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Occasional Papers, No. 11.

The American Negro Academy.

THE NEGRO AND THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE

*A SERIES OF PAPERS AND A SERMON BY*

*Archibald H. Grimke, Charles C. Cook, John Hope, John L. Love, Kelly Miller and Rev. Frank J. Grimke.*

*PRICE: THIRTY-FIVE CENTS.*

WASHINGTON, D. C.

PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY.

1905.

CONTENTS

- The Meaning And Need Of The Movement To Reduce Southern Representation--_ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE_ - The Penning of the Negro--_CHARLES CHAUVEAU COOK_ - The Negro Vote in the States Whose Constitutions Have Not Been Specifically Revised--_JOHN HOPE_ - The Potentiality of the Negro Vote, North and West--_JOHN L. LOVE_ - Migration and Distribution of the Negro Population as Affecting the Elective Franchise--_KELLY MILLER_ - The Negro and His Citizenship--_FRANCIS J. GRIMKE_

The Meaning And Need Of The Movement To Reduce Southern Representation--_ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE_

In 1787 when the founders of the American Republic were framing the Constitution they encountered many difficulties in the work of construction, but none greater than the bringing together on terms of equality under one general government of the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding states. The South was willing to enter the Union provided always that its peculiar labor and institutions received adequate protection in that instrument. And this the North had finally to consent to incorporate into the organic law of the new nation. One of these concessions was known as the Slave Representation Clause of the Constitution, which gave to the Slave section the right to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives. This concession did not probably seem at the time like an exorbitant or ruinous price for the North to pay for the Union, but subsequent events proved it to be both exorbitant and ruinous in the political burden which it imposed upon that section, and in the political perils which grew naturally out of the situation, and which were produced by it.

Everybody now-a-days seems to forget, or makes believe to have forgotten, this lamentable chapter in our history, and its application to present day evils--everybody but a few far-seeing Negroes, and a few far-seeing white men at the North. It is well not to forget this chapter ourselves, or to let the country make believe to have forgotten it, as it contains a lesson which it is dangerous to forget.

History repeats itself and will continue to do so just as long as men are men, and the passion for power and the struggle for domination lasts among them. Such a struggle set in between the two sections almost immediately after the adoption of the Constitution. With industrial and political ideas, interests, and institutions directly opposed to each other, rivalry and strife between them became from the beginning unavoidable. Any one not totally blinded by the then emergent needs of the moment could not fail to foresee something of the consequences which were sure to follow such a union of irreconcilable forces and passions under one general government. Each set of antagonistic ideas and interests was compelled by the great law of self preservation to try to get possession of the government in its battle with the other set. And in this conflict of moral and economic forces and ideas the three-fifths slave representation clause of the Constitution gave to the South a distinct advantage, an advantage which told immediately and powerfully in its favor. For the right to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives among the several states placed the political power of the Southern states in the hands not of all the whites but of a small and highly trained and organized minority only, namely; the master class. This circumstance solidified the South, and gave to its action a unity and energy of purpose which the industrial democracy of the North always lacked. As a consequence, Southern men obtained speedy possession of the National Government, and shaped National Legislation and policy to advance best the peculiar ideas and interests of their section. The big end of the National Government lay plainly enough well to the south of Mason and Dixon's line during the first twenty-five years of the existence of the Union. The course of events during this period revealed this bitter fact to New England. For she was outwitted, out-voted and over-matched again and again in national legislation and administrative measures by the slave oligarchy, which ruled the South and dominated in national affairs.

For instance, New England opposed the embargo and the retaliatory measures of Mr. Jefferson's administration, which destroyed her splendid carrying trade, and bore distress to hundreds of thousands of her people. She opposed the War of 1812 because it seemed to her inimical to her interests, but regardless of protests and cries the embargo was laid on her ports and shipping, the War against Great Britain was declared. She was forced to dance, volens-nolens, to the rag-time music of her Southern rival. She danced in both instances while discontent grew apace in her hot, surcharged heart. She did not disguise the ugly fact that she was sick of her bargain under the Constitution--was discontented almost to disaffection with Southern domination in the Union. Out of this widespread discontent and incipient disaffection sprang the Hartford Convention to voice this growing Anti-Southern sentiment, and to cast about for a remedy for what was rightly deemed bad political conditions. The great question with which this celebrated convention grappled was, in fact, the undue and disproportionate power wielded by the slave oligarchy in national affairs, and how best to impose a check upon its further growth. It could think apparently of but one remedial measure to relieve the situation, and that was the imposition of a check on any further increase in the then existing number of states. But while the resolution which embodied this rather doubtful remedy referred to states in general, it was intended when read between the lines, to refer to slave states in particular.

