The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-03-27
(Concluded.)

(Concluded)
 The year 1888 is made memorable by the successively desperate acts of the Re- publican party and the resultant degreda- tion of Constitutional liberty.
 In June, Congress ordered State goverIl- | meiits to bet set up in the South. instruct ed them, on pain of extinction, to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. In July, Con. gtess, in face of the protest of the Presi- dent and the Secretary of State. declared the Fourteenth Amendment adopted. In November, General Grant was elected President, by a small popular majority. In December, Congress began to prepare the Fifteenth Amendment.
 On the very opening day of Congress, December, 1888, Senator Semner introduc- ed a bill to confer upon the freedmen the right of the electorate. The Senator did not desire an amendment to the Consti- tuition to accomplish his object. He dis claimed the necessity for such an amend ment. The Declaration of Independence was the only authority his bill needed, he said He had opposed the Fourteenth amendment, among other reasons, be- cause superfuous. the Declaration being already written and already adopted in American doctrine. The need of the day was, a faithful conformity by Congress to the original and all.sufiicient letter ana spirit of the Declaration. The Senator spoke at length on this first day of the session on his negro enfranchisement olll' He wished to make negro suffrage the basis of general reorganization of South ern society, looking to immediate negro social, civil and political equality. He would divide the plantations and allot the land, parcel by parcel, among the freed- men, leaving a proper parcel to the oiu master. Two hundred and forty-one thousand negroes, he said, had fought for the Union. They were the "saviors Of the Union," for without them the CnloA must have been finally lost.
 While MT. Sumner held the floor with his bill in the Senate, Representative w. D Kelley. Pig Iron Kelley" engaged the attention of the House with his reso- lution to propose an article of hfteenth amendment. Mir. Kelley's resolution read: All qualifications or limitations oi the right of suffrage in the Constitution or laws of any State based upon race O: parentage are, and are hereby declared to be, void" The article left the doOI open for general exclusion of negro cleo tors.
 The problem of negro suffrage, which had been thrown into the Fourteenth Amendment, to disguise the only bonl fide of that article. namely, the national debt conservater, Section {, was now brought face to race With the attitude ol the Northern States. in their separate government, on the race question. In. diana and Michigan. after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, yet re tained their ConstitutionaI inhibition oi negro emigration 'thither. Massachusetts had an educational test which disquali fled most negroes for the enjoyment of the electorate Indeed. the Sumner bill before the Senate and the joint resolu- tion before the House were in direct con fict with the laws and customs of every State of the North.
 After much discussion. through weeks the Senate Committee on the Judiciary got through that chamber an article oi Fifteenth Amendment, as follows
 NO discrimination shall be made among citizens of the United States ir the exercise of the elective franchise, or n the right to hold office (sic) in any state (sic) on account of race, color. ma uonality. property. education or creed. ' fCong. Globe, 40 Congress, Srd scss. T l63).
 The animus was. to secure to negroes the right to vote and hold oftice Tn any