Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

* * * * *

SPEECHES AT THE Constitutional Convention,

BY GEN. ROBT. SMALLS.

WITH THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE PASSED BY THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

COMPILED BY MISS SARAH V. SMALLS.

ENQUIRER PRINT, 425 KING STREET. CHARLESTON, S. C. 1896

INTRODUCTION.

Months previous to the time that the recent Constitutional Convention met, Conservatives and Reformers, announced publicly their intention to disfranchise the Negro in South Carolina.

For this pamphlet such portions of the new Constitution have been selected as affect the colored people, together with the speeches made thereon by my father Robert Smalls; several editorials from leading newspapers; also a few of many letters received by him from all parts of the country congratulating him for the manly spirit displayed by him and the other colored delegates, whenever the rights of their race were in jeopardy.

Indeed, it may have been an object lesson, planned by the All-wise God, to teach the haughty, boastful sons of Carolina that there are Negroes capable and amply qualified in every respect to protect themselves whenever it becomes necessary to do so; that those few representatives of the race were but a _very small_ part of the rising host that time and education are bringing forward day by day in spite of lynching, caste prejudice or any methods used against them.

No stenographers were employed by the Convention, the speeches were not written, and are therefore not given in full, but just as they were published in the papers of the State.

SARAH V. SMALLS.

PLAN OF SUFFRAGE.

The following plan of suffrage was introduced by Hon. Robert Smalls and referred to the suffrage committee, which reported it unfavorably, notwithstanding that he went before the committee and made a strong speech in advocacy of the said plan, and said report was adopted by the Convention:

SECTION 1. In all elections by the people the electors shall vote by ballot.

SEC. 2. Every male citizen of the United States of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, not laboring under the disabilities named in this Constitution, without distinction of race, color or former condition, who shall be a resident of this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, or who shall thereafter reside in this State one year, and in the county in which he offers to vote sixty days next preceding any election, shall be entitled to vote for all officers that are now or hereafter may be elected by the people, and upon all questions submitted to the electors at any elections; provided, That no person shall be allowed to vote or hold office who is now, or hereafter may be, disqualified therefor by the Constitution of the United States, until such disqualification shall be removed by the Congress of the United States; provided, further, That no person while kept in any alms house or asylum, or any of unsound mind, or confined in any public prison, shall be allowed to vote or hold office.

SEC. 3. It shall be the duty of the General Assembly to provide from time to time for the registration of all electors.

SEC. 4. For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have lost his residence by reason of absence while employed in the service of the United States, nor while engaged upon the waters of this State, or the United States, or the high seas, nor while temporarily absent from the State, or removing from one house to another or from one place to another in the same precinct.

SEC. 5. No soldier, seaman or marine in the army or navy of the United States shall be deemed a resident of this State in consequence of having been stationed therein.

SEC. 6. Electors shall in all cases, except treason, felony, or breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest and civil process during attendance at elections and in going to and returning from the same.

SEC. 7. Every person entitled to vote at any election shall be eligible to any office, which now is, or hereafter shall be elective by the people in the county where he shall have resided sixty days previous to such election, except as otherwise provided in this Constitution or the Constitution and laws of the United States.

SEC. 8. The General Assembly shall never pass any law that will deprive any of the citizens of this State of the right of suffrage, except for treason, murder, robbery, or duelling, whereof the persons shall have been duly tried and convicted.

SEC. 9. Presidential electors shall be elected by the people.

SEC. 10. In all elections, State and Federal, there shall be but one ballot box, and one ticket for each party or faction thereof, with the names of all the candidates thereon. There shall be three commissioners of election for each county and three managers for each polling precinct, not more than two of whom shall be of the same political party.

SEC. 11. In all elections held by the people under this Constitution the person or persons who shall receive the highest number of votes shall be declared elected.

ON THE SUFFRAGE.

MR. PRESIDENT: I have been asked whether I would speak on this important matter. I replied that it all depended on circumstances whether or not I would. The circumstances are such that I have made up my mind to make a short speech on the general bill, and content myself with the vote I will cast on the amendments and sections as they are brought up; inasmuch as I have been perfectly pleased with the speeches made last night, and the one just concluded by the representatives from my county, as I feel that they echo the sentiments not only of the county they represent, but the entire race in the State, and every one I could claim to represent. I endorse their utterances in the language of Mr. Cash when he said he endorsed “every syllable” and accepted it as his own in this letter. I want to hear some of the speeches on the other side, because I do not like this matter that is called Indian file, as it seems now we are to form a Negro file in this Convention. I will only say that this Convention has violated the principle laid down in the Constitution under which we are now living, it giving the right for any two members to call for an “aye” and “nay” vote, but the skillful chairman of the committee on rules, from Edgefield, I mean ex-governor No. 1, (laughter) has made a rule which requires 10, four above the number we have, to call for the “aye” and “nay” vote, hence we cannot put the members on record without the assistance of some of the white members of the Convention. They formed a “dark corner” over there by themselves.

