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Equal Suffrage—New Constitution—Duty of Republicans.
Speech of Hon. CHAS. S. MAY, of Kalamazoo, Delivered at Jackson before the Grant Club, Wednesday Evening, March 4, 1868.
READ AND CIRCULATE.
Fellow-Republicans of Jackson:
I am here by your invitation, to discuss the issues of the spring campaign, and to advocate the adoption of the new Constitution. On the first Monday of April next, the electors of Michigan will have questions of the highest gravity and importance submitted to them for their decision. In addition to the responsibility of the yearly election of local officers, will be decided the great question of our fundamental law for many years to come. This is the very highest exercise of political power on the part of the people, and lends a dignity to every voter and to every ballot that shall be cast. No where else outside of our own country is such a privilege granted to the people. No where else can such a spectacle be presented of the great body of the people of a State settling at the ballot box the organic law under which they are to live. It is the chief glory of our republican institutions that all political power is in the hands of the people, that they can not only elect their own rulers, but make and unmake all statutes and Constitutions.
In the exercise then of this highest prerogative of freemen, it becomes us to act wisely, calmly and on full reflection, so that no mistake be made, no injustice be done, but our fundamental law be well grounded in sound and just principles of freedom and public policy. Let nothing be done with passion or prejudice. This work is too great and important and too far-reaching in its consequences to be done in such a spirit. Let us act as good citizens and true patriots, loving our noble commonwealth and guarding well her interests and her honor.
A WORD TO REPUBLICANS—UNION AND HARMONY.
In discussing this question I wish to address myself especially to Republicans. We are the dominant party of the State. We had a large and controlling majority in the Constitutional Convention. We must meet the responsibility of this proposed political change, and we have the power in our hands to effect it. If a full Republican vote is polled for the new Constitution, it will be adopted. What we need, therefore, in order to secure this result, is union and harmony in the party. It is unnecessary, it is useless for us to go to our political opponents. Following its time honored instincts and prejudice the Democratic party will cast its whole vote against the new Constitution. When did that party ever fail to vote against human rights and especially against the negro?
But we can settle this question ourselves without their help; and we ought to settle it ourselves. True, we would not refuse, or spurn their assistance. We would like to have Democrats rise above party prejudice and come and stand with us in favor of the best interests of the country and the rights of man. But what I wish to say is that we need not go out of our own party to carry this question, and we ought to address ourselves at once to the work of convincing every Republican that it is his duty to cast his vote and give his best exertion in favor of the adoption of the new Constitution. This is why I wish to address myself especially to Republicans to-night.
TOLERATION ON THE QUESTION OF PROHIB?TION
One great cause of difference in the party is removed by the separate submission of the question of prohibition in connection with that of annual or biennial sessions of the Legislature. Of the first of these questions, the question of prohibition, it is undeniable that a great diversity of opinion exists in the Republican party. Not proposing to discuss that question here, and only alluding to it in order to emphasize the appeal for harmony. I wish to say that we must tolerate each other's opinions on this question, and not let them stand in the way of a hearty and united support of the main instrument. Following my own long cherished convictions of duty, I shall vote for prohibition. My neighbor, who is as good a Republican as I am, is in favor of license. Is there anything in this to prevent us both voting for equal suffrage and the new Constitution? I repeat it, we must tolerate each other. Let the temperance question be fought out on its own merits. It is not an issue between the two political parties to-day. We should have in the Republican party no intolerance and no ostracism on account of it.
THE MAIN QUESTION.
Turning again to the main question, we find that all are agreed that we have outgrown the old Constitution; that it is inadequate to the present condition and wants of the State—and that we should have a new one. Both parties were agreed that we should have a Constitutional Convention. The new Constitution, indeed, is the joint work of both parties. Except as to one question no party issue was made in the Convention upon any of its articles or provisions. All were sustained and opposed indifferently by delegates of both parties on other than party grounds. On the question of suffrage itself, the ablest and most influential Democrat in the body, Hon. G. V. N. Lothrop, spoke in favor of the principle of impartial suffrage.
