Part 3

The real truth is that “white supremacy” has never been endangered; for even in the days of Republican ascendancy all the great offices, and a large majority of all the offices, were held by white men, and no one ever thought of making it a Negro government. The suffrage plan, as we have been informed, as agreed upon by the committee, is as follows: Every male citizen twenty-one years of age who has not been convicted of crime, and is not an idiot or an inmate of a prison or a charitable institution, who can read a section of the Constitution to the satisfaction of the officers of election, or who can explain said section when read to him to the satisfaction of said officers, or who pays taxes on $500 worth of real property; or who can satisfy the election officers that he has paid all taxes due by him to the State, and who shall be duly registered according to law, shall be entitled to vote.

Every one of these provisions, as simple and just as they appear, when read by the uninitiated, are freighted with fraud, corruption and prostitution of the suffrage. For the officers of election are the sole judges of the qualification of the elector, and can at their will make the Negro vote or the white vote as large or as small as they choose.

INSTRUMENTS OF FRAUD.

Everyone of these innocent little “ors” is the instrument of and contains infinite possibilities of fraud, and in the hands of election officers, all of whom are members of one party and of the same faction, are construed to mean one thing to one set of voters and another thing to another set, when they offer to register.

As Mr. Creelman has explained in his dispatches, the registration officer and his board will have the sole power to make voters in South Carolina, as the Supreme Court of the State has decided that there is no appeal to any Court of law from the acts of election officers. In short, the Convention has been called to legalize the frauds which have been perpetrated upon the elective franchise in this State since 1876. No one can tell or estimate what the vote will be, and that question can be answered only by the election officers.

ROBERT SMALLS, THOMAS E. MILLER, JAMES E. WIGG, R. B. ANDERSON, ISAIAH REED,

Republican Members of the Constitutional Convention. Columbia, S. C., Sept. 30, 1895.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.