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The Negro And The Elective Franchise. A Series Of Papers And A Sermon The American Negro Academy. 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.
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... Continue reading book >>