I was born and raised in South Carolina and to-day I live on the very spot on which I was born, and I expect to remain here as long as the great God allows me to live, and I will ask no one else to let me remain. I love this State as much as any member of this Convention, because it is the garden spot of the South.

Mr. President, this Convention has been called for no other purpose than the disfranchisement of the Negro. Be careful and bear in mind that the elections which are to take place early next month in very many of the States are watching the action of this Convention, especially on the suffrage question. Remember that the Negro was not brought here of his own accord. I found by reference to a history in the Congressional Library in Washington, written by Neil, that he says that in 1619, in the month of June a Dutch man-of-war landed at Jamestown, Va., with 15 sons of Africa aboard, at the time Miles Kendall was deputy Governor of Virginia. He refused to allow the vessel to be anchored in any of her harbors. But he found out after his order had been sent out that the vessel was without provisions, and the crew was in a starving condition. He countermanded his order, and supplied the vessel with the needed provisions in exchange for 14 Negroes. It was then that the seed of slavery was planted in the land. So you see we did not come here of our own accord; we were brought here in a Dutch vessel, and we have been here ever since. The Dutch are here and are controlling the business of Charleston to-day. They are not to blame, and are not being blamed.

We served our masters faithfully, and willingly, and as we were made to do for 244 years. In the last war you left them home. You went to the war, fought, and came back home, shattered to pieces, worn out, one-legged, and found your wife and family being properly cared for by the Negroes you left behind. Why should you now seek to disfranchise a race that has been so true to you?

This Convention has a good leader in the person of the distinguished gentleman from Edgefield. Mr. President, when men go out shooting and want to shoot straight, they are compelled to shut one eye, and this leader uses only one eye in this Convention, hence he is always striking the bull’s eye; let him beware lest he strikes it one time too often. (Laughter.)

Since Reconstruction times 53,000 have been killed in the South, and not more than three white men have been convicted and hung for these crimes. I want you to be mindful of the fact that the good people of the North are watching this Convention upon this subject. I hope you will make a Constitution that will stand the test. I hope that we may be able to say when our work is done that we have made as good a Constitution as the one we are doing away with.

The Negroes are paying taxes in the South on $263,000,000 worth of property. In South Carolina, according to the census, the Negroes pay tax on $12,500,000 worth of property. That was in 1890. You voted down without discussion merely to lay on the table, a proposition for a simple property and educational qualification. What do you want? You tried the infamous eight-box and registration laws until they were worn to such a thinness that they could stand neither the test of the law nor of public opinion. In behalf of the 600,000 Negroes in the State and the 132,000 Negro voters all that I demand is that a fair and honest election law be passed. We care not what the qualifications imposed are: all that we ask is that they be fair and honest and honorable, and with these provisos we will stand or fall by it. You have 102,000 white men over 21 years of age; 13,000 of these cannot read nor write. You dare not disfranchise them; and you know that the man who proposes it will never be elected to another office in the State of South Carolina. But whatever Mr. Tillman can do, he can make nothing worse than the infamous eight-box law, and I have no praise for the Conservatives, for they gave the people that law. Fifty-eight thousand Negroes cannot read nor write. This leaves a majority of 14,000 white men who can read and write over the same class of Negroes in this State. We are willing to accept a scheme that provides that no man who cannot read nor write can vote, if you dare pass it. How can you expect an ordinary man to “understand and explain” any section of the Constitution, to correspond to the interpretation put upon it by the manager of election, when by a very recent decision of the Supreme Court, composed of the most learned men in the State, two of them put one construction upon a section, and the other Justice put an entirely different construction upon it. To embody such a provision in the election law would be to mean that every white man would interpret it aright and every Negro would interpret it wrong. I appeal to the gentleman from Edgefield to realize that he is not making a law for one set of men. Some morning you may wake up to find that the bone and sinew of your country is gone. The Negro is needed in the cotton fields and in the low country rice fields, and if you impose too hard conditions upon the Negro in this State there will be nothing else for him to do but to leave. What then will you do about your phosphate works? No one but a Negro can work them: the mines that pay the interest on your State debt. I tell you the Negro is the bone and sinew of your country and you cannot do without him. I do not believe you want to get rid of the Negro, else why did you impose a high tax on immigration agents who might come here to get him to leave?

