CHAPTER X.

A NEW DEPARTURE-THE NEGRO VOTE.

The fidelity of the blacks to the whites during the war, we should suppose, would have awakened in the latter a feeling of gratitude to those to whom they owed so much, and made their relations closer than ever. So it might have been if these had remained unchanged. So long as the two races lived together as masters and servants, there was no friction between them, as the one was subject to the other, and its attitude was that of submission and obedience. But when the war was over, and the sky had cleared, "old things had passed away, and all things had - become new." There had been an upheaval and dislocation of the former strata of society; so that those who had been accustomed to look down upon their inferiors, suddenly found themselves standing on the same level and in close proximity. There were no longer masters and slaves, but simply white and black "fellow-citizens."* From that

*This is the order of events, which shows the several stages of progress:

In the early part of the war Mr. Lincoln had been urged by the more pronounced anti-slavery men to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation; but with his usual caution, he hesitated and

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moment jealousies arose which did not exist before, and a process of alienation began, which has continued to widen till the two races now stand apart in complete separation.

The climax was reached when, in addition to the fullest

delayed from month to month, hoping that the ending of the war would render such an extreme measure unnecessary. But as it still went on with increasing bitterness and doubtful issue, he began to perceive that in the last resort he might be compelled to take this step; and on the 22d of September, 1862, (within a week after the battle of Antietam, when perhaps he thought the South might be more disposed to listen to reason) he sounded the first note of warning: that if it persisted in rebellion, in just one hundred days from that date-viz: on the 1st of January, 1863—he would issue a Proclamation declaring that "all persons held as slaves within any State, the people whereof should be in rebellion against the United States, should be then, thenceforward, and forever FREE." The warning was not heeded. The war went on, and on the appointed day the thunderbolt fell in that great Proclamation of Emancipation, which was to mark the beginning of a new era in American history. It closed with these memorable words: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God."

In the very year that the war ended, 1865, slavery was forever abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that "neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Three years later, in 1868, was added the Fourteenth Amendment, securing, not only the liberty of the blacks, but their citizenship, as it declared that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States are CITIZENS," and that of their privileges as such they cannot be deprived by any State; and in 1870 came the Fifteenth, and last, Amendment, that "the right of the citizens of the United States to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

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THE VOTE NOT A NATURAL RIGHT.

personal liberty, the blacks were raised still higher, and invested with political power. This is not included in freedom. Alexander II. emancipated twenty millions of serfs in Russia, but that did not give them the right to vote. Neither did it give the right to the freed slaves of America. It is important to keep these two things distinct. Personal liberty may be a natural right, but the privilege of voting certainly is not. We have heard a great deal of late of "manhood suffrage" (which has a brave sound, that fits it to be a political war-cry), as if suffrage were a right which attached to every man, of woman born, however ignorant, though he were a fool or an idiot, for this did not destroy the fact that he was still a man! In all the countries of Europe that have free institutions, even in aristocratic England, there has been a tendency towards this feature of a pure democracy. Every few years there has been an extension of the suffrage, making the qualifications less rigid, till now the voting class includes almost the whole population of England. These changes Americans are wont to hail as movements in the direction of liberty. But whether they are in the direction of good government, is another question. That depends on whether those to whom the vote is given are fit to use it. If not, every extension of the suffrage, so far from being a step in the way of progress, is a step backward towards barbarism. It is this absurd notion of natural rights, carried to the utmost extreme, that lies at the bottom of all the false and destructive theories of socialism and communism, which threaten society in the Old World. It is in political philosophy what "original sin" is in theology—the "primeval curse," the "Adam's fall, in which we sinned all."

From that entailed curse no nation has suffered more

than our own. The first downward plunge was made when the suffrage was given to the immigrants just landed

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on our shores. History could not furnish a better argument against the suicidal folly of giving political power to those who are utterly incompetent to use it. Universal suffrage is well enough in New England, in the country towns, where there is general intelligence, and the people have been trained to voting in their town elections; but to give it to the ignorant creatures that are "dumped," like cattle, on our wharves, is the very insanity of democracy. We have found what a terrible curse it is in New York city, where we are overrun by these hordes that have not the remotest idea of American institutions. We import ignorance by the cargo, and set it up to rule over us. Mr. Hugh McCulloch, in his recent admirable volume, argues that the giving of the suffrage to all the immigrants that land upon our shores, is the great danger of the Republic.

But, as if it were not enough to commit one such folly, we must add another, and a greater, in giving the same unrestricted suffrage to the negroes of the South. Not that it is any worse to give the vote to ignorant blacks than to ignorant whites, [it is not the color I object to, but the ignorance wherever it exists, in white or blackthe mistake is as great in the one case as in the other,] it is worse only in that it is far greater in amount; that whereas the immigrants in our Northern cities are counted by tens of thousands, the blacks in the South are counted by millions. One folly does not excuse another; it should rather be a warning against it; and the horrible blunder that was made in giving the vote to the "raw Irish," should have warned us against plunging into a still deeper abyss by giving it to the blacks without reserve.

But with a nation, as with individuals, there is sometimes a state of the public mind approaching to frenzy, which leads it to rush to fatal extremes. Such an access of rage and madness is apt to follow a civil war. It fol

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LINCOLN ON POLITICAL EQUALITY.

lowed ours, and there was but one man who could control it-the man who had carried the country through the war, and thereby acquired a boundless popularity. Such a strong hand was needed in the critical period of reconstruction. How he would have acted in this very matter, it is not difficult to see for all his ideas and habits of mind were conservative, and with his sense of humor he would have received a proposal to give the suffrage to the blacks just off the plantation, as a huge joke! This was something which he never dreamed of. When he wrote his Emancipation Proclamation, he promised the slaves their liberty, to be maintained by all the military forces of the United States; but it never entered his head that he was to divide with the newly emancipated the business of the government! On this point we are not left to conjecture, for he had expressed himself in no doubtful language. Long before the war, in his famous joint debate with Douglas, in answering the question whether he was "really in favor of a perfect equality between the negroes and white people," he replied in words which could not be more explicit: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

No doubt Mr. Lincoln's ideas may have been changed by the war, which brought an overturning of all things; but it could not change the "physical difference," which, in his view, would "forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." Remem