The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1881-03-10
aThe Enscss Of Negro sunrage.'


North American Review an article
which is attracting considerable notice IN
j the Northern journals and which We re
greet that our limited space prevents III
from reproducing The New York
Nation commends sits temperance and
ability while il dissents from its con
illusions.
Judge Chalmers declines to question
the patriotism of the authors of negro
suffrage, but thinks they certainly
''took the risk of tremendous political
experiment He sketches what he
considers the "evils" that have flown
from it both North and South, and
while he recognizes as one of its worst
effects the banding together of parties
on the color line he predicts ills even
worse when this white and black solidi-
ty shall disintegrate, for then, he says,
''the enormous negro vote of the South
will offer field for the arts of the dem
agogue and briber such as the world
has never SEEN" He admits that edu-
cation and time and white immigration
may perhaps eventually furnish a
solution of the problem, but these must
be slow processes, and says he pitiable
must be the condition of the South
meanwhile. He admonishes the people
of the South that the negroes as negroes
can never be DISTINGUISHED and that
governments cannot be maintained by
the means that revolutions justify"
He warns the people of the North that
the Anglo-Saxon will never be governed
by the African and that 'if they are
wise they will aid those who propose that
the latter shall be wisely, justly and
fairly governed" by the former.
He suggests some Limitations upon
the right of suffrage by which intelli-
gence and virtue shall no longer be left
at the mercy of ignorance and brutal
ty." We regret that we cannot give
fuller synopsis of the paper which is
receiving such general attention. 1t
will be understood that we are giving
the authors statements and deductions
not ours.
Time and experience have completely
the course of THE CLARION
when, coming under the present editO-
rial management thirteen years ago, it
threw itself against a tempest of passion
and prejudice and urged the former
governing class to accept negro suffrage
and negro civil rights as one of the in
evitable results of the war which had
been irreversibly decreed by the gov
eminent that had by force of arms
the power to enforce its auth
GRITTY. We said, it is no use arguing
the right or the wrong of it. You
might as well address your reasoning to
stocks and stones as to the party then in
possession of the government which was
led by Sumner, Chandler, Thad. Stevens.
and that ilk. We said the only way to
lessen the evil of ignorant and ire
sponsible suffrage, is to control it and
you can't control it cursing the negro
and refusing to take part in elections
because the privilege to do so had been
conferred upon him. There was but
one way out of the wilderness and that
was as plain as the road to market. 1t |
was to recognize the rights the federal
government had bestowed upon him to
,reat him kindly, and to point him the
way he should go. This plan was not
pursued. The negro, rejected
by the Southern whites, took refuge I'M
Ter the hammer of the carpet-bagger
Who won his confidence in order to use
him for base and selfish ends and thus
ollowed the long train of ills which
esulted from carpet-bag supremacy and
rom which the people rescued them
elves by extraordinary effort in 1875.
In conclusion, there is one position of
he Chief Justice in which we do concur,
md that is that 'sthe men of the South
must understand, once for all, that the
negroes, as negroes, and because their
kins are black, can never be disfran-
:hised. Their right to vote, as a race,
8 as fixed and irreversible as their
reedom." "The men of the South"
lie further declares, Unjust understand,
likewise, that governments cannot live
" the means which revolutions justify.
The ballot-box must speak the unbiased
-erdict of all lawful electors"