Again, it must be conceded by all that the new Constitution in all its essential features and provisions is an improvement on the old.
I need not stop here to discuss the various amendments and improvements in the Bill of Rights, the Legislative Department, the Judiciary, the article on Salaries, etc. It is enough to say that there is no disagreement among Republicans on those subjects, and no objections come from Democrats that are at all valid, or sound, or worthy of serious consideration. On party ground they have no right to complain of these features of the new instrument, and they would not complain but for their opposition to the Constitution on another, and with them, a paramount ground.
WHY, THEN, PARTY ISSUE?
Why then this PARTY issue? Why do we find the Democratic party unitedly opposing the adoption of the new Constitution?
The answer is plain: It is because the “negro” is in the new Constitution; because the word “white” is stricken out and negro suffrage is incorporated in the instrument.
The negro was put into the Constitution by the Republican party. We don't deny
EQUAL SUFFRAGE FUNDAMENTAL TO THE PARTY.
First, we are bound to sustain it because it is FUNDAMENTAL to the party. We are committed to it by the origin and history of the party.
The Republican party was organized on the Anti-Slavery idea. It was organized to prevent the spread of slavery; to keep it out of the new territories, and to stay its encroachments in the Government. It triumphed on this idea in 1860; then slavery rebelled, and the war followed. To put down the rebellion and to bring the war to a successful issue, it became necessary to destroy slavery. Hence the immortal proclamation of Lincoln.
All this was done by the Republican party. Every step in this great contest, from opposition to the spread of slavery to its final destruction, was taken by the Republican party; was under Republican rule.
Now I hold that this great mission and history of the party commits us to the logic of equal suffrage. All former slaves, all negroes, North and South, are now freemen and citizens of the Republic, declared so by the very highest authority, legislative and judicial. The last step in this great march of liberty, the final conclusion in this sublime logic of events, we cannot refuse to take, we cannoa hesitate to adopt. Citizenship thus granted to the negro—thus earned by the negro, I might say—must carry with it its natural concomitant and its only sure protection, the ballot. Equal political rights is the only true rule in a Republic. The Declaration of Independence cannot mean anything less than this.
There is nothing that gives strength and vitality to a party like a great principle. This cannot be overlooked nor overestimated in a calculation of party chances. The Republican party owes its life and its great and splendid history in the past to its adherence to the great principle of human freedom. That is what has given it victory. Our Central Committee in their noble and manly address—an address which does them the very highest honor—fully recognize this fact. “By this sign we conquer.” This flaming sign has lit up our political heavens for the past seven years. It has shown us the way to triumph as a nation and as a party.
By this sign only shall we conquer in the future as in the past. Whenever we shall turn our backs upon this great principle of human rights we shall go to speedy overthrow and defeat. And if we prove untrue we shall deserve defeat. The Republican party is nothing if it is not true to human freedom. I wonder that all our politicians do not see this. Just in proportion as we have been bold and outspoken on the side of liberty we have been successful. Whenever we have lowered the standard a single inch for expediency we have lost by it. This should teach us a great lesson.
PARTY CGNSISTENCY.
Again we are committed to this doctrine of equal suffrage by party consistency. I know this is not the highest ground, but there is great force in it. The coming Presidential campaign must be fought out on the Congressional plan of reconstruction. That plan enforces negro suffrage at the South. How can we, while supporting this, turn round and refuse the negro the ballot at the North? Who cannot see that this will be the baldest inconsistency, the rankest party stultification, Certainly it cannot be argued that the colored man at the North, always a freeman, is less prepared for the ballot than his fellow at the South just released from slavery.
In this great matter we must act with reason and upon principle. We must not take such a position as shall make it easy for a political opponent to hold us up to the condemnation of every fair-minded man, and make us a just subject of ridicule by all who oppose our principles.
Again, if the National Republican Convention to meet at Chicago shall incorporate this principle of equal suffrage in their platform, as I sincerely trust they will, what then will be the position we shall occupy in Michigan if we oppose it at the coming election?
