Freed persons; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); Southern States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1950
people--which is probable, as soon as their own rights are sufficiently
secured--divide their votes between the different political parties.
The effect of the extension of the franchise to the colored people upon
the development of free labor and upon the security of human rights in the
south being the principal object in view, the objections raised on the
ground of the ignorance of the freedmen become unimportant. Practical
liberty is a good school, and, besides, if any qualification can be found,
applicable to both races, which does not interfere with the attainment of
the main object, such qualification would in that respect be
unobjectionable. But it is idle to say that it will be time to speak of
negro suffrage when the whole colored race will be educated, for the
ballot may be necessary to him to secure his education. It is also idle to
say that ignorance is the principal ground upon which southern men object
to negro suffrage, for if it were, that numerous class of colored people
in Louisiana who are as highly educated, as intelligent, and as wealthy as
any corresponding class of whites, would have been enfranchised long ago.
It has been asserted that the negro would be but a voting machine in the
hand of his employer. On this point opinions seem to differ. I have heard
it said in the south that the freedmen are more likely to be influenced by
their schoolmasters and preachers. But even if we suppose the employer to
control to a certain extent the negro laborer's vote, two things are to be
taken into consideration: 1. The class of employers, of landed
proprietors, will in a few years be very different from what it was
heretofore in consequence of the general breaking up, a great many of the
old slaveholders will be obliged to give up their lands and new men will
step into their places; and 2. The employer will hardly control the vote
of the negro laborer so far as to make him vote against his own liberty.
The beneficial effect of an extension of suffrage does not always depend
upon the intelligence with which the newly admitted voters exercise their
right, but sometimes upon the circumstances in which they are placed; and
the circumstances in which the freedmen of the south are placed are such
that, when they only vote for their own liberty and rights, they vote for
the rights of free labor, for the success of an immediate important
reform, for the prosperity of the country, and for the general interests
of mankind. If, therefore, in order to control the colored vote, the
employer, or whoever he may be, is first obliged to concede to the
freedman the great point of his own rights as a man and a free laborer,
the great social reform is completed, the most difficult problem is
solved, and all other questions it will be comparatively easy to settle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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