That was the first blow aimed by the industrial democracy of the North at this aristocratic feature of the National Constitution, namely: the right to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives among the states. It was felt at the time and much more strongly and generally afterward, that this three-fifths slave representation clause which enabled a small minority of the people of the South to wield the political power of that section, and in any controverted question between the sections to neutralize the free-will of every three freemen by the dummy-will of every five slaves, was an unjust and dangerous advantage possessed by the slave oligarchy over its sectional rival, the free democracy of the North.

The consciousness of this political wrong and danger was at the bottom of the bitter opposition on the part of the North to the admission of Missouri as a slave state, to the annexation of Texas, and to the Mexican War. It was at the bottom of the fierce cry which rose all over that section at the close of that war, "No more slave territory, no more slave states." It was the soul of the great movement which beat back the slave tide from Kansas and saved that state to freedom. It was, in fact, this struggle of the free states to reduce to a minimum the peril to its industrial democracy which grew out of the slave representation clause of the Constitution, and the resistance of the slave states to such a movement, which produced the war between the sections. This war ended in the destruction of slavery and as the North supposed and intended, in the total destruction of this right of the South to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives among the several states in the newly restored Union.

But wrong does not die under a single stroke. It has a strange power of metamorphosis, i. e. ability to change its form without losing its identity. The slave power, which everybody at the North imagined to be dead, re-appeared almost at once as the Southern serf power, in consequence of legislation enacted in the then lately rebellious states by the old slave masters. They had lost their slaves, to be sure, and the political power incident under the Constitution to such ownership, but they had not lost the political cunning and determination to create a similar power out of the social forces and material which lay in disorder about them.

The reconstruction of the South by the old slave oligarchy resulted in the threatened rise in national affairs of an African serf power more formidable to the North than was the old slave power than five is greater than three in federal numbers. This threatened rise in national politics of an African serf power aroused the North to the danger which girt afresh the supremacy of its industrial democracy in the Union. It thereupon set about the work of removing this peril forever. In doing this work it unfortunately limited itself exclusively to the use of political agencies. But there is no doubt that what it did in reconstructing the old slave states was meant to be thorough. It meant to extirpate root and branch, from the Constitution the right of the South to count five slaves as three freemen, or five serfs as five freemen in the apportionment of representatives among the states. This was the plain purpose of the whole body of congressional legislation looking to southern reconstruction. It is the plain purpose likewise of the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.

All of these great acts were intended to destroy utterly the basis on which rested the old slave power, and on which would rest the new serf power, namely: inequality and race subjection. The 13th amendment abolished slavery, the 14th raised the former slaves to citizenship, and the 15th conferred on them the right to vote. The whole scheme for removing forever this evil seemed on paper complete enough, and in practice it would undoubtedly have proven effective had not an unexpected difficulty arisen when it was put into operation. This unexpected difficulty was the attitude of the Supreme Court in interpreting the laws made in pursuance thereof. The effect of the decisions of this tribunal has almost invariably been against the Negro's claim to equality, and in favor of the Southern contention of the existence of two races in the south, one permanently dominant and the other permanently servile, and that the maintenance of this state of race superiority on the one side, and of race inferiority on the other furnished the only working plan of their living in peace together or of their making any further progress in civilization. Owing to this deplorable attitude the Supreme Court has been a hindrance rather than a help in the settlement of this question. No relief need be looked for from it, therefore, under the circumstances. Relief, if it comes at all, must come from another quarter of the political system under which we live. And for such relief fortunately, the 14th amendment has adequately provided. All that is necessary to render the provision of this amendment, which is applicable to the present situation, effective are courage and common sense. But alas, courage and common sense in respect to this subject seem to be sadly lacking to-day both at the North and among the Negroes as well.

