The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-12-21
SATURDAY DECEMBER s1, 1901.
OPPOSES THE SCHEME.

The New Orleans Item. which is Re- publican paper as we'll as Southern one, does not take at all kindly to the efforts of Congressman Moody to ring in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution as 8 means of pun ishing some of the Southern States for the: determination to eliminate negro suffrage from our politics. The Item says:
 The Moody bill assumes that the ques- tion Of suffrage is regulated by the Fourteenth Amendment, when in fact the suffrage conditions and qualifications and alternatives presented by that amend ment were superseded by the Fifteenth Amendments, which declared uncondition- ally that there shall be no discrimination as to suffrage on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment has no longer anything to do with the question and the Moody bill proceeds upon a fallacy. What the new Southern constitutions have done Is either to violate the Eff teenth Amendment or not. If not, then the question is ended It is for the courts to decide whether we have yiolat- ed the constitution. If we have done so the remedy is not to cut down reple- sentation. but to restore the suffrage to all who have been unlaWfully deprived of it. It is matter entirely for the Federal court. and not for Congress, to determine.
 In our judgment there is little reason to fear that Congress will care to play with fire, however much some of the members may desre to show their malice and sectionalism. We believe a majority of even the Northern members will not wish to raise a question of such doubtful justice and propriety. and others will find that it Is question which will gut both ways. Cutting dowr represen- tation because suffrage regulations de- prive some citizens of their vote will ap- ply to some Northern States as aptly as to any Of the Southern States and when the people of Massachusetts, for example, find that their State may lose two Of three Representatives in Congress they will be apt to inform Moody and his kind that the best thing they can do is to drop it. When their own OK is be- ing gored it will not be so pleasant. Vet there are not wanting Southern news papers which are disposed to take a pes EiulStlc NleW or the situation. The New Orleans Picayune. for example. says it should be remembered that when Owen Iyovejoy. Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were agitating for a war on the Southern States for the destruction of negro slavery, few of the statesmen of that day foresaw in 1t any danger to the Republic. The storm broke, despite the sanguine predictions of the optimistic prophet, and there may be now just as terrible tempest in the sectional cloud which is again rising on the political hori- zon."
 Depriving some Southern States of their Representation because they have deter mined to regulate the suffrage in their own way would net result in another war. but the result would be disastrous to the colored race and would work no advantage to the Northern States and people. However. we are not disposed to look with any great degree of ap- prehension at the efforts of some North ern ineorrigibles to precipitate trouble.