The record-union., 1893-03-09
AGAINST NEGRO SUFFRAGE.
A Prominent and Able Southerner's
Arraignment of 1t.

Prominent and Able Southerner'S
Arraignment of 1t.
In last months Forum, the ablest of the
American magazines devoted wholly to
polemics, there appeared a paper from
the pen of John c. Wickliffe, in which
the distinguished writer undertakes to
demonstrate that the Republican party
responsibility for the adoption of the
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States returns to it's authors
laden with a thousand ills.
1t has, he urges, simply increased Con-
gressional representation in the South,
and given those States added influence
and undue weight in Presidential cleo
tions, while detracting from the power
and importance of the States outside the
old slaveholding section. The Re-
publican party,n he writes, 'by the
Fifteenth Amendment, made for itself
a club to use in political warfare The
Democratic party has now wrested that
weapon from its grasp and is biennially
using it to batter its maker" The only
solution of the problem he can find is that
1.-The Northern idea of the negro political
equality must be abandoned the South
| ern advantage OF additional political rep
resentation must be surrendered. This
resolves itselfinto repeal of the Fifteenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the
! nlLeQ STATES dIN I6DllSSlOu Ol lnG
qualification for the suffrage to the several
States"
Coming into the political arena coin
cident with the advent OF an entire DEM
ocratic Federal Administration, the pro-
position is most significant. None the
less so because of the personnel and rec
ord of its author.
John c. Wickliffe is one of the leading
men of the Louisiana bar, and power in
New Orleans, the city in which he lives.
1t is to him, more than to any other score
of men in the Pelican State, that the re-
fusal of an extended charter to the Louis
lana State Lottery is due. Before he took
up arms against that legalized gang OF
robbers there had been protests of a
feeble kind, and appeals of the most in
efiectual nature made TO the Legislatures
and people of The State to stamp it out;
and to his credit must be placed the
death blow the lottery received last year,
when the question OF re-charter came up.
At first almost single-handed and alone,
threatened with financial and professional
ruin, and menaced with assassination Dy
the creatures of the plutocratic corpora
ton, he began his crusade by starting a
daily paper in New Orleans, to which he
contributed with pen and purse, opposed
by the leading papers all over the Stale.
He took to the stump and his tour OF the
State resulted in the election OF Legisla-
ture pledged against re-charter, and the
members kept ther pledges.
1t was John c. Wicklitfe who stirred
the populace OF New Orleans to Viudicate
outraged law in the case of the Malta
murderers of Chief Hennessey, the ablest
head of police that city has ever had
Notwithstanding the fact that the COM
plicity of the eleven defendants in the
crime was clearly proven, jury bribed
through a court bailiff failed in their
duty. The intelligence was flashed from
, citizen to citizen and from street to street
and presently a vast crowd gathered
about the statue of Henry Clay, at the
intersection of st. Charles and Cana
streets, and, led by John c. Wickliffe
the avengers of Chief Hennessey n?eted
out to his murderers the fate he had met
at their hands.
He is a Southerner, Democrat and
lawyer, claiming descent from the an
cient English family of Wycklytfe, one
of whose members made the first trans
lation of the Bible from the Latin into
: the English vernacular. In appearance
.he is typical Southerner, tall aud spare
} and wears the customary mustache anc
goatee. Intellectually strong, and en-.
dowed with the courage of his convic.
: tions, he has the temerity to spring. a.
what would seem to be the most inoppor
} tune moment, a political scheme wnicl
would greatly impair the voting power o
the Southern States and reduce their rep
resentation in the popular branch of Con
gress and in the Electoral College fully
. TO per cent; and to such measure JohI
c. Wickliffe has committed himself, Will
: the certainty that he will advocate it a.
/ long as he lives, unless the consumma
} ton is reached in his lifetime.