The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-08-11
COLOR AND THE FRANCHISE.

II any one Northern newspaper more
than another exerted it's influence, at
the end of the Civil War, to give the
negro the elective franchise, and to
turn the desolated South over into the
hands of the semi-barbarous blacks
and their carpet-bag allies. that paper
was Harper's Weekly. "a Journal of
Civilization" Its venomous carica-
lures Of Southern men and women, from
the pencil of Thomas Mast, embittered
the people of both the North and the
South.
The costly experiment of negro cit
szenship in the South Immediately fol-
lowing the conclusion of peace, at the
expense of an impoverished and help
less people-brought about partly for
revenge and partly by morbid senti-
ment-would have crushed and ruined
any people except such as composed
the remnant of the armies of the Con-
federacy. Time and again ignorant
and corrupt negroes, and their more
corrupt white allies, the carpet-bag-
gers, were forced uopn this brave and
suffering people, and other political out
RACES were perpetrated, in order that
the North might demonstrate that it
was irresistible. Hostility between the
races was bred and fostered, and it
grew to such degree that it will never
be eliminated.
And, recently, to prove the alleged
sincerity of the people of the North
in their much Wanted desire to bring
all people into one fold, the natives
of the Hawaiian Islands, descendants
of the cannibals who only a hundred
years ago murdered Capt. Cook, were
enfranchised. The experiment there
has not been a success. This has taught
the whites of the North that this is a
white mans country, and now they
say that the Porto Ricans are not to
be given the franchise because there
is large black population in the ISL
and, and the Filipinos are not to be-
come voters because a vast majority
of the people are brown men.
Harper's Weekly has at last opened
its eyes to the costly mistakes of the
Republican party, and in an editorial
in recent issue it goes back on the
black and the brown men. AS Har-
per's, by its extreme partisanship was
potent instrument in bringing about
much of the political troubles of the
past thirty-odd years, it may afford
some satisfaction to the Southern peo-
pie, who have been so frequently Will
fled and injured by it, to read what
that journal now has to say on the
question of the franchise. 1t admits
that the South was right in its pro-
tests against negro suffrage.
An extract from the editorial is as
follows:
ITO an American citizen, having the
negro in mind, it is inevitable that
such an opinion should at once be read
in the light Of our post bellum legis-
lation incorporated in and based on
the war amendments, and so does Mr..
Bryce. What is his verdict? That the
negroes were not fit for suffrage when
1t was given to them, and that dis
passionate Americans studying the
facts now admit that the granting of
suffrage to them was a mistake. OF
course this is what the Southern white
man has always said, and what the
| Northern press and politicians are re-
! luctantly admitting. And yet with
| the sad record of unwse haste in con-
! ferTing manhood suffrage upon the
negro of the South and upon the Ha-
waiians in Hawaii, which our country
| already has in its dealing with this
| ttcklish problem of controlling unlike
| races by democratic forms of govern
lnent, there have been men of repute
as scholars and statesmen in this coun-
| try during the past four years who
would have had us repeat the method
and score another blunder. Some day
1t viii be seen by the dispassionate his
torlan of the future, as he comes to
write of the beginnings of new epoch
OF American history, that one of the
greatest qualities displayed by the
american people and their responsi-
pie officials during the period of leg
lslation following the Spanish mer-
lcan war was the lesson derived from
experience in the South with the ne
gro. In Porto Rico an executive and
a council, deriving their place not from
the voters. but from without, stand
between the representative body and
the possible excuses of the
latter. Had the Southern states
had similar bulwark during
the reconstruction period how differ
ent the history Of those commemorative
would have been. In the Philippines.
by the advice of the Civil Commission
democratic government is to be a
growth, not deposit; training in sur
frage is to begin in the lower forms of
political structure"