The Washington bee. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1884-1922, 1891-02-21
SUPPLEMENT.


munities to shift this burden of their OWE
communities to be shared by the whole
nation.
You are in the habit of speaking in q
! phrase common in your states to the
| effect that this is white mans govern.
ment." Let us look at that. Yes, it is a
white mans government. OF the 63,000,-
600 OF our population, 56000000 are white
and 100000 are black, and the white
men IN this country are to rule in matters
between them ana the blacks within the
purylew of the constitution of the United
States and its laws. This is the white
population that is to rule, and this is to be
the character and manner of its rule; but if
senators mean that the white population
are to rule In this country outside of the
equality between whites and blacks under
the constitution ano under the suffrage, it
is misappIication of the phrase.
The white men govern this country by
the vast proportion of their suffrage, their
wealth, their intelligence, their strength,
and within the purview of what belongs
to the federal constitution and the federal
laws. 1t is the white men who are ruling
themselves and the blacks also under one
equality before the law, one equality in
the suffrage. But, Mr.. President, | can
not understand why there should be so
great unwillingness, on the part of the
whites of the states wherein the popula-
ton is so adjusted between whites and
blacks 90 to raise questions of the vastest
interest, to hold on with both hands to the
whites in all the rest of this country.
Mr.. Butler. Will the senator permit me
to interrupt him, as he has defined what a
white mans government means? should
be very glad to say, if the senator will
permit, that when | used the phrase that
this is white mans government, | used
it just exactly as he defined it; that it was
white mans government under the laws
and constitution of the United States.
MIR. Evarts. l am very glad to have the
support of the senator's opinions and
expressions, and l have no doubt of his
sin Gritty; and it is quite as valuable from
him, and even greater, than from me-
Now, the next observation that ] have
to make of the fermentation in the south
is based on closer circumspection of what
| regard as the only portion of this COM
try that is really under very serious, or at
least any permanent stress; mean thatsec-
ton ofthe country which may be called the
gulf states, but | include south Carolina
as adjacent to that system, and quite
prominent, and perhaps the most promin-
ent in it. The six states South Carolina,
Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi
and Louisiana, are, in nv Judgment,
entitled to be considered by the dispas.
sionate observation of their countrymen
as nOn-sufrage states.
We are in the habit not of looking at
laws, but at executed laws, as the meas
ure of the authority of communities.
Unexecuted laws carry no terror to evil.
doors and no praise to those who do well.
Executed laws are the measures of the
power and the exercise Of the duty of the
law-maker. Therefore, without finding
on the statute book this or that impede
ment in the free exercise of suffrage and
sss .sassse J. sse s a II. n - ~ Il
count, | am justified in saying that those
six states stand to us in reference to their
duties and their relations, and our duties
and our relations to this situation, and the
law in the predicament that they are
states.
Suffrage is not there predominant. Suf-
frage is not there measured by law or the
constitution, either of the United States
or of the states. They are silent. The
laws ofthe state are as silent before some
power or other that paralyZes that execu
ton of their laws as if they did not exist,
and our constitution and our laws are para
lyZed by the non execution of our own
laws. Whatever system of government
you have in this region that | have cir
it is not a government by
What prevails there? plan which
originated, l think, in the state of Mis-
sissippi, and was known, l believe, as the
Mississippi plan" undertook to wrestle
with the constitution of the United
States and the laws. 1t could not change
the laws of the United States by en-
upon the suffrage, as declared
here, without being obnoxious to the con-
and therefore void. What then |
was to be done? The hegemony seems
to have been given to Mississippi, and |
under that hegemony the Mississippi |
plan spread itself with greater or less |
severity, but with entire efficacy, as l |
it, through these other states. |
1t was that this matter of the suffrage |
should be governed by something else |
than law, and that freedom of the suf- |
frage should be thwarted and controlled |
by some methods that were not according |
to law, either of the states or of the |
Uniteo States.
There was to be consensus on the |
principle of comnauniS error fdcit jus, before |
which the laws of the state and of the |
union were to retire, and calculated, let us |
hope, with as much clemency as might be, !
and with as little exercise of final force or
ostentatious fraud as was necessary; the |
object aimed at was to be reached against |
the laws of the states and the laws of the |
United States. Yet all proceedings oflaw
were to yield to all these proceedings of
force and fraud. Thus power was to be |
gained through this use of the means of |
force and by the progress of fraud, by its |
being recognized and felt that these were |
no longer to be exercised when no longer |
needed to secure or retain power. Now,
that is, in my Judgment, a correct con-
of the difficulties into which
these communities have been brought.
1t is said that the supreme safety of the |
state required it; that the preservation of
required it; that the main
tenance of the necessary predominance of
the education and of the property and of
the responsibility of one portion of this