The provision of the 14th amendment just referred to reads as follows: "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state."

Every Southern state has virtually by one device or another, since the adoption of the 14th and 15th amendments, denied to its colored citizens the right to vote. This was first done by the shot-gun method, which gave place in time to fraudulent manipulations of electoral returns, and this in turn to "grandfather" and "understanding clauses" administered by prejudiced registration boards in those states which have revised their constitutions. Says Professor Dunning in an article on "The Undoing of Reconstruction" in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1901: "With the enactment of these constitutional amendments by the various states, the political equality of the Negro is becoming extinct in law as it has long been in fact, and the undoing of reconstruction is nearing completion." Now this statement is exactly true. The South has everywhere nullified in practice the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. It denies to black men the right to vote, but it counts at the same time those same black men in the apportionment of its representatives. The present serf power therefore, enjoys to-day a right far greater than that enjoyed by the old slave power, for it counts five of its disfranchised black citizens not as three but as five free men. It has achieved the extraordinary feat of eating its political cake and keeping it at the same time.

In South Carolina, for example, where the blacks outnumber the whites by 224,326, and in Mississippi where the colored population is in excess of the white by 263,640, "the influence of the Negroes in political affairs," as put by Prof. Dunning, "is nil." And this is substantially true of almost everyone of the old slave states whether they have or have not revised their constitutions. Says Prof. DuBois: "To-day the black man of the South has almost nothing to say as to how much he shall be taxed, or how those taxes shall be expended, as to who shall make the laws and how they shall be made. It is pitiable that frantic efforts must be made at critical times to get law-makers in some states even to listen to the respectful presentation of the black side of a current controversy."

Entrenched in the South to-day is an aristocracy based on race. The whole tendency of things down there is to de-citizenize the blacks, to reduce them to a state of permanent political and industrial subordination to the whites. This is aristocratizing the republic with a vengeance. For with the right to vote, the right to a voice in making the laws, denied to any class of people in an industrial republic like ours, such class must go from bad to worse in the struggle for bread, for existence, in competition with more favored classes. It does more: it reduces the efficiency of such a class as a producer of wealth not alone in respect to itself, but in respect to the section in which it lives as well. For whatever degrades and wrongs such a class degrades and wrongs the community and the country of which it forms a part. And there is no help for it, for such is the natural law of retribution which no "understanding" and "grandfather clauses" and registration boards, however adroitly devised, can in the long run possibly evade or nullify. This then is the deplorable economic situation with regard to whites and blacks alike in the Southern states, as a direct consequence of the undoing of the 14th and the 15th amendments to the Constitution by those States. The degradation of their black labor will ultimate in the degradation of their white labor also. In fact, the disfranchisement of the blacks operates practically everywhere down there as a disfranchisement of the great body of the whites likewise. For disuse of a power, whether physical or political, begets in time disinclination and then incapacity for exercising the same. The right to vote, under present political conditions which prevail throughout that section, is, as a matter of fact, exercised but by a small minority of the whites only. The total vote, for example, cast for representatives in Southern congressional districts is surprisingly slight in comparison with that cast in Northern congressional districts. The same is true of the vote for presidential electors, and for the executive, legislative and judicial officers of the various southern states for that matter. A handful of ruling whites, and that not of the best class as in antebellum times, casts to-day the entire vote of that section as represented by all of its black and a large majority of its white citizens, at national and state elections.

For instance, the average vote cast for Congressmen by Northern congressional districts during the election of 1898 was over 35,000, while that cast by Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, which are operated in effect on the Mississippi plan, was less than 5,000. The total vote cast for 37 congressmen by those five Southern states was only 184,602, while the total vote polled by the state of New York for 34 congressmen was 1,250,000, i. e. 184,602 electors in those five Mississippi-ized states had actually a larger congressional representation by three than had the 1,250,000 voters of the Empire state. Again, take the case of Kansas, which though casting 100,000 more votes at its congressional election in 1898, than were cast by these same five Southern states combined, yet Kansas had but seven representatives in Congress to guard and promote her peculiar interests against the 37 who sat in the House to guard and promote the peculiar interests of the ruling oligarchy of those five de-republicanized Southern states.

