The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1870-04-28
The Fifteenth Amendment and How it will
Work.

The radicals never urged the ballot for the
blocIs as a measure of justice to the race.
Their action, as every development has shown,
was one wholly of self-interest. With the ne
gro vote they could, for time at least control
the Southern States. This vote they proposed
to cement to their own through the gratitude"
felt by the blacks for their enfranchisement.
And their most powerful argument was that
with white enfranchisement, the blacks would
be thrust from the polls. With the final dispo-
sition 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 analysed
the smaller it becomes. They feel that they
were enfranchised to be used by politicians !;
that they were given the ballot simply to as
sist their pretended friends to lucrative offices.
If there ever was any obligation, it has been
fully requitted The account will evenly bal.
ance. If there be any deficit, it will be found
ON the side of the ofice-seeker, who has been
obtaining goods under false pretenses. The
blacks are now to run the race of life for them
selves. They are large, but yet minor ele-
ment, even in population; and in everything
else they are as but an atom in the great aggre-
gate. Their interests are those of the Southern
whites and, the questions out of which grew
their freedom at rest they will, like other peo-
pie, naturally consult their own interests
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 tlve years
from the date of the proclamation which de-
clared the fifteenth amendment part OF the
organic law of the land, the great mass OF
Southern blacks will vote with the whites ON
all vital questions of public policy. We mean,
of course, those who will vote at all !; tor 1t
will not be long before steady numerical de-
crease in colored voters at the polls, will COM
mence. The novelty of the new relation; the
opposition shown to their exercise OF the cleo
tive franchise; the strong appeals OF the poll
ticians into whose hands they fell have thus
far controlled them. But with the novelty
worn away, their status assured, and the reall-
zation that for them there is nopoliticai future,
the din and clatter of politicians will seldom
tempt the blacks from the industrial spheres in
which is to be solved their problem of civiliza-
ton. Partisan hatred and rancor will soon have
run their course. The fires of the late war are
dying out and we are on the eve of the day
when the efforts of sectional extremists
matter of what partisan fealty, to array class
against class and race against race, Will vlslt
nothing but the most severe condemnation up
on their authors. Though designed as weak
ness and humiliation, the black vote will be-
come to the South an element OF strength.
To-day New England rejoices over the fifteenth
amendment The "whirligig of time" will
turn this jubilation into sorrow for colored
suffrage but doubles the power of those whose
vital interests are directly antagonistic to those
of New England.-Erchange.