The Portland daily press., 1866-02-08
Singularly Confused Democracy

p.
fS- Reading Matter on all Four Pages.
singularly Confused Democracy.
From the Saco Democrat, usually one of tho
clearest-headed and most straight forward
Democratic papers in the State, we clip the fol-
lowing singular paragraph: +alr-d
Black suffrage in this State does not consti-
tute negro equality. The Democratic party
have ever favored equal laws, and the lust
rights of all classes, but they have never claim
ed that negroes or any other barbarians con-
stituted portion of the people or citizens Of
this Government, to have voice in the adj
ministration of its affairs. They do not be-
lieye them competent for such position.--
They have never contended that the COnsti-
tuition recognized any such right or equality !;
or that negro equality constituted any part OF
the fundamental law of our government.
They acknowledge the political equality OF all
men recognized by the Declaration OF Inde-
pendence, but that was not intended to include
the political equality of the African, or any
other barbarian race, as on a par with the
white people that formed our present white
government; and President johnson says he
who contends that 1t was Is either fool or a
knave. 49,.
Our contemporary denies the equality of
the negro with the white man in this State.
OF course, he does not refer to the social, in
tellectual or moral equality, for no one has ev-
er made an issue on these points. As an in
genuous controversialist he must refer to DO
litical and civil equality, and none other, and
yet be denies this when there is not a word
in the Constitution, Bill Of Rights, or the laws
of the State, making any distinction between
men on account Of color; when, as he knows,
the negro has all the rights Of the white man
at the polls, in acquiring and holding property,
in the control of his own children, In our pub
Lie schools, in our public conveyances, In our
judicial tribunals, on the witness stand, in the
assessors office, and in everything under the
control or within the reach of the law. And
so far as any legal bar is concerned, the black
est citizen may fill the gubernatorial chair or
occupy seat upon the supreme bench. He
is kept from these places of honor and dis
tinction by the same means that white men
are; supposed lack of fitness or lack of votes;
and his chances Of reaching these positions, in
this State, are about as good as are those of
the partisan friends of our neighbor of the
Democrat. If these things do not show that
the negro, in this State, has the fullest and
most perfect civil and political equality with
the white man, we do not know what would
show such fact.
Though our Saco friend denies that the Dem
ocratic party ever claimed that negroes con-
ttituted portion of the people of this Gov
ernment, to have voice in the administra-
tion ofits affairs, he ought to know that when
1Al,s ;.-~&it ,vo,<.--s.x
ed upon SO broad foundation, the Democrat
ic party was in the ascendent; the same party
made the Constitution and qualified the ne
gro to vote and made him eligible to testify,
to sue and be sued, to hold Office that elected
VIM. King the first Governor, and that claim
ed to be the Madisonian or Democratic war
party of some half dozen years previous.
Our neighbor viii not deny, surely, that every
man who is allowed to vote, Is one of the peo-
| pie or citizens of this Government, or that
the very act of roting is "a voice in the ad-
ministration of its affairsn Nor do we think
he will claim that, for the exercise of such a
"voicc" the negro is less competent than thou
sands Of ignorant foreigners, the dupes of
priestcraft, forced to our shores by the pres
| sure of poverty and despotism in the old
world, and who are SO easily translated into
Democratic voters before they have time to ex-
change the rags with which they were clothed
in foreign almshouses, or to wash off the dirt
which stuck to them as they left the bogs of
Ireland. To say the negroes of Maine-for it
is such negroes of whom the Democrat speaks
are not far, very far above the Irish voters,
as class, in point Of education, is to deny the
facts of daily observation. The negroes of this
State, generally, are educated, some of them
well-educated, and they are generally indus
trious, weIl-behayed, orderly, and observant of
the laws Of the land and of the requirements
of good society. That this is not true, to the
same extent, of the foreign population, is ap-
parent to all. fsd.tru -t f-
The fling at the moral condition of the ne
groes of this State, and the intimation that
they are "barbarians," is peculiarly unfortu-
nate when brought to the test of facts and fig
ures. Look, for example, at the statistics of
our State Penetentiary. Of the seventy-eight
convicts in that institution at the date of the
last report, not one, we believe, is negro,
while fifteen are of foreign birth. Of ten un-
der sentence of death, three are foreigners. We
think an examination of our county jails and
criminal court records will show that the ne
gro is seldom found in either, while the men
OF foreign birth are never absent. These facts
do not show that the foreigner is @barbari-
an or that he is naturally worse than other
men; they indicate rather the bad training
which he has had, and the unfayorable infu-
ences to which he has been exposed; while
the negroes in Maine, under better training
and exposed to better influences, maintain a
position before the law as order-loving, law
abiding citizens, to which the foreign immi-
grant may safely aspire. a.I iNa '4i't to14
The Saco paper says the Democrats Sac
knowledge the political equality of all rccog-
nized by the Declaration of Independence"
but denies that that Declaration was intended
to include the political equality of the Afri-
can. As well and with as much truth he
might say the Declaration did not include the
political equality of the Irishman., Those
who haye read the original draft of the Decla-
ration, in Jefferson's own handwriting, with
all its interleneations and erasurcs, kno,c that
the African scas included in the call men" of
whose inalienable rights it speaks, for Mr..
Jefferson used language that excludes any
idea less wide and universal, and to say that
he or those who acted with him labored to
create only white mans" government is an
assertion that viii be rejected with scom by
every true Democrat in the land. 1t was hu-
man rights and not the white mans rights
which they labored to secure, and in no State
in the Union was there bar against the vote