Year: 1867

We see it often taken for granted that the act enfranchising Southern blacks confers also the right of holding office in addition. This is mistake. Black citizens have always been eligible to the highest offices in the country. They have been legally qualified to hold the of fee of President, of Senator, or of Repre- sentative of the United States, although excluded from the ballot box in nearly eve ry State. Rigidly exclusive as is our State Constitution, negro might legally be cho- sen Judge of the Supreme Court, or High Sheriff. or State Senator in Connecticut. In short the right of holding office has sel- dom been dependent upon the right of voting The argument, therefore, that, because we have declared negroes entitled to vote, we have declared them entitled to immediate election to office, rests on a mistake in law.

 We hold, moreover, that all men are en- titled to the ballot, but that few are quail fled for high office, and that only those qualified should be put in nomination. In the Southern States few negroes are com petent to fill important public positions and we certainly do not desire to see any of them elected to offices the duties of which they are not competent to perform. But, say the Democracy, negroes will form the bulk of the Republican party, South, and consequently, they will demand, and com pei you to grant them, offices for which they are in no way qualified. This is cer- tainly a very strong argument against a wholesale disfranchisment of Southern whites. But we must recollect that the white population largely preponderates over the negro population in nearly every Southern State. The moment, therefore, men are elected to offices they are not qual- flied to fill, merely because they are black that moment the white voting population becomes a unit, and politically irresistible. Consequently, We have never depended

 

 the assistance of white votes. A political conflict of races would put us in a hopeless minority at once. This important fact we imagine the negroes appreciate quite as fully as we do; and if the ballot saves them from much serious oppression and injus- tice, we imagine it will do all that any req sonable man expects of it for years to come.

 Furthermore, the Democracy have them selves, furnished us case in point. Near ly one half their votes are boiled by foreign CTS, most of them extremely ignorant and unfit to perform any important official du- ty. Are the Democracy compelled to nom- mate those foreigners for office? Seldom, as far as our experience goes. We live in a Democratic town, but we have never known an Irishman elected to the smallest town office or even put in the jury box, and yet the Democracy could not have car ried a single election without the Irish vote, still less against it. In the State at large we see no foreigners elected to posi- tions for which they are not qualified, ex- cept perhaps in the single case of Mir. James Gallagher Nor can We attribute this conduct of Democratic affairs to the extreme modesty of their foreign born al- lies, especially those of Irish descent It is the natural result of suffrage nearly uni versal.

 It may be that in some parts of the South politics will assume temporarily the aspect of contest between races. But that such state of things would become general or lasting we should be very sorry to suppose It would as certainly be to our party dis advantageas it would be to the disadvan tage of the\country