History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United StatesBarnes, William Horatio
History
History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States
Barnes, William Horatio
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1869; United States. Congress (39th : 1865-1867)
Mr. Julian, of Indiana, having obtained the floor near the hour of
adjournment, made his argument on the following day, when the
consideration of the question was resumed. In answer to the objection
that negro voting would "lead to the amalgamation of the races or
social equality," he said: "On this subject there is nothing left to
conjecture, and no ground for alarm. Negro suffrage has been very
extensively tried in this country, and we are able to appeal to facts.
Negroes had the right to vote in all the Colonies save one, under the
Articles of Confederation. They voted, I believe, generally, on the
question of adopting the Constitution of the United States. They have
voted ever since in New York and the New England States, save
Connecticut, in which the practice was discontinued in 1818. They
voted in New Jersey till the year 1840; in Virginia and Maryland till
1833; in Pennsylvania till 1838; in Delaware till 1831; and in North
Carolina and Tennessee till 1836. I have never understood that in all
this experience of negro suffrage the amalgamation of the races was
the result. I think these evils are not at all complained of to this
day in New England and New York, where negro suffrage is still
practiced and recognized by law."
In answer to the argument that a "war of races" might ensue, Mr.
Julian said: "Sir, a war of races in this country can only be the
result of denying to the negro his rights, just as such wars have been
caused elsewhere; and the late troubles in Jamaica should teach us, if
any lesson can, the duty of dealing justly with our millions of
freedmen. Like causes must produce like results. English law made the
slaves of Jamaica free, but England failed to enact other laws making
their freedom a blessing. The old spirit of domination never died in
the slave-master, but was only maddened by emancipation. For thirty
years no measures were adopted tending to protect or educate the
freedmen. At length, and quite recently, the colonial authorities
passed a whipping act, then a law of eviction for people of color,
then a law imposing heavy impost duties, bearing most grievously upon
them, and finally a law providing for the importation of coolies, thus
taxing the freedmen for the very purpose of taking the bread out of
the mouths of their own children! I believe it turns out, after all,
that these outraged people even then did not rise up against the local
government; but the white ruffians of the island, goaded on by their
own unchecked rapacity, and availing themselves of the infernal
pretext of a black insurrection, perpetrated deeds of rapine and
vengeance that find no parallel anywhere, save in the acts of their
natural allies, the late slave-breeding rebels, against our flag. Sir,
is there no warning here against the policy of leaving our freedmen to
the tender mercies of their old masters? Are the white rebels of this
District any better than the Jamaica villains to whom I have referred?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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