Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1872-09-11
CARTER AND THE CoIonED MAN.

The hostility OF the Greeleyites to the
colored race has been once again illustrat-
ed in Tennessee. Where the kuklux have
their blood-stained haunts, there, indeed,
Greeley is King Where rebel Generals
can be elected to Congress, there, also the
slave lords are supreme and Greeley safe.
But where the original Unionists are in
the ascendancy, the Greeley negro-haters
still manage to display their venom by
nominating for Office some crooked-souled
Unionist, who glories in his hate for the
colored man. This kuklux spirit was we'll
illustrated in the nomination of William
d. Carter as the Greeley candidate for Con-
gress in the First District. Carter is a
preacher-one of those preachers who dis
dain to receive the negro as "man and
brother" Carter was member of the
Constitutional Convention that framed
the new Constitution of Tennessee; and
while a member, never let slip an oppor-
tunity to exhibit his hate for the colored
man. In the Nashville Banner of Janu-
airy Goth, 1870, we find the following re-
port of his speech on the question of negro
suffrage:
Z" Mr.. Carter said he believed he stood al
most alone in the delegation from the east
ern end of the State in the opinion which
he held. He believed the negro aCas IN
able to exercise the right Of suffrage right
ly and well, either for himself or his coun-
try, 1t was madness to think of invest
ing this poor, degraded race with power
over the lives and liberty of the people.
He would as soon think of clothing the
children of .fUe gears of age with this sa-
cred right. He was the friend of the col
ored man-always had been. He looked
to the future and he would tell them that
if this right to vote were placed in their
hands, the day was not far distant when
all these hills aUOuId be stained aOith the
blood of the african. He would never
consent to do anything which would bring
down ruin on their heads. If the right to
vote were placed in the hands of the negro,
he would hold the balance of power in
Tennessee, and he was anoriIIi1lg to trust
his life and liberty in such hands,"
Carter was the only delegate from East
Tennessee who voted to take the ballot away
from the colored man. Three times in the
convention he voted directly or indirectly
to disfranchise the colored men. And
when Carter found that the Convention
dared not snatch the ballot out of the
hands of the colored citizen, he, on the
next to the last day of the session, "pro-
negro suffrage" because the New Con-
stitution left the negro in the actual pos
session of a franchise that he has no capac-
9ty to exercise or appreciate :" and because
the Constitution had no right to force ne
gro suffrage upon the people of Tennessee"
MIR. Carter was not only the only dele
gate from East Tennessee who voted in fa-
vor of robbing the colored man of the right
to vote, but he was also the only delegate
from East Tennessee who voted that " no
negro, mulatto, or mustee shall be allowed
to sit on juries or hold Office in this State"
Mr.. Carter cast several other votes in the
Convention which, 1--WE take it, will not in
crease his popularity in East Tennessee.
He voted to remove all the Judges, States
Attorneys, and other officers; he voted
against the people electing their Judges
and States Attorneys; he voted in
favor of taking away from the peo-
pie the right to elect their Judges
and at! States Attorneys, and; to give
this right to the Governor and he voted
against giving the people the right to elect
the Clerks of the Chancery Courts. Mr.
Carter associated and voted with the bit
terest white suffrage rebels of Middle and
West Tennessee, and stood aloof from the
East Tennessee delegates. Indeed, q stran-
ger would have guessed that Carter repre-
sented the kuklux of Shelby rather than
the people of Carter and Johnson.
Is it not rather singular that the Gree
leg Democrats should have selected as their
candidate from the First District the onlp
East Tennesseean in the constitutional
Convention who spoke and voted against
colored men having the right to vote, the
right to hold Office and the right to sit on
juries The truth is, this man Carter is a
self-righteous aristocrat, who has no SYM
pathy for the black or white, and whose
spirit, instead of going abroad among man
kind, sits in the silence of its own solitude,
contemplating its own self-importance,
and saying scornfully to the world, 81 am
holier than tnouu