The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-11-11

The platform was the pending Constitutional
Amendment; its leading feature change
IN the basis of representation, giving to
each State members in proportion to its
voters, and not, as at present, to its in
habitants. 1t proposed to leave the regu-
lation of the suffrage to the discretion of
the States, allowing them to admit or ex-
clude the negroes at their pleasure. Now,
If the elective franchise is indispensable
for their protection, the Republican party
proposed last year to surrender them to
oppression. The party is wrong now or it
was dereliot then. It is more natural to
suppose its present fears chimerical than
that Republicans were last year accomplices
Of cruelty.
Mems views change amid the passions of
political life but the facts Of nature do not
thereby lose their stability. Human nature
in the South was the same last year as this,
and the means Of judging it equally trust
worthy. If the policy then proposed would
have been safe (and the Republicans must
have thought it safe), the present scheme rests
on no necessity and has no valid defense. If
an accountant adds up column Of figures and
finds the amount, the same process will give
the same result unless some disturbance
clouds his faculties. The passions generated
by the quarrel with President Johnson have
disturbed the perceptions of many Republi-
cans, and the heat of opposition gives to
ehimeras a semblance of reality. If they be-
come as cool as when the Constitutional
Amendment was proposed, they will see as
little necessity as then for forcing negro suf-
frage.
Let us 90 back still another STEP from the
Thirty ninth Congress to the Thirty-eighth.
We find another Republican estimate of the
necessities of the situation. The war had
not ended, but the Emancipation Proclamation
was nearly two years old at the point of
time to which we direct attention. The obli-
CATION to protect the negroes was as great as it
could ever become. 1t was in the summer of
1864 that the Republican Congress, expecting
an early termination of the war, passed, by
large majorities in both Houses, a Reconstruc-
tion act prescribing the conditions of readmis-
sion. President Lincoln defeated it by a
pocket veto, thinking it too rigid, so that it
never became law; but it is none the less
valuable as evidence of the views of the party
at that time. The bill contained not word
about negro suffrage, although manifesting
the liveliest solicitude for the freedmen. The
only condition it imposed on the States in
reference to the negroes was the insertion in
their constitutions of provision declaring
that ''involuntary servitude is forever pro-
hibited, and the freedom Of all persons is
guaranteed in said State" The bill did not
propose to trust the protection of their free
dom solely to the States; it provided for a
release from compulsory servitude by habeas
| corpus, and imposed a fine of not less than
$500 and from five to twenty years impri-
sonment for reducing any person to slavery.
In view Of that bill every honest Republican
must admit one Of these two conclusions
either that Congress did not think the suffrage
necessary, or that it did not think it had any
authority to require it as a condition of re-
storation. If there was no necessity Of pre-
scribing it then there can be none now; if it is
authority that was wanting, the Thirty
ninth Congress had just as little as the Thirty
eighth.
We have preferred to rest the case in the
action of Congress rather than the opinions of
individuals, as more fully expressing the col
ective sense and average Judgment OF the
arty. Some eminent Republicans did not
estate to say that the action Of Congress
overstepped the limits of any real necessity,
| President Lincoln, who refused to sign the
rst Reconstruction bill, will not be accused Of
eartless disregard of the welfare Of the negro.
verybody knows that he did not require
egro suffrage as a condition OF restoration.
He strenuously favored the prompt admis
sion of Louisiana and Arkansas, while the wal
was yet raging, with constitutions which ex-
cluded all negroes from the suffrage We
! suppose Mr.. Beecher will be as little accused
| of indifference TO the welfare of the freedmen as
Mr.. Lincoln. Nobody can have forgotten that
| this gentleman was opposed to excluding the
| States even as means of compelling them tC
adopt the milder constitutional amendment
But we lay no stress on the views of partiou
lar men. What we wish to emphasize is, tina
the Republican party last year, and the Re-
publican party in 1864, undertook to prescribe
the conditions of restoration, and that Il
neither saw the necessity, nor claimed thu
power, of oonferring the suffrage upon thu
Southern negroes.
The point we make is, that danger which
was not then perceived can have no real exist
ence. 1t is fgment of fancy generated by
party heat It has no more correspondence tC
anything in nature than the swiftly changing
perceptions of old "Polonius, " in the play ol
| Hamlet He said
Ham-Do you see yonder cloud that's almost
| in the shape of a camel ,., ,,, -,
| indeed J., ~. ,
| Pol-It is backed like weasel.
| Han.-Or, like a whale?
| Pol-VePy like whale.
| chief Justice Chase and the National
Banks
Prom the SanduSky (Ohio) Register.