No, no. We must not do this unjust and inconsistent thing. I will never be a party to such shocking inconsistency. I will never degrade myself and insult my fellow-citizens by standing up and asking that the ballot be given the negro at the South and denied to the negro at the North. If we do this we are defeated already. The American people are not fools nor blind to all moral distinctions. They cannot be imposed upon by such transparent inconsistency and injustice. Let us beware how we attempt it.
HIGHER GROUNDS.
But rising out of mere party considerations and reasons there are broad and solid principles upon which to rest this doctrine of equal suffrage. Whether we look at it on grounds of political economy, of public policy, or of absolute political right, we find equal warrant for giving all men the ballot.
EXPEDIENT AND SAFE.
First, I hold that it is expedient and safe. It is no experiment. It has been tried from the earliest period of the Government. It prevailed in twelve of the original States, for a long time. In some instances I think almost up to the rebellion, free colored men have voted in the slave States themselves, right in the midst of the institution of slavery. It may be consoling to some of our fastidious white citizens of Michigan, who fear the proximity and contamination of going to the polls with a negro, to know and be assured that Washington, the father of his country, and Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, submitted gracefully to this same necessity in their day. Nor has history informed us that they made any complaint.
Colored suffrage has prevailed in some of the Northern States ever since the foundation of the Government. It prevails to-day in New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. It works no evil or mischief in those States. No complaint has ever been made that it did. It has never inundated these States by colored immigration. It has never checked nor crowded the avenues or opportunities of labor. The few colored votes have fallen into the mass peacefully quietly and without detriment or injury to anybody.
As it has been in these States so it will be in this. The less than 1,000 votes from colored hands will fall noisless and harmless into the mass of 180,000 white votes, and the million of white citizens of Michigan will stand in no danger of being trampled out o?
The chief objection which is urged against negro suffrage, is that the colored race is too ignorant and degraded to be allowed the electivy franchise. This objection is the standing one, and outweighs all others and constitutes the difficulty with many honest Republicans. They say it is not safe to give the ballot to this class of citizens—they are not intelligent enough to use it properly. Wait till they have the requisite qualifications.
Now aside from their inconsiderable numbers, which in any event would hardly be felt in the great aggregate of voters, and putting also aside the fact that ignorant and degraded white men
are
allowed the ballot, I reply that the objection is not sound because it rests upon an assumption which is not true.
I say that the colored race among us are not wholly unprepared, morally and intellectually, for suffrage. Let us not be so completely blinded by prejudice as to lose sight of the facts in the case, and of our own observation and experience. I make no extravagant claim in behalf of our colored citizens. I do not assert that they have the highest qualifications, nor all the qualifications for citizenship; but I do insist that the common notion on this subject, even among Republicans, does them great injustice. I do say that the race is generally law-abiding, and that its tendency and desire is towards moral and intellectual improvement. My observation has been that they, more largely than white men of equal advantage and intelligence, are trying to improve themselves, and to go upward and onward, instead of downward. They support churches and church organizations among their people; they are fond of a social life which is pure in its morals and elevating in its tendency; they are more noted for a love of music than for drunkenness and profanity, aud they have availed themselves, promptly and earnestly, of every educational advantage which the law has extended to them.
This has been my observation, and I believe that our public statistics will show that our colored population furnish less than their proportion of our criminals and paupers—certainly less than some other elements of our population which are supposed and claimed to be their superiors.
No; there is no danger in giving the ballot to the colored man. Let no Republican hesitate a moment on this objection, that he will misuse or abuse it. Look to the South. See how the black man uses the power there. Tell me what protection there would be for loyal white men at the South, or what support for the Government there would be in that whole region if it were not for the ballot in the hand of the negro. Tell me the negro don't know enough to vote; that he don't understand these matters of Government! He knows enough to be always loyal to the Government; to fight for it when white men are trying to destroy it, and how to keep down by the ballot a rebellion which has been put down by the bullet and the bayonet. Republicans ought to be ashamed to make such an objection. It is ungenerous and untrue. God seems to have given a moral instinct to this race which is in advance of their intellectual state and condition. In the terrible effort which guilty white men made to overthrow this Government, they received not the least assistance from black men, North or South. The negro was loyal everywhere, His sympathy and his efforts were always and everywhere on the side of the Government. And now when the rebellion has been suppressed and the ballot has been put into his hand, he uses it as he did the musket, on the side of loyalty and the Union.
