Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1888-12-14
NEGRO SUFFRAGE.
prominent Scutherner Interviewed
i Ab0nt the Matter--Talk Of Dis
franehising the Negro.
Congress Never Had any Right to Regulate the
Qualifications of Voters in the States.
nliterate Voters.

NASHVILLE, TENN, Dec. l0.-The
interview had by its Montgomery CORE
! spondent with Ex-Governor Thomas II .
! Watts, who was attorney general of the
! Confederate states, on the question of
DISTINGUISHING the negro. Governor
Watts says:
Congress never had any right to regu-
late the qualifications of voters in states.
! Perhaps under the power to organize ter
ritorial governments and its exclusive
| jurisdiction over the District of Columbia
congress could prescribe the qualifications
! of voters iii territories and in the district,
but, it is beyond dispute, congress has no
! power to prescribe or regulate the
qualifications of voters i'll states III
election of members of congress or of
presidential electors. By the fifteenth
amendment the states are prohibited
from denying or abridging the right of
citizens to vote on account of race, color
or previous condition of servitude. States
are not prohibited by any other clause
of the constitution from prescribing an
educational or other qualifications, so
that if they see proper to have
THE UNQUESTIONED RIGHT
to prescribe educational or property or
tax-paying qualification to the right of
voting, and such qualification is pre-
scribed in the state constitution, it
would operate in state elections
and in elections for members of con-
gress and presidential electors. If
Alabama were to prescribe educational
qualification to the right of voting it
would necessarily apply to white as well
as to colored citizens. Under the census
of 1880 Alabama had over
"a 900 whites over tweuty-one years
of age who could not write, and
over so 900 colored citizens who
could not write. 1t would in my judg-
ment be almost practical suicide for any
Southern state to so act. No public man
advocating such a change in our state
constitution as to make an educational or
property qualification for the right of
voting could politically survive the just
the condemnation of the people. Without
action of states in their separate sovereign
capacity mo change IN the qualification of
voters can be made. Congress is with
ont any power on the subject except
to propose amendments to the federal
constitution or to call a convention
ture of two-thirds of the states, and such
amendments as it proposes or as the con-
vention of states proposes would have to
be ratified and adopted by three-fourths
of the states. Such
SCHEME is IMPRACTICABLE
even if it were desired. The increased po-
litical power which the South has ac-
quired by the freedom of the negroes
ought never to be relinquished. There
is no policy of the South which demands
il or makes it desirable. So long
as intelligence is superior to ignorance
or brain power superior to the mere
muscle in this policy of the state the
South has nothing to fear from the pres
ence of the negro with equal
right to vote. The Northern states
being conquerers in the war between
the states is unwilling to increase the
political power of the conquered in the
election of presidential electors. That
the cOnquerors should augment the power
of the conquered was never before done.
/ believe in the history of mankind. 1t
was not magnanimity to the conquered,
but i'll the
VAIN BELIEF AND HOPE
that the former slave when once free
Woulti ulEtclll lIcTtiSc Tue pONcT Oh the
Republican party i'll congress, and
the election of president and
president for all time, which
induced such remarkable action
| doubt not the suspicion arose greatly
from ignorance of the negro and his ca
pacity for government when edu-
Gated. If the Northern states could
now and then observe what
the experience of the last twenty
years so fully shows, they would
doubtless act promptly and vigorously.
Fortunately for the Southern states the
constitution of the United States
presents an insuperable barrier to the
exercise of such power, however, much
the fanaticism and hatred is engendered
by the bloody conflict might prompt.