The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1909-09-30
DISFRANCHISIRG AMENDMENT.
Violates Constitution of United States
and Nay Take Suffrage from You.

and nay Take Suffrage from You.
1t is the duty of every good citizen
to obey the law of the land himself and
! also do what he can to make others
! obey it. The Constitution of the United
States is undoubtedly the supreme law
OF the land, tor the Constitution of
Maryland declares that all the people
| of this state shall be bound thereby,
! anything IN the Constitution or law of
this state TO the contrary notwithstand-
ing. No person can hold any office or
practice law or become naturalized as
an American citizen without an oath to
support that Constitution. And all
other citizens, though they may not
take this oath, are both legally and
morally under the same obligation to
support it.
The Fifteenth Amendment declares
that the right of citizens to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any state on account of
race, color or previous condition of ser
vitude, and yet this is precisely what
| the proposed DISTINGUISHING amendment
to the Maryland Constitution attempts
to do. How any one can vote for the
adoption of such an amendment without
violating his obligation to support the
Constitution of the United States it is
hard to see. Many of us may doubt
the wisdom of the Fifteenth Amend
ment, but if one is at liberty to disre-
gard any law simply because he does not
approve of it, we may as well not have
any law at all.
That the purpose of the proposed
amendment is to abridge the right of
negro citizens to vote simply because
they are negroes is too plain for argu-
ment, although it is quite apparent that
the devices which have been necessarily
resorted to in seeking to accomplish
this notification of the Fifteenth
Amendment by an attempted evasion
OF the letter of its prohibition against
DISTINGUISHING on account of race, color
or previous condition of servitude will
undoubtedly have at the same time the
effect of DISTINGUISHING a greater or less
number Of white men.
Every white man, native or natural
lied, may be called upon to prove that
he or his ancestor had the right to vote
before 1869 or was naturalized before
1909. This proof would often be hard
to give, especially if the registrars
wanted to keep the applicant off the
registration books. Those who cannot
give the proof lose the right to vote un-
less they pass the impossible So
called educational test, which is skill
fully framed for the purpose of exclud-
ing everybody attempting to pass it, or
unless they pay taxes on $500 worth of
property standing in their own or their
wives names.
The educational test, which requires
every person seeking to register under
1t to make application in the presence
of the officers of registration in his own
handwriting with pen and ink without
any aid, suggestion or memorandum
whatsoever, and without any question
or direction addressed to him by any of
the officers of registration, correctly
stating seventeen separate and distinct
irrelevant and disconnected facts, max
ing the right to vote under it condl-
tional upon the exercise of a feat of
memory which not one man in a thou
sand could perform
Every voter should give due consid-
GRAFTON to its effects before voting upon
the question Of ratifying the proposed
DISTINGUISHING amendment, with the
consequent possible loss of his own or
his children votes as one of the re-
suits therefrom.