The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1903-02-14
Was No Mistake

something more IMAM q pare answer Oe
given question which he puts in the
following form:
Did the American people do right by
granting the negro the suffrage?
1t will be seen that the question is
one of right rather than expediency,
but no doubt it includes, in the mind of
the reader, the whole problem of negro
suffrage. In the narrowest sense or
the widest it is one of the most momen-
tous topics OF the times. Nor is the
problem merely academic, for while
the legal form of negro suffrage seems
to be a fixed fact the actual privilege
or right is so largely denied land
thwarted that there is no question
more vital than the problem of the
negro vote and its suppression, in re-
spect to perhaps a million men, by
fraud or violence, or both.
Many Americans who formerly be-
l'eved unhesitatingly in tine justice and
good policy of giving the whole colored
population of the United States the
right to vote. on equal terms with
white men, have grown weary of the
difficulties attending the practical
workings of negro suffrage. They are
tired IF the cheating, the tricks. and
the various crimes by means of which
the highest right OF citizenship is made
farce and mockery, as far as the
colored men of the states most largely
peopled by the Afro-Americans are
concerned From WEAKNESS and i'm
patience ola very hard problem springs
certain relaxing of principals, will
ingness, perhaps, to yield the point OF
abstract justice for the sake of quiet.
And so negro suffrage is questioned, as
public policy, where it was once almost
unanimously accepted as not only right
but wise.
This paper had no doubts in the
days when the ballot was given to col
ored men. 1t is still true to the old be.
lief thai race and color could not right
ly or wisely lie permitted to be attest of
fitness for the suffrage. Grave ills
have attended the granting of a priv
the south are determined to render no
more than delusion or an empty form
of law. II has seemed to provoke
wholesale crime. But no evil With
which negro suffrage has been identi-
fed can be weighed against the greater
and more monstrous wrong OF declaring,
as the deliberate judgment and purpose
of the greatest republic of the earth
that neither patriotism nor character
nor yet mental attachments and worth
as citizen, shall be the test oft ess
for the ballot, but only the accident
Of race and the color of the skin.
Intimidation and fraud in elections,
crime and lawlessness rampant and de-
faint, unpublished and boastful, are
very bad for any country. They are
the browning disgrace of America to.
Gay, 1t is ]amentable thing toquick
en- race prejudice and intensity class
feeling in any part of the country
Danger turks in Wholesale violation or
evasion of the national constitution.
Corruption and other evils flourish on
the conditions which attend the prac-
tically nominal right of negro suffrage,
in many states and parts of states.
Every honest and Thoughtful Ameri-
can feels these things keenly. The ex-
perience of more than generation has
all illusions as to the transitory nature
of the ills connected with the effort
sincerely made, at the close of the civil
war, to give the colored man equal
rights and an equal chance in life with
the white man who has been their mas
ter Strong faith in the progress of
the country and the world, and much
confidence in the triumph of right,
however long delayed, are needed to
look far enough ahead to forsee the end
of the conditions which are now so evil
and so 'disgraceful,
But consider the alternative to writ
ing negro suffrage into the statutes
and organic laws of the American re.
public. Now the decree of the nation
stands for right and justice. In the
darkest hour of encouragement every
ambitious and aspiring man of negro
blood knows that the laws of his coun-
try are intended to open every door of
advancement to him and place him on
the same footing, as a free citizen of
a great republic, with the white man.
like himself or native born. He real
ICES that the forces that thwart his
natural desire for ordinary rights and
privileges are lawless forces He feels.
more or less definitely, that his fate is
linked with that of his country. He
understands that il the degree he is
detrauded it is di8honored He knows
that its ideals and the promise of its
past and present can never be realized
until he is given his rights under the
laws.