The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-24

slaves were cattle, and the North had as
much right to representation for her farm
animals, for the legal status of the slave
was then but that Of farm animal. This
gross immortality and injustice was of
course part Of that enacted crime against
human nature, American slavery. With
the legal extinction of slavery, however,
has followed complete suppression
of free coiored suffrage by the
Southern white Democracy. who have
today larger representation on the ba-
sis OF the negro population than they had
before the wal, because they steal the whole
representation of the negro population,
who today are counted the same as the
whites. Under the law previous to 1860 the
Southern states would have been allowed
for their present negro population twenty
nine members of congress and the same
number Of votes in the electoral college.
But since the abolition of slavery they are
given forty-six members Of congress and
the same number of votes in the electoral
college.
This theft of forty-six members Of con-
gress and forty-six votes in the electoral
college was accomplished by the party of
Mr.. Grady, with the approval, aid and in
fuence of Mr.. Grady, who, if he had been
patriot, an honest man, and not an I'M
scrupulous Southern partisan posing as a
patriot, would have refused to place a
congress and a president over the whole
nation by virtue of a wholesale theft of
suffrage and representation whose
execution and perpetuation has
made one minority president in
shape of Cleveland, and several con-
crosses. This vast and far-reaching polit-
ical crime Mr.. Grady helped to execute
and maintain, and so long as this crime,
which is an outrage not only on the
blacks who are directly robbed of vote and
representation, but upon every state
where free suffrage exists, because the
white Southern Democracy adds to its
legal representation the negro representa-
ton it has stolen by suppression, and thus
has been able to impose a minority
congress and minority executive upon
the whole nation; so long as great wrong
remains unrighted the Republican party
will be the party of patriotism, of liberty
and justice and equal political rights
under law. The fourteenth amendment
to the constitution declares that whenever
any state shall refuse the right of suffrage
to any part of its population its
representation shall be proportion
ately reduced. Senator John Sherman
has more than once expressed the
inn hot ~
stitutionally employed when the denial of
suffrage is made by individuals in a state
unprevented and UNPUBLISHED by its au-
thorities. The extension of public educa-
ton and the elevation of the moral stand
ard at the South has thus far failed to
check and remedy the evil of wholesale
denial and perversion of the suffrage.
Against this evil the Federal Elections
Bill of the last congress was but red rag
to bull. but under the remedy that Sena-
tor Sherman has suggested congress
has simply to satisfy itself that
suffrage is denied to an appreciable
fraction of the voting population in any
state, reduce the representation of that
state in congress by act of legislation, and
refuse admission to any members elected
in excess of the reduced quota. This
congress could do, and some day will do,
since it is charged with the enforcement
Of the Federal constitution; and the con-
stitution declares that wherever suffrage
is denied to any class or number of persons
in state those persons shall not be held
as part Of the population in determining
the basis of representation in the House
of Representatives and in the electoral
college.
Mr.. Spring is too intelligent a man not
to see, as John Sherman has more than
once pointed out, that the crime against
the suffrage is crime against the people
OF the whole country, not simply a denial
Of justice to the blacks of the South. It is
unjust to the citizens of every other state
in the Union to give the representatives
and electors from the South nearly double
weight in the House and the electoral col
lege; unjust to give the Southern Democ-
racy an artificial influence in national af-
fairs; as immoral in principle as it would
be to allow a man to vote on stock
which he had just stolen from an absent
stakeholder by violence or fraud. The
South not only has illegally disfranchised
the negroes, but insists upon voting on the
stolen stock to end of maintaining the
present unfair and fraudulent preponder-
ance of the South in the House of Repre-
sentatives and the electoral college. To
this vast steal and determination to keep
voting upon the stolen stock Mr.. Grady
was party. If he had been an honest
man he would have urged Georgia to
disfranchise the negro so far as
she desired by recasting her suf-
frage laws and accept the constitu.
tional penalty of reduced representation.
The South cannot honestly have her
cake and eat it too; she cannot honestly
disfranchise the negro and yet expect
without protest to vote for him. Neither
in law or morals had the late Mr.. Grady
any justification for advocating an illegal
scheme which wronged every state in the
Union in order that the South might not
only steal by violence and fraud the politi-
cal stock of the negro, but vote on the
stock thus stolen. The South has grown
industrially, not spiritually; Northern
rapital has deyaloOeJ bar uaoIth,