Of the sixty-six Republicans thirty-eight were colored and twenty-eight,
white. There was a slight increase in the colored membership as a result
of the election of 1873, but the colored men never at any time had
control of the State Government nor of any branch or department thereof,
nor even that of any county or municipality. Out of seventy-two counties
in the State at that time, electing on an average twenty-eight officers
to a county, it is safe to assert that not over five out of one hundred
of such officers were colored men. The State; district, county, and
municipal governments were not only in control of white men, but white
men who were to the manor born, or who were known as old citizens of the
State--those who had lived in the State many years before the War of the
Rebellion. There was, therefore, never a time when that class of white
men known as Carpet-baggers had absolute control of the State
Government, or that of any district, county or municipality, or any
branch or department thereof. There was never, therefore, any ground for
the alleged apprehension of negro domination as a result of a free,
fair, and honest election in any one of the Southern or Reconstructed
States.
And this brings us to a consideration of the question, What is meant by
"Negro Domination?" The answer that the average reader would give to
that question would be that it means the actual, physical domination of
the blacks over the whites. But, according to a high Democratic
authority, that would be an incorrect answer. The definition given by
that authority I have every reason to believe is the correct one, the
generally accepted one. The authority referred to is the late Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Mississippi, H.H. Chalmers,
who, in an article in the _North American Review_ about March, 1881,
explained and defined what is meant or understood by the term "Negro
Domination."
According to Judge Chalmers' definition, in order to constitute "Negro
Domination" it does not necessarily follow that negroes must be elected
to office, but that in all elections in which white men may be divided,
if the negro vote should be sufficiently decisive to be potential in
determining the result, the white man or men that would be elected
through the aid of negro votes would represent "Negro Domination." In
other words, we would have "Negro Domination" whenever the will of a
majority of the whites would be defeated through the votes of colored
men. If this is the correct definition of that term,--and it is, no
doubt, the generally accepted one,--then the friends and advocates of
manhood suffrage will not deny that we have had in the past "Negro
Domination," nationally as well as locally, and that we may have it in
the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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