The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1878-12-12
SENATOR BLAINE'S SPEECH
The Election Frauds and Oatrages.
Shall a Northern Vote be as Pow
efful as a snlhern?

MR.. PRESIDENT The pending resolution was
offered by me with two-fod purpose in view:
First, 10 place record, in definite and authen-
tic form, the frauds and outrages by which some re-
cent elections were carried by the Democratic party
in the Southern States:
Second To find it thsre be any method by which
repetition of these crimes against lrte ballot may
be prevented
Phe newspaper is the channel through which the
people of the United States informed OF current
events and the accounts given in the press represent
the elections in some of the Southern States TO have
been accompanied by violence; in not few cases
reaching the destruction of life; to have been
trolled by threats that awed and intmidated large
class of voters to have been manipulated by fraud
of the most shameless and shameful description. In
deed in South Carolina there seems to have been
election at all in any proper sense of the term
There was instead a series of skirmishes over the
State in which the polliug-paces wese regarded as
forts to be captured by party and held against
the other, and where this could not be done with
convenience, frauds in the count and tissue. ballot
devices were resored to in order to ecually destroy
the voice of the majority These in brief are the
counts given in the non-partisan press of the dis
graceful outrages that attended the recent elections
and far have seen, these statements wi h.
out serious contradiction 1t is but just and fair to
all parties, u0WeVtfy tldt lmpdIual IuveSCiSdlOu
of the facts shall be made by committee of the Sem
ate proceeding under the authority of law aud rep
resenting the power of the nation. Hence my reso-
luton.
But we do not need investigation to establish Ger.
tain facts already of Official record. We know that
one hundred and six Representatives in Congress
were recently chosen in the States formerly slave
holding and that the Democrats elected one hundred
and one, or possibly one hundred and two, and the
Republicans four or possibly five. We know that
thirty-ve of these Representatives assigned to
the Southern States by of the coloed popula
tion and that the entire political power thus founded
on the numbers of the coored people has been seized
and appropriated to the aggrandizement of its own
strength by the Democ attic party of the South.
The issue thus raised before the country, Mr..
President. is not of sentiment for the rights
Of the negrothough far distant be the day when the
rights of any American citizen, however black
however poor shall form the mere dust OF the bal
ance in any controversy; nor is the issue one that
involves the waving of the bloody Shirt" to quote
the elegant veruacular of Democratic virtuperaton
nor still further is the issue as now presented only
question of the equality OF the black voter of the
South with the white voter of the South the issue,
Mr.. President, has taken far wider range, one o.
portentous magnitude; and that is, whether the
white voter of the North shall be equal to the white
voter of the South in shaping the policy and fixing
the destiny OF this country; or whether, to put 1t
still more badly, the white who fought in the
ranks of the Union army shall have as weghty and
influential vote in the Government the Republic
as the white man who fought in the ranks of the
Rebel army The one fought to uphold, the other to
destroy the Union of the States, and to-day he who
fought to destroy is far more important factor in
the Government of the nation than he who fought to
uphold it.
Let me illustrate my meaning by comparing groups
of States of the representative strength North
! and South, Take the States of South Carolina,
| Mississippi and Louisiana. They send seventeen
Representatives to Congress- Their aggregate popu-
lation is composed of ten hundred and thirty five
| thousand whites and twelve hundred and twenty
four thousand colored the colored being nearly
| hundred thousand in excess of the whites. OF the
seventeen Representatives, then it is evident that
nine were apportoned to these States by reason of
| their coored population, and only eight by rea-
| son OF their white population; and yet in the
choice of the entire seventeen Representatives the
coored voters had more voice or power than their
| remote kindred on the shores Of Senegambia or on
| the Gold Coast. The ten hundred and thirty-fve
| thousand white people had the sole and absolute
choice of the entire seventeen Representatives. In
contrast, take two States in the North, Iowa and
/
have white population OF two million, two hundred
| and forty seven thousand-consideraby more than
| double the entire white population of the three
Southern States have named In Iowa and Wis
consin therefore, it takes one hundred and thirty
two thousand white population to send Represents
tive to Congress- but in South Carolina Mississippi
and Louisiana every sixty thousand white people
| send Representative In other words, sixty thcus
and white people in those Southern States have pre-
csey the same political power in the government Of
the country that one hundred and thirtytwo thous-
and white people have in Iowa and Wisconsin.
Take another group of seventeen Representatives
from the South and from the North. Georgia and
Alabama have white population of eleven hundred
and fifty-eight thousand and colored population Of
ten hundred and twenty thousand. They send sew
enteen Representatives to Congress, of whom nine
were apportoned on account of the white population
and eight on account of the colored population
But the colored voters are not able to choose a
single Representative, the white Democrats choosing
the whole seventeen The four Northern States,
Michigan Minnesota, Nebraska and California, have
seventeen Representatives, based on a white popuis
ton of two and quarter millions, almost double
| the white population of Georgia and Alabama, SO
that in these relative groups of States we ind the
white man South exercises by his vote double the
political power OF the white man North,
Let us carry the comparison to a mole eompIehen-
siye generalization. The eltven States that formed
the Confederate Government had by the last censu:
population of nine and half millions, OF which
in round numbers We and halt millions were white
and four millions colored. On this aggregate pcpu
lation seventy-three Representatives in Congress
were apportioned to those States-fortytwo or three
which were by reason Of the white population, ant