Now, Mr. President, we should not talk one thing and mean another. We should not deceive ourselves. Let us make a Constitution that is fair, honest and just. Let us make a Constitution for all the people, one we will be proud of and our children will receive with delight. Don’t let us act like a gentleman said he talked. The other day a gentleman told me that a prominent lawyer, a member of this Convention, made a very bitter speech against the Negro while he was a candidate for election to this Convention. After the lawyer had concluded his speech of bitterness against the Negro and in favor of white supremacy, some colored men waited on him and asked him why he had made such a bitter speech against them, saying they had regarded the gentleman as their friend, as he had often acted as their lawyer. This gentleman replied to them: “Don’t mind my speech. I am a friend to the Negro, but I have got to make bitter speeches to fool the Crackers because I want their votes.” Gentlemen, I warn you that you can fool the Crackers when you talk to them, but if you pass this ordinance that has been proposed by the committee on suffrage you will fool nobody, for every person in the nation has been informed of your speeches on the stump and you will not be able to explain it away as that lawyer did his words of bitterness to the colored men who waited on him.

Mr. President, strange things have happened and I have been shocked in my life, but the greatest surprise of my life was when the distinguished lawyer from Barnwell, Mr. Aldrich, introduced a Constitution in this Convention that was taken verbatim et literatim from the Constitution of ’65 and the black code of ’66, which deprived every Negro from holding an office in this State, notwithstanding that Constitution and black code were rejected by Congress. That Constitution caused the passage of the acts of reconstruction by Congress and made it necessary for the Constitutional Convention of 1868, which gave to you the best Constitution of any one of the Southern States. Let us make a Constitution, Mr. President, that will demand the respect of mankind everywhere, for we are not above public opinion. While in Washington a committee of capitalists came over from England hunting for timber land in which to invest. One of South Carolina’s Representative in Congress called upon those gentlemen and informed them that there were large tracts of land in Beaufort County, in the Township of Blufton, for sale. They inquired for the name of the State, and when they were informed that the timber lands were in South Carolina they answered: “You need not go any further, as our instructions were, before we left England, not to invest money in a State where life and property was not secure under the law.” In God’s name let us make a Constitution that will receive the approval of everybody--the outside world as well as those at home.

Some time ago I heard the distinguished gentleman from Edgefield, I mean Mr. George D. Tillman, say that the white man wanted elbow room, and I suppose that this is what this suffrage plan is proposed to give him. Again, the other day, in this Convention, I heard him make a very eloquent speech on the township government bill, but before he got through he had acted like the good Jersey cow, which gave her two gallons of milk, and, though she did not put her foot in it before she was through, she had shaken so much dirt from her tail into the pail that we could not accept the milk. [Laughter.]

Now, Mr. President, I will not detain this Convention, as I had no intention of making a speech upon this subject, as I said before; but now, sir, in the language of Mr. E. B. Cash, in his letter received from the distinguished “Bald Eagle,” of Edgefield, Gen. Mart Gary, (holding up the letter) let me say that I endorse every letter, syllable, verbatim et literatim, and accept as my own the speeches made by my colleagues last night and this morning. And I would, therefore, ask that the Convention will not vote down the substitute for the suffrage bill introduced by my colleague, Mr. Whipper, as they did that of Mr. Wigg, by a simple motion to lay on the table, but will allow this matter to go over, as the attendance is very slim, until Monday. I ask the Senator from Edgefield if he intends to press this matter to a vote this afternoon.

Senator Tillman remarked that that was what he proposed to do.

Smalls--Ah! I am beginning to know the Senator at last. [Laughter.]

SUFFRAGE PLAN ADOPTED.

The following is the plan reported by the suffrage committee, which was adopted by the Convention, and which is now a part of the Constitution of South Carolina:

ARTICLE II.

RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE.

SECTION 1. All elections by the people shall be by ballot and elections shall never be held or the ballots counted in secret.

SEC. 2. Every qualified elector shall be eligible to any office to be voted for, unless disqualified by age as prescribed in this Constitution. But no person shall hold two offices of honor or profit at the same time, except that any person holding another office may at the same time be an officer in the military and a notary public.

