The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1868-05-24


James Grant, Union.
Views OF n kentucky Member OF tho
House on the Subject OF the Colorcd
Man.
We extract the following from Mr..
Beck's recent speech:
Mr., Highby-I wanted to ask the
gentleman what he would do with
the negro?
Mr.. Beck-I will tell the gentle
man what would do with the negro.
/ would protect him as free man,
as [ would protect our women and
children, or any other person who
had not the capacity for exercising
political rights. I would hold the
negro unfit for political rights, as we
do the Indian and the Chinaman, for
a great variety of reasons. His
whole Tace has shown itself in all
time unfit for self-government. The
Caucasian race alone has developed
that power, and that only under ia
vorable circumstances, by the growth
OF centuries and by education up to q
point which we think we have
reached. Many of the races even
upon the continent of Europe and
Asia are yet unfit for self-government.
And to say that the negro, inferior
all time past, shall be taken from the
rice, cotlcn and sugar plantations of
the South, in absolute ignorance,
degraded, as the Republicans always
claimed, to the level of the mule he
drove-to take him from that condi-
tion and place him above his former
master, degrade, debase and disfran-
chise the white man, and put above
him man who has not an idea what
to do except to follow the bidding of
the derhagogue who seeks to use him
to do this is an outrage upon the
white race to which we belong, and
one which the people OF this country
never will permit.
l would protect the negro in all his
rights, but I would hold him unfit to
exercise political rights. Twill GO as
far to protect him in his civil rights
as any gentleman from New England
will go. And the men of my State,
as much as they have been slandered
upon that subject, will and do go as
far in protecting and defending him
as any set of men in America. If
gentlemen will GO there now, they
will see the negro as happy and bet
ter protected and better cared for
than in any other State, North or
South, in spite of all the efforts of
demagogues to make it otherwise.
Mr.. Ward-Will the gentleman
yield to me for question?
Mr.. Beck-I cannot yield further.
When Michigan, Minnesota, Kansas
and Ohio refused to give the negroes
any political rights, how can gentle
men representing those States now
seek to fasten that policy upon the
people of the South?
Having made the experiment under
the most auspicious circumstances
and fairly tested it in the free States
I mean in the States where men
were free to act and to decide-and
your own people having everywhere
discarded your attempt to establish
negro suffrage, with all the induce
ments and temptations you could
hold oct &c them, 4 accs seem .to ino
tnat ms faithful representatives of the
people. whose will you know and
whose instructions you have received,
afte" full and fair submission of the
question to them by yourselves, you
have no right to place the white men
OF the South under the domination
of the negro-no right to use the
coerced and ignorant negro vote in
the South to neutralize the free, in
telligent vote of the Northern and
Western States, for this is really not
vote, but an indirect and efficient
mode of stuffing the ballot-boxes OF
the North, as fragrant, when fairly
looked at, as burning up all the bal
lot-boxes in the States of New York,
Pennsylvania and Indiana would be.
These three great States having about
the s6ma alpctOrol yofao 90 fba 6ye