The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-15
The Fifteenth Amen dment and
HOW IN Will Work.
FROM the Memphis A ralanche.


The radicals never urged the ballot for the
blacks as a measure of justice to the race.
Their action, as every development has
shown, was one wholly of self-interest With
the negro vote they could, for time at least,
control the Southern States This vote they
proposed to cement to their own rough the
E'gratitude" felt by the blacks for their en-
franchisement. And their most powerful
argument was that with white enfranchise-
ment the blacks would be thrust from the
polls. With the final disposition of the
suffrage question new light dawns upon the
blacks. They are now assured of their
rights and privileges before the law,
and the more the claim of gratitude is
analyZed the smaller it becomes. They feel
that they were enfranchised to be used by
politicians; that they were given the ballot
simply to assist their pretended friends to
lucrative Offices If there was any obligation,
it has been fully requited. The account will
evenly balance Ii there be any deficit, it
will be found on the side of the office-seeker,
who has been obtaining goods under false
pretenses. The blacks are now to run the
race of life for themselves. They are large
but yet minor element, even in population;
and in everything else they are as but an
atom in the great aggregate Their inte-
rests are those of the Southern whites; and,
the questions out of which grew their free
dom at rest, they will, like other peo-
pie, naturally consult their own inte-
rests. They will naturally fall into the
highways of opinion travelled by those who,
while better able to shape public policy with
their aid, will shape it even without them
In less than five years from the date of the
proclamation which declared the fifteenth
amendment part of the organic law Of the
land the great mass of Southern blacks will
! vote with whites on all vital questions of
public policy. We mean, of course, those
who will vote at all, for it will not be long
/ before o steady numerical decrease in colored
voters at the polls will commence. The nov
city of the new relation; the opposition
shown to their exercise of the elective fran
chlse; the strong appeals of the politicians
into whose hands they fell; have thus far
controlled them. But with the novelty worn
away; their status assured; aud the realiza-
ton that for them is no political
futures the din and clatter of
politicians will seldom tempt the
blacks from the industrial spheres in which
is TO be solved their problem OF civilization.
Partisan hatred and rancor will soon have
run their course. The fires of the late waI
are dying out; and we are on the eve of the
day when the efforts of sectional extremists,
no matter of what partisan fealty, TO array
class against class and race against race, will
visit nothing but the most severe condemna
ton upon their authors. Though designed
as a weakness and humiliation, the blacl
vote will become to the South an element o.
strength, To-day New England rejoices Owe
the fifteenth amendment. The ''whirligil
of time" will turn this jubilation into sorrow
for colored suffrage but doubles the power o
those whose vital interests are directly an
tagonistic to those Of New England.