The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1890-12-21
SENATE PROCEEDINGS.
Spooner Speaks Five Hours on Elections
BiIl-Remarks by ingalls,.


spooner Speaks Five Hours on Elections
BiIl-Remarks by Ingalls,.
WASHINGTON CRY, Dec. 20.-[Special. T.
In the Senate Pettigrew Introduced a bill
to prohibit the sale of firearms and ammu-
milton to Indians on reservations; referred.
A dozen private pension bills were passed
Moody, from the committee on Indian
depreciation claims, reported the House
bill for the adjudication of claims arising
from Indian depredations; placed on the
calendar.
Sawyer asked unanimous consent for
fixing an early day in January for the con-
sideration of postal telegraph measure,
but Wolcott objected.
ingalls,, at his own request, WAS granted
two weeks leave of absence.
Platt introduced joint resolution ap-
propriating $l00, 600 to enable the president
to take action to obtain from the German
government supply of the remedy dis
covered by DIR. Koch, and the formula for
the manufacture of the same; laid over.
The morning hour having expired, the
presiding officer laid before the Senate the
elections bill.
Paddock gave notice that after consider
ton of the pending bill he would ask the
Senate to take up the pure food bill, which
was demanded by the farmers from one
end of the country to the other
Edmunds demanded the regular order,
and the floor was taken by Spooner, who
spoke in advocacy of the bill. A stranger
in the gallery, he said, listening to the d
would be impressed with the idea that all
love of liberty and devotion to the consti-
tuition and freedom from partisanship
were to be found on the Democratic side of
the chamber. He hoped the gentlemen on
the other side would not assume that the
Republican senators were not equally with
them lovers of liberty. IF had been said
at the South. 1t was, in part; it was aimed
at every spot in the United States where
by fraud or force men who had the right
to vote for members of congress were
cheated out of that right. The South, he
thought, was where the bill was specially
needed. In proof he read extracts from a
speech by Delegate Chrisman in the late
constitutional convention in Mississippi,
declaring that since 1875 there had not
been fair election in that state; that in
plain words the whites had been stuffing
ballot boxes, committing perjury and
carrying elections by fraud and violence.
He also read the qualifications for voters
in the constitution of Mississippi, among
others being the ability of the voter, after
January, 1892, to read or to give q reasona-
BILE explanation of the meaning of any
clause of the constitution of the state. If
the constitution of Mississippi had stopped
at an educational test and excluded from
the right of suffrage every white or
black who could not read that
instrument, nobody would COM
plain of it. But now an ignorant
read to him and be asked if he under
stood, and answering yes might be per-
mitted TO vote, while an abstruse clause as
to the right of eminent domain or some
technical question might be read to a col
ored voter, who would be asked to give
reasonable explanation of it. The scheme
was plainly devised to let the ignorant
white man vote if he voted the Democratic
ticket, and to keep the ignorant black man
from voting unless he voted that
ticket, and yet the Democratic sena-
tors rallied against the pending measure
as giving the supervisor lordly powers.
This constitution of Mississippi had been
adopted, too, not by vote of the people,
but by the convention itself. Southern
men ought not to fold their arms and say
they would keep their increased represen-
tion while suppressing the negro vote. 1t
had been said on the other side that the
negro should never have had the right to
vote, but it was too late now to argue that
question. The right had been given him,
whether in wisdom or unwisdom, and
could not be taken from him.
Referring to Stewards speech yesterday
and his remark that the election law could
lie opinion would not support it, Spooner
said
Have we fallen into a condition in our coun-
try that calls for the preservation by law of the
AZ al.
must stop at Mason and Dixons line because
public opinion in the South is in favor of dis
honest and fraudulent, and violent suppression
OF the sufrages? / cannot believe it.
Spooner spoke over five hours, and the
speech was listened to with marked at
tention on both sides of the chamber
ingalls, said il was the conviction Of the
great mass of the people of the North that
the constitutional convention of Miss
issippi had assembled for the avowed pur-
pose of dlsfranchising the majority of its
citizens, who were also citizens of the
United States. 1t had assembled for the
express purpose of nullifying, defeating
and overthrowing the amendment TO
the constitution of the United States
by agreeing to which the state OF
Mississippi secured readmission into the
Union. The Southern people had retained
representation in the House of Represen-
tatives and in the electoral college while
they suppressed the coiored vote. They
had retained representation which had
given them for fourteen years supremacy
in the House, and once placed in the pres
idential chair man who had never been
elected 10 that Office in any just sense.
Contrary TO the usual course pursued in
free communities, the results of the Miss
issippi convention would not be submitted
TO the people to be voted on. It had been
arranged 10 have it declared the organic
law Of the state without any action on the
part of voters.
Edmunds added that the convention
came into existence by methods entirely
outside Of the constitution of the state
which provided practically for its own
amendment.
The conference report on the bill for 9
public building at Kansas City was agreed
10. The Senate then adjourned.
House Proceedings.
WASHINGTON CITY, Dec. D.-In til,