But let us look more closely into this matter. Alabama with a population of 1,828,697, and nine representatives in Congress polled at the Congressional election, in 1902 a total vote of 90,105 for the nine districts, while the new state of Washington with a population of 518,103 and three representatives polled at the same election a total vote of 93,681, i. e., there were 3,000 more votes polled to elect three congressmen in Washington than Alabama polled to elect nine. Again, Mississippi with a population of 1,531,270 and eight representatives in Congress polled at the same election a total vote of 18,058 for the eight congressional districts, while little Idaho with a population of 161,772 and one representative polled at the same time a vote of 57,712, which exceeded more than three times the vote polled by Mississippi for eight representatives. Or let us take Louisiana with a population of 1,381,625 and seven representatives in Congress, and her total vote of 26,265 during the same election for seven districts and contrast these figures with those of Rhode Island with a population of 428,556 and two representatives. The Rhode Island figures are 56,064, or nearly double the vote of Louisiana for seven congressional districts. Or again, let us glance in passing at South Carolina with a population of 1,340,316 and seven representatives in Congress, and New Hampshire with a population of 411,588 and two representatives. The first polled in 1902 at the election of her seven congressmen 32,085 votes, and the second at the election of her two representatives polled at the same time 74,833. In other words, there were nearly 43,000 less votes polled in South Carolina to elect seven Congressmen than were polled in New Hampshire to elect two. To sum up: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina with an aggregate population of 6,106,908 and 31 representatives in Congress cast in 1902 a total vote of 166,576 in 31 congressional districts, while Idaho, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Washington with an aggregate population of 1,500,000, and eight representatives polled at the same general elections a total vote of 282,294 in their eight congressional districts. The average vote for each of the 31 Southern congressional districts was 5,530; while that for each of the eight Northern districts was 35,287. Why Massachusetts alone with a population of 2,805,346 and 14 representatives rolled up a vote to elect these 14 congressmen more than double that which the four Southern states with a population of over 6,000,000 polled to elect their 31 representatives!

Again: At the presidential election last November the combined vote of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, for 39 electors was less than 200,000 or to be exact was just 186,253, while the vote of Massachusetts for 16 electors was 442,732. In other words, the vote of Massachusetts for her 16 representatives in the electoral college, exceeded that of the four Southern states for their 39 in the same body by more than 250,000 polls. Once more: Is it not immensely ominous and significant the marked shrinkage in 1904 of the popular vote for electors in Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, states which had but recently revised their constitutions, as compared with the popular vote of the same states for electors in 1900? There was for example a shrinkage of the popular vote in Alabama of nearly 50,000 polls; in North Carolina the shrinkage amounted to nearly 85,000, and in Virginia it ran up to more than 135,000. These figures are eloquent of great wrongs done the Negro. They are not less eloquent of great dangers which now threaten to subvert free institutions in the Republic.

Since the elections of 1898 things in the South went rapidly in respect to this subject from bad to worse. Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia followed the example of Mississippi and revised their constitutions. This reactionary movement of the Southern oligarchy has reached as far north as Maryland, and the work of aristocratizing her constitution and of Jim-Crowing her laws is now nearing completion. Where is this movement to stop? Will it halt south of Mason and Dixon's line unless drastic measures are speedily adopted by the National Government to arrest it? No, this aristocratic revolution will certainly, unless checked, invade the North, attacking and overthrowing first the political rights of black men in that section, and later those of other classes of citizens industrially and politically feebler than the rest until one after another of the states now free shall have succumbed to the rule of class and plutocratic power. Then indeed will the undoing of the 14th and the 15th amendments, and of democratic institutions in America, be complete. Not until then will the movement, which is fast aristocratizing the Republic, stop its steady advance. I am no alarmist, but am telling the sober truth. Those who have eyes to see, let them look around at the ominous signs of this advancing evil. Those who have ears to hear, may hear everywhere about them the foreboding sounds of this rising flood of wrong and inequality, this growing disregard for law, this denial to the people of a voice in government, whether state, colonial or national, which characterize the present period of our national history.