If the negro at the South, just released from the dark prison house of slavery, where he has been kept ignorant by law, gives this supremest test of his fitness for the ballot, cannot he be trusted in Michigan?
IT IS RIGHT AND JUST.
But there is a higher ground still on which to rest the doctrine of equal suffrage. It is right and just. And this position includes the other, for in the great domain of political ethics that which is RIGHT is always EXPEDIENT.
What is the significance of our Government, of this nation among the nations of the earth, if it is not in that great principle of our political system which we profess to hold sacred, the principle of the inherent rights of man as man. What else is it that has made and justified our separate existence as a government, and given us such a splendid history in the past?
Now we have applied this principie to white men; we have recognized and maintained the inherent natural and political rights of white men. But it remains for us to recognize this principle if applied to the black man. And until we do this we shall not fully realize the Republican idea—we shall not make this nation what it ought to be and what it was meant to be by its immortal founders.
TRIED BY THE MAXIMS OF THE REPUBLIC.
Tell me if this principle is not right, if it is not the very soul of
Justice?
Let us try it by some of the great maxims of the Republic.
Take first the sublime utterance of the Declaration of Independence—“All men are created equal.” Does that mean all WHITE men? Who dares to take the life and soul out of that lofty maxim of political ethics, made for all mankind, by torturing it into a selfish and boastful assertion of the rights of a particular race! Before the advocates of a “white man's government” thus esmasculate the noblest words in the Declaration of Independence, let them prove that negroes are not “MEN” else the major premise is removed from beneath their blasphemous logic.
Take also, from the same great source, that other maxim—“Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Here is the African race in this country, through all our history “governed” by the superior race; yes, governed by a rod of iron—by the whips and scourges and hounds of slavery at the South; by the sneers and jeers and injustice and meanness of prejudice at the North. Never since the days of Egyptian bondage was a race so governed before. Now, tell me when in all this dreary history, was the “consent” of this long suffering race obtained for all or any of the many measures and statutes by which they have been oppressed?
I cannot argue such a point as this. The great inconsistency and injustice must stand confessed. Tried by our own maxim we are convicted. We have been false to one of the leading and cardinal principles of our own government and of all governments.
Once again let me quote from the Declaration of Independence. In enumerating the offences of the British King against the liberties of the people of America, Jefferson says “he has imposed taxes upon us without our consent.” Here was the germ of the rallying
How do we stand tried by this principle? How stands the case in Michigan? Again we must be convicted, on our own plea of guilty, of a great political falsehood and outrage. You may find the black man's name on our tax rolls. You look in vain for it on our registry list of voters. He is taxed without his consent; he is denied representation. Our fathers went to war on this principle against the first military and maritime power on earth. To-day we are peacefully and calmly considering in Michigan whether we will recognize and apply it to a people who have been denied it all their livea, and who have helped to pay our taxes and fight our battles the meanwhile
Can there be any question as to what is JUST and RIGHT? I appeal to all fair-minded men. Let us not perpetuate this injustice any longer. Let us not take the black man's money, without his consent, to pay our taxes, and then refuse him all voice in its distribution. Let us not accept his services in defending the State as a soldier and then meanly refuse him all participation in a government which he has shed his blood to save.
I know a black man in my county, one of the earliest settlers of the county, Enoch Harris by name—who has owned for twenty-five years a farm of between four and five hundred acres of our best soil, worth twenty-five thousand dollars, and who has paid more than fifteen hundred dollars directly to the State of Michigan in taxes. And yet this man, now old and venerable, with such intelligence and thrift as have enable him to secure and take care of such a property, has never cast a vote, nor been recognized by the State in any way except to be taxed!