SEC. 3. Every male citizen of this State and of the United States 21 years of age and upwards, not laboring under the disabilities named in this Constitution and possessing the qualification required by it, shall be an elector.

SEC. 4. The qualifications for suffrage shall be as follows:

(a) Residence in the State for two years, in the county one year, in the polling precinct in which the elector offers to vote four months, and the payment six months before any election of any poll tax then due and payable; provided, however, that ministers in charge of an organized church and teachers of public schools shall be entitled to vote after six months residence in the State, if otherwise qualified.

(b) Registration, which shall provide for the enrollment of every elector once in ten years and also an enrollment during each and every year of every elector not previously registered under the provisions on this article.

(c) Up to January 1, 1898, all male persons of voting age applying for registration who can read any section in this Constitution submitted to them by the registration officer, or understand and explain it when read to them by the registration officer shall be entitled to register and become electors. A separate record of all persons registered before January 1, 1898, sworn to by the registration officer shall be filed, one copy with the clerk of court and one in the office of the secretary of the state, on or before February 1, 1898, and such persons shall remain during life qualified electors unless disqualified by the other provisions of this article. The certificate of the clerk of court or Secretary of State shall be sufficient evidence to establish the right of said citizens to any subsequent registration and the franchise under the limitations herein imposed.

(d) Any person who shall apply for registration after January 1st, 1898, if otherwise qualified, shall be registered; provided, that he can both read and write any section of this Constitution submitted to him by the registration officer, or can show that he owns and has paid all taxes collectible during the previous year on property in this State assessed at $300 or more.

(e) Managers of elections shall require of every elector offering to vote at any election, before allowing him to vote, proof of the payment of all taxes, including poll tax, assessed against him and collectible during the previous year. The production of a certificate or of the receipt of the officer authorized to collect such taxes shall be conclusive proof of the payment thereof.

(f) The general assembly shall provide for issuing to each duly registered elector a certificate of registration and shall provide for the renewal of such certificate when lost, mutilated or destroyed, if the applicant is still a qualified elector under the provisions of this Constitution, or if he has been registered as provided in subsection (c).

SEC. 5. Any person denied registration shall have the right to appeal to the Court of Common Pleas or any judge thereof, and thence to the Supreme Court, to determine his right to vote under the limitations imposed in this article, and on such appeal the hearing shall be de novo and the General Assembly shall provide by law for such appeal and for the correction of illegal and fraudulent registration, voting and all other crimes against the election laws.

SEC. 6. The following persons are disqualified from being registered or voting:

First. Persons convicted of burglary, arson, obtaining goods or money under false pretenses, perjury, forgery, robbery, bribery, adultery, bigamy, wife-beating, housebreaking, receiving stolen goods, breach of trust with fraudulent intent, fornication, sodomy, incest, assault with intent to ravish, miscegenation, larceny, or crimes against the election laws; provided, that the pardon of the Governor shall remove such disqualification.

Second. Persons who are idiots, insane, paupers supported at the public expense, and persons confined in any public prison.

SEC. 7. For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence by reason of his presence or absence while employed in the service of the United States, nor while engaged in the navigation of the waters of this State, or the United States or of the high seas, nor while a student of any institution of learning.

SEC. 8. The general assembly shall provide by law for the registration of all qualified electors and shall prescribe the manner of holding elections and of ascertaining the results, of the same; provided, at the first registration under this Constitution, and until the 1st of January, 1898, the registration shall be conducted by a board of three discreet persons in each county, to be appointed by the governor, by and with the advice and consent of the senate. For the first registration to be provided for under this Constitution, the registration books shall be kept open for at least six consecutive weeks, and thereafter from time to time at least one week in each month, up to 30 days next preceding the first election to be held under this Constitution. The registration books shall be public records open to the inspection of any citizen at all times.

SEC. 9. The general assembly shall provide for the establishment of polling precincts in the several counties of the State and those now existing shall so continue until abolished or changed. Each elector shall be required to vote at his own precinct, but provision shall be made for his transfer to another precinct upon his change of residence.

SEC. 10. The general assembly shall provide by law for the regulation of party primary elections and punishing fraud at the same.

SEC. 11. The registration books shall close at least 30 days before an election, during which time transfers and registration shall not be legal; provided, persons who will become of age during that period shall be entitled to registration before the books are closed.