The Negro and the elective franchise. A series of papers and a sermon — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Negro and the elective franchise. A series of papers and a sermon
John Stuart Mill · en
History repeats itself and will continue to do so just as long as men
are men, and the passion for power and the struggle for domination lasts
among them. Such a struggle set in between the two sections almost
immediately after the adoption of the Constitution. With industrial and
political ideas, interests, and institutions directly opposed to each
other, rivalry and strife between them became from the beginning
unavoidable. Any one not totally blinded by the then emergent needs of
the moment could not fail to foresee something of the consequences which
were sure to follow such a union of irreconcilable forces and passions
under one general government. Each set of antagonistic ideas and
interests was compelled by the great law of self preservation to try to
get possession of the government in its battle with the other set. And
in this conflict of moral and economic forces and ideas the three-fifths
slave representation clause of the Constitution gave to the South a
distinct advantage, an advantage which told immediately and powerfully
in its favor. For the right to count five slaves as three freemen in the
apportionment of representatives among the several states placed the
political power of the Southern states in the hands not of all the
whites but of a small and highly trained and organized minority only,
namely; the master class. This circumstance solidified the South, and
gave to its action a unity and energy of purpose which the industrial
democracy of the North always lacked. As a consequence, Southern men
obtained speedy possession of the National Government, and shaped
National Legislation and policy to advance best the peculiar ideas and
interests of their section. The big end of the National Government lay
plainly enough well to the south of Mason and Dixon’s line during the
first twenty-five years of the existence of the Union. The course of
events during this period revealed this bitter fact to New England. For
she was outwitted, out-voted and over-matched again and again in
national legislation and administrative measures by the slave oligarchy,
which ruled the South and dominated in national affairs.