And this is not a case standing alone. Can any words of mine be needed to characterize such transparent injustice.
MUST GIVE THE NEGRO HIS RIGHT OR MAKE HIM AN OUTLAW.
It is a fundamental maxim of our political system, incorporated in terms into many of our State Constitutions, that “all political power is inherent in the people.”
We are fast approaching the point in our history where we must recognize the natural and political rights of the negro or practically make him an outlaw. We are more than just, we are generous to all other races among us. We welcome foreigners from every nation to full participation in the blessings and benefits of American citizenship. Even the half civilized Indian on our forest outskirts is made a voter. I do not complain of all this. It is right if we are to be truly and in the broadest sense a Republican government.
But we take this African race and put them beneath our feet. We make them obey the laws which they can have no voice in making. We tax them; we deny them representation; we inflict upon them a political and social oppression which is hard and grievous to bear. These men are not aliens; they are native born citizens. Their fathers fought side by side with ours on the fields of the revolution to establish this Government. They themselves have just contributed their full share to preserve it in all the trials and dangers of the great rebellion.
THE NEGRO HAS FOUGHT FOR US.
The patience, the loyalty, the devotion and courage of this race ought to shame us into justice. What! refuse the ballot to the black patriot who bore the Federal musket through the fiery storm of Wagner! Deny the ballot to the black soldier who gave his right arm for you at Port Hudson!
Republicans of Michigan: You surely will not do this. You whose hearts bled for your country in those dark and terrible days, you will not prove thus ungrateful to the thousands of dusky patriots who stood bravely in the bloody trenches and in the battle's smoke and fury, that this glorious country might live and not die.
MUST RISE ABOVE PREJUDICE.
Let us rise at once above the mean and unjust prejudice against the negro. It is ungenerous, it is unreasonable, it is devliish. The blac kman was born here; he has a right to live here; he is needed here. We cannot afford to oppress him any longer. In the noble language of that great statesman and true patriot, Chief Justice Chase, written while he was Secretary of the Treasury—“The Government cannot afford to lose the support of the humblest member of this despised race among us.” We have not yet paid in full the terrible penalty which a just Heaven has exacted of us for our past oppression of the African race. Three hundred thousand brave men slain in battle; a land full of crippled and wounded soldiers, of widowed wives and orphan children; hundreds of millions of treasure wasted and sunk in the maelstrom of war: these are the fearful installments already paid. A national debt of nearly three billions to burden the industry of the country for long years to come; a disordered commerce and an unreconstructed Union—these remain with all their difficulties and dangers.
WILL BE AGITATION TILL JUSTICE IS DONE
Is not this enough? Shall we brave more of Heaven's retribution? Our path is plain—it is to do justice to the negro—give him his rights. That is easy—that is safe. When the ballot shall be put into the hands of the negro then will be the end of the negro question. But until that is done there will be agitation. It will go on euntil there is full quality of political right in America. This is in accordance with God's law, with the spirit of the age. I ask this right for the negro, not because he is a NEGRO, but because he is a MAN. I do not ask for him SOCIAL equality. That is not fixed or regulated by Constitutions or Statutes. I do not exalt him above his fellow men; I do not “worship” him because I ask for his rights. Give him the ballot and he will take care of himself. But oppress him, and all that is good and high and noble in human nature, art and poetry and eloquence will plead for him and agitate for him. That is why the negro has been prominent in our politics and literature. When our political waters shall become pure they will cease to be agitated.
Republicans of Michigan! It is a high and responsible work which we have before us. In rebuilding our political house let us plant its foundations upon the rock. Then it will stand when the storms and the waves of passion and civil strife beat against it. I beseech you to reject with magnanimous scorn the wretched pretension that tis is a “white man's government.” It is a Government for ALL men—it is a PEOPLE'S Government. Don't, I pray you, let a single Republican vote at the coming election be given so as to aid that monstrous and unholy crusade which the Democratic party in this country is waging to-day against the fundamental idea of a Republic, against the rights of man and against the spirit of Christianity.