tation in Congress or in the Electoral College; has shown himself capable of being President of the whole country, and not merely one section of it, and has been enabled to present the spectacle of a reunited people, and contributed much to place our government in the very front rank with the nations of the world.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE SOUTHERN MAN TOWARDS THE

NEGRO.

The Southern man knows the negro, and the negro knows him. The only conflict which has, or is ever likely to arise, springs from the effort of ill-advised friends in the North to confer upon him, without previous training or preparation, places of power and responsibility, for which he is wholly unfitted, either by capacity or experi

ence.

When it comes, however, to dealing with the negro, in domestic service, or in a business way, the Southerner is infinitely more indulgent to him than his Northern compatriot.

There comes to us a well-authenticated story from Kentucky, of an old darky, who, after the war, influenced by the delusion that the only friends the negro had were in the North, wandered up into Illinois, hoping to find an easy fortune. But here he soon found, that while the people had much to say to him about the evils of slavery, and the destiny of his race, every one with whom he did business, held him to a strict accountability. Trained, as he was, to the slow movement of the mule in the Southern cornfield and cotton patch, he could not handle the complicated machinery, or keep pace with the quicker methods of farming in the West, and so he was soon cast adrift. When he asked for help he was told to go to work, and so he wandered, foot-sore and weary, back through Indiana and Ohio, until he reached again the old Southern plantation in Kentucky. Finding the planter comfortably seated upon his veranda, the old darky approached, hat in hand, and asked for something to eat.

"Why, you damn black rascal, what are you stopping here for? Go into the kitchen and tell the cook to give you something to eat."

"Before God, master," the old darkey said, grinning from ear to ear, "them's the sweetest words I'se heard since I left old Dixie."

The old man was home at last. He was among people who understood him, and whom he understood.

WHITE SUPREMACY BY LAW.

But if we would have white supremacy, we must establish it by law-not by force or fraud. If you teach your boy that it is right to buy a vote, it is an easy step for him to learn to use money to bribe or corrupt officials or trustees of any class. If you teach your boy that it is right to steal votes, it is an easy step for him to believe that it is right to steal whatever he may need or greatly desire. The results of such an influence will enter every branch of society; it will reach your bank cashiers, and affect positions of trust in every department; it will ultimately enter your courts, and affect the administration of justice.

I submit it to the intelligent judgment of this Convention that there is no higher duty resting upon us, as citizens and as delegates, than that which requires us to embody in the fundamental law such provisions as will enable us to protect the sanctity of the ballot in every portion of the State.

The justification for whatever manipulation of the ballot that has occurred in this State has been the menace of negro domination. After the war, by force of Federal bayonets, the negro was placed in control of every branch of our government. Inspired and aided by unscrupulous white men, he wasted money, created debts, increased taxes until it threatened to amount to confiscation of our property. While in power, and within a few years, he increased our State debt from a nominal figure to nearly thirty millions of dollars. The right of revolution is always left to every people. Being prostrated by the effects of the war, and unable to take

up arms in their own defense, in some portions of th State, white men, greatly in the minority, it is said, resorted to strategem-used their great intellect to overcome the greater numbers of their black opponents. If so, such a course might be warranted when considered as the right of revolution, and as an act of necessity for self-preservation. But a people cannot always live in a state of revolution. The time comes when, if they would be a free, happy and contented people they must return to a constitutional form of government, where law and order prevail, and where every citizen stands ready to stake his life and his honor to maintain it.

WHAT REMEDY SHALL BE ADOPTED.

Upon the threshold of our deliberations, I will not undertake to indicate to you how you should solve this new and difficult question of Constitutional reform. At the outset of this movement, I venture to suggest that delegates should be cautious in undertaking to define just what provisions would be or should be embodied in the Constitution; that the new Constitution, when made and placed before the people for ratification, would be and ought to be the result of the united action of the Convention; that if one came here with his mind made up and his Constitution in his pocket, he would hardly be in a fit condition to confer with his fellowdelegates on this important subject. I still hold this view. I fail to appreciate the idea of those who seem to think it the duty of delegates to this Convention to write out and publish their views before the Convention meets. Under this plan, we would be liable to have as many Constitutions as delegates. What the people want, in my judgment, is an earnest consideration of and consultation upon these important questions, so that the finished work will represent the united wisdom and experience of the Convention.

Mississippi is the pioneer State in this movement. In addition to the payment of a poll tax, there it is provided that only those can vote who have been duly reg

istered, and only those can register who can read, or understand when read to them, any clause in the Constitution. The decision as to who are sufficiently intelligent to meet the requirements of the understanding clause is exclusively in the hands of the registrars.

But to this plan, the objection has been urged with force that it perpetuates the very form of abuse from which we are seeking to escape; that elections by managers or registrars is not what we want. Our aim should be for a correction of all evils which threaten the purity of the ballot and the morals of the people.

The provision adopted in South Carolina requires the payment of the poll tax, assessed against him for the previous year, six months before any election, and that the voter shall be duly registered. To be qualified for registration up to January 1st, 1898, voters must have been able to read a clause in the Constitution, or understand or explain it when read by the registration officer; and all who register subsequent to that time must be able both to read and write any section of the Constitution, or else show ownership of property assessed at three hundred dollars or more, and the payment of all taxes assessed against him and collectable during the previous year.

In Louisiana and North Carolina, the methods of relief adopted are substantially the same, and require in addition to the poll tax clause, that the voter shall register in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, and only those are authorized to register who are able to read and write any section of the Constitution in the English language, with the further proviso that no male person who was, on January 1st, 1867, or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under the laws of any State in the United States wherein he then resided, and no lineal descendant of any such person shall be denied the right to register and vote at any election by reason of his failure to possess the educational qualifications prescribed, provided he registers within the time limited by the terms of the Constitution, which in Louisiana is about six months, in North Carolina about eight years.

It is contended in defense of this provision, that while in effect, it will exclude the great mass of ignorant negro voters, it does not, in terms, exclude them, and applies generally to all classes of voters, without reference to their race, color or previous condition of servitude; that all negroes who were voters prior to January, 1867, of whom it was claimed, there were quite a number-could vote, and the descendantswhether slaves or not-of these free negroes, were entitled to vote, and that these were quite numerous. And, on the other hand, that white people born in other countries -emigrants-who canot read and write, could not vote, nor could white people who were unable to vote in the State in which they lived prior to 1867, unless they were able to read and write. If it be said that this exception permits many more white people to vote than negroes, the answer was that this would be equally true of any proper qualification which might be proposed. It would be true of an educational qualification, and it would be true of a property qualification, the validity of which has never been questioned.

These provisions are justified in law and in morals, because it is said that the negro is not discriminated against on account of his race, but on account of his. intellectual and moral condition. There is a difference it is claimed with great force, between the uneducated white man and the ignorant negro. There is in the white man an inherited capacity for government which is wholly wanting in the negro. Before the art of reading. and writing was known, the ancestors of the AngloSaxon had established an orderly system of government, the basis, in fact, of the one under which we now live. That the negro, on the other hand, is descended from a race lowest in intelligence and moral perception of all the races of men. As was remarked by the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Williams vs. Mississippi (170 U. S., 213), quoting the Supreme Court of Mississippi, "Restrained by the Federal Constitution from discriminating against the negro race, the Convention discriminates against its. characteristics and the offenses to which its criminal members are prone."