The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-24 00:00:00

JUSTICE AND GENEROSITY THE TRUE ULTIMATUM.

Secretary Browning, in his recent letter, thinks
he makes a Strong point against the Republican
Congressmen by attempting to show that what they
really aim at is negro suffrage, and that they are
willing to restore " red-handed rebels" to power, if
they can at the same time make voters of the
negroes. If this were true it would be no discredit
to Congress, but quite the contrary. Universal
suffrage is the only solution of our present diffi-
culties that can give permanent peace to the coun-
try. And this conviction is growing rapidly upon
the people. It seems impossible that intelligent men
in the South should not themselves see it, and it can-4
not be doubted that the progress of events will soon
force the conviction upon them. It was a lack of
courage rather than conviction that prevented
Congress from proposing it in an amendment to the
Constitution, as the condition of final settlement,
and it could not have been more obnoxious to the
people of the South than the amendment offered
them. That Congress had as complete a right to
make equal suffrage the condition as equal repre-
sentation is not to be disputed. Its right to do
either comes not from the Constitution, but the
power of the victor to dictate terms to the vanquished.
It was the manifest lack of Constitutional right
which prevented the passage of the bill providing
for readmission to representation upon the adoption
of the amendment. Congress expressed its purpose
in the prompt admission of Tennessee, but it did not
put it into the form of law, because it had no right
so to do. It could have made the same implied
offer of course, through an amendment for equal
suffrage and a law for universal amnesty.
The border State Unionists, who two years ago
were nearly unanimous, and many of them very
bitter against negro suffrage, are learning wisdom
by hard experience. The Louisiana Unionists, who
refused to give their freedmen the suffrage when
they had the power to do it and President Lincoln
was urging it upon them, now clamorously demand
that Congress shall do for them what they refused
to do for themselves. The experiment of keeping
power by disfranchising white voters has entirely
failed in their case, and the machinery of the State
and local governments has passed almost wholly into
the hands of their opponents. The same thing has
occurred in Virginia, and is likely to happen in
Tennessee, in spite of every appliance, fair and
foul, used by Governor Brownlow, and his small
following to keep the power in their own hands.
Even in Missouri, where the real Unionists have
an honest majority, the rule of exclusion has been
made so rigid that it reacts against them. Many
of the more liberal Unionists are themselves dis-
gusted, and refuse to submit to the inquisition of
the registration law, while the more unscrupulous
of the opposition swear to anything that is offered
them, and so many of them will get a chance to
vote in spite of the law. They have a process of
expurgation by which names are stricken off the
registers whenever anybody objects to them, and
these names being merely posted at the registrar's
office, the probability is that in most cases the
to
bea m
will not learn the fact in time to swear
Personsthem
to re
on again,
means of
still
butoi injustice the process itself can scarcely
fail
among voters, and so
will tend
tomore odious the whole system
of disfranchisement, If o
tt heecioaequal Missouri
suffrage Unionistsinto
theirha d
been wise enough
new constitution they might have dispensed with
the system of disfranchisement and been
stronger than they are now; in fact might have held
the State with the utmost security, instead of being
fearing
rebel
voterst h that
anxiomusayand
be a loabrlini
geedd at so tfih
ge yh
tn
toow
kaereep,
they
from the polls. The same may be said of Maryland.
In each of these five States the real Unionists would
have been in secure possession of power to-day if
they had enfranchised the negroes instead of dis-
franchising white men. In Louisiana our friends
have come to understandthistoolatthe,eio
anddestraoreetdeo-
manding what is DOW impossible,
of the State Government they themselves created,
that they may have a chance tobiusisloduraif araiinoy.
on
broader and better principles. In m
Mary-
land, and Tennessee, it is not yet too late to cor-
rect the great error.
If the proposed amendment to the constitution
is not accepted by the unrepresented States, Con-
gress will once more have the opportunity to put
reconstruction upon a sounder basis. It may then
make equal suffrage and universal amnesty
the conditions of full restoration of the Uniour
This will leave the people of the South, without
distinction of race or colour, to decid3 for them-
selves whether they will be ruled by the men who
led them into rebellion with all its unavailing
sacrifices and sorrows, or whether they will elect
men who are in sympathy with the new order of
things. This would cause a warm political contest
at the South, but it would be a healthy one, and its
right determination at last cannot be doubted. As
things now stand the controversy is still with the
North. Establish the natural and normal relations,
and the South must work out its own salvation, and
fight its own battles at home. But Congress must
propose equal suffrage as a national measure, not as
a speciality for the South, and must put it in a form
to involve the least possible interference with State
rights. Is there anything better than the original
proposition of The he Republican—equal suffrage on
the basis of intelligence in Congress' onal and Pres i-

dential elections. This would secure uniformity
and equality in national elections, while it would
leave the States free to establish their own law of
suffrage in local elections. Of course the national
system would very soon rule in State elections,
but it would do so without doubtful inter-
ference of the General Government with the
rights of the States. If the whole matter
is to revert to Congress for revision, as now seems
likely, let us have the controversy settled upon first
principles, and so settled forever. Such a settlement
will; commend itself to the general judgment, and
at the same time be less offensive to sectional pride
and prejudice than any half-way measures.—
Spring held Republican.