Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. Occasional Papers, No. 11. The American Negro Academy. THE NEGRO AND THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE *A SERIES OF PAPERS AND A SERMON BY* *Archibald H. Grimké, Charles C. Cook, John Hope, John L. Love, Kelly Miller and Rev. Frank J. Grimké.* *PRICE: THIRTY-FIVE CENTS.* WASHINGTON, D. C. PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY. 1905. CONTENTS · The Meaning And Need Of The Movement To Reduce Southern Representation—_ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKÉ_ · The Penning of the Negro—_CHARLES CHAUVEAU COOK_ · The Negro Vote in the States Whose Constitutions Have Not Been Specifically Revised—_JOHN HOPE_ · The Potentiality of the Negro Vote, North and West—_JOHN L. LOVE_ · Migration and Distribution of the Negro Population as Affecting the Elective Franchise—_KELLY MILLER_ · The Negro and His Citizenship—_FRANCIS J. GRIMKÉ_ The Meaning And Need Of The Movement To Reduce Southern Representation—_ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKÉ_ In 1787 when the founders of the American Republic were framing the Constitution they encountered many difficulties in the work of construction, but none greater than the bringing together on terms of equality under one general government of the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding states. The South was willing to enter the Union provided always that its peculiar labor and institutions received adequate protection in that instrument. And this the North had finally to consent to incorporate into the organic law of the new nation. One of these concessions was known as the Slave Representation Clause of the Constitution, which gave to the Slave section the right to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives. This concession did not probably seem at the time like an exorbitant or ruinous price for the North to pay for the Union, but subsequent events proved it to be both exorbitant and ruinous in the political burden which it imposed upon that section, and in the political perils which grew naturally out of the situation, and which were produced by it. Everybody now-a-days seems to forget, or makes believe to have forgotten, this lamentable chapter in our history, and its application to present day evils—everybody but a few far-seeing Negroes, and a few far-seeing white men at the North. It is well not to forget this chapter ourselves, or to let the country make believe to have forgotten it, as it contains a lesson which it is dangerous to forget.