reasons for believing that in any political society the existence of a large class, branded without their fault with a mark of legal inferiority, could not fail to be a circumstance tending to public disorder, wrong, and danger. The discrimination. against the colored people at the polls was now the last remaining badge of their late servitude, and the wrong done them by their enslavement could not be fully atoned for while it was continued. It might be highly desirable that the individual States should take action to abolish it; but while many were ready to do so, in

1 All this is assumed in the special message of the President announcing to Congress the ratification of this amendment.

others public sentiment was not yet fully aroused to the justice, necessity, or expediency of such a step; and an amendment to the federal constitution was consequently the only method in which the reform could be speedily, completely, and effectually accomplished.

§ 1972. What is particularly noticeable in the case of this article is the care with which it confines itself to the particular object in view. The pressure of a particular evil was felt; the reproach of a great wrong was acknowledged; and that evil was to be remedied, and that wrong redressed. There was no thought at this time of correcting at once and by a single act all the inequalities and all the injustice that might exist in the suffrage laws of the several States. There was no thought or purpose of regulating by amendment, or of conferring upon Congress the authority to regulate; or to prescribe qualifications for, the privilege of the ballot. From the beginning the States had exercised that authority, and however diverse had been their action, there was no complaint of any resulting evil which in any case had become of national importance except the single one at which this article was aimed. The correction of this was consequently the immediate need, and whatever else was wrong or impolitic might properly be left to the action of the States where the subject was left when the Constitution was framed. At their hands, it may be trusted, will whatever else is unequal in due time be corrected, and whatever is inconsistent with republican institutions be discarded.1

§ 1973. This last amendment crowns the edifice of national liberty. Freedom is no longer sectional or partial. There are no longer privileged classes; the laws have ceased to be invidious, and all classes of citizens who are to be governed by them are admitted also to participate in their administration."

1 Soon after the adoption of this amendment (July 14, 1870) Congress amended the naturalization laws so as to extend them "to aliens of African nativity, and to persons of African descent:" their benefits were confined previously to white persons. The same act contains important provisions which give to the federal authorities a certain supervision and the right to take charge of the preservation of order at elections in towns of 20,000 inhabitants or more, when representatives in Congress are to be chosen.

2 It was proposed in Congress to make the amendment embrace the right to hold office also, but this was finally omitted. It was doubtless believed that when the allot was given, the very numbers and strength of the class would constitute a suf

§ 1974. The question may indeed be raised, whether it be not possible that we have plunged into new dangers in laying thus broadly the basis of responsible citizenship. There are those who foresee only evil, and who prophesy only calamity. But evil is always prophesied when concession is made to democracy: when kings are set aside, when hereditary privileges are abolished or restricted, when the press is unmuzzled, when the conscience is set free. It was prophesied in England when toleration was extended to dissenters from the established church, and again when the Catholics were emancipated, and again when political rights were extended to the Jews. Every step in that country towards making the parliament a truly representative body of the whole nation, every disfranchisement of decayed or corrupt boroughs, and every extension of the franchise to the people, has been earnestly opposed as fraught with danger to the state. Every step in America in the same direction has met with the like opposition. The rulers, whether they be kings or lords or privileged classes, always believe they rule by right divine. Power is safe in their hands, but it would be dangerous in the hands of the people at large this is the assumption always when the demands of new classes for a voice in the government are to be resisted. The American people have assumed that that which is most just is also the wisest and safest, and they trust to time and experience to justify their confidence. It is beyond question that many unfit persons will demand and exercise the right of suffrage, but no test that could be prescribed - whether of education, property, experience, race, or color could be completely effectual in separating out the fit from the unfit, the virtuous from the vicious, the patriotic and public-spirited from the selfish, mercenary, and mean.

§ 1975. It may be well for the country and for the experiment we enter upon that a new generation is already coming upon the stage, whose political training was going on while the artillery of civil war was battering down old prejudices, and the nation was staking its existence upon the emancipation of a race it had before despised. To such a training there were different surroundings from those which in some particulars operated to narrow the ideas and shape the action of the founders of the government. Liberty ficient protection against any exclusion. But even if the disposition should exist to establish any, we doubt if it could be supported in view of the provisions of the fourteenth amendment.