The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-16
Make a Clean Sweep.

To the Editor Of The AQVertlSef.
 The minority report of the Suffrage Committee must give us cause for con- temptation and reflection. What evolu- tions in the mental makeup of man. kind are taking place in this day and generation?' Convictions so deep seated as to become a part of our very na- lures are undergoing a gradual change, and we tolerate today that which from our births we have been taught to ab- hor. Not many years ago, at least, not so far back that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary" and after the Fifteenth Amendment to the Con stitution of the United States had been declared adopted. and while the white people of this fair land were ip tn , throes of that most eventful struggle for freedom from the rule of the carpet baRger, there was a man in our midst who had the moral and physical cour- age, though surrounded as we were by Federal bayonets. to fling to the breeze the standard of white supremacy. A nobler type of mankind never lived then he. That man was the lamented Robert Tyler, who has long since de- parted to a better and eternal life. Under this standard the white man ral- lied, and the rule of the carpet -bagger and the negro ended, and, as we fondly hope. fore yer. Since then and until d very recent period, we thought we were 8 unit upon the one proposition. that this is a white mans country, and that the question was one of race, pure and simple, This illusion was not dispeued until the holding of race conference convention in this city in the spring of 1899, when to the amazement of most of us white men-natives to the soil-' openly advocated the education of the negro as a solution of the So-called race question. It seems that these advocates have increased not only in numbers, but in prestige, and to such an extent that we find such able men as those who signed the minority report of the Suf- frage Committee. declaring i've ad- here firmly to the Jacksonian Demo- cratic doctrine of equal rights to all, special privileges to none."
 I ask these gentlemen if this decla
 ration, when first made, was ever in- tended to apply to the rights of suf- frage. or in any sense, to the negro. ask them if Jacksonian Democracy ever advocated negro suffrage, or negro eQuality-political or social. If so, then am misinformed, and 1 am not now, and never have been a Jacksonian Democrat. If to disfranchise the negro as a race (had we the power) would be undemocratic, and contrary to re- publican form of government, accord ing to Jacksonian ideas; then again l say. I am not a Democrat Since re- construction days,-when first became a Voter,-I have been led to believe that the white mans government was the bed rock of Southern, if not Jacksonian Democracy; and upon this idea l have always stuck to the party, though diff fering with it in the recent past. in some of it's most vital, and to my mind, modern doctrines. The sentiments ex- pressed in this minority report are those then urged by the carpet -baSger, | backed by the National Republican party; yet we find able men, pure men, white men to the manner born, openly. advocating this lamentable heresy, which. If practically followed, will Af- ricanize this Southern land. The prime | cause urged for another Constitution | was to disfranchise. as far as possible, i the negro, to the end and for the pur | pose of purifying the ballot. Yet these gentlemen urge that a discriminating suffrage clause which in its practical working, will disfranchise a large DOT tion of the negro race, because they happen to be of the class upon which it will mostly bear, win not only be contrary to the Fifteenth Amendment, but the principles of Jacksonian De- mocracy. That the suffrage article as reported by the committee may, per haps, be unconstitutional, on account of the Grandfather clause. or that this clause may be unconstitutional, is to my mind no reason why this article as reported should not be adopted, if necessary to attain the end in view, viz: White supremacy and honest cleo tions. In the first place. it is provided that If any clause in this article should be legally declared unconstitutional, this shall not affect the remainder. Thus the article itself as a whole, will not. and cannot be jeopardized. Tn the next place. however firmly convinced these gentlemen of the Convention may be. that this Grandfather clause is ur constitutional. there are many others strong and able men--and among them | those who signed the majority report,
 who are of the contrary opinion; hence there certainly must be room for doubt.