CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



195 



and Wisconsin, therefore, it takes one hundred 

 and thirty-two thousand white population to 

 ^n<\ M I Representative to Congress, but in South 

 ( ' irolinu, Mississippi, and Louisiana every six- 

 ty thousand white people send a Representa- 

 tive. In other words, sixty thousand white 

 people in those Southern States have precisely 

 the same political power in the government of 

 the country that one hundred and thirty-two 

 thousand white people have in Iowa and Wis- 

 consin. 



"Take another group of seventeen Repre- 

 sentatives from the South and from the North. 

 Georgia and Alabama have a white population 

 of eleven hundred and fifty-eight thousand and 

 a colored population of ten hundred and twen- 

 ty thousand. They send seventeen Represent- 

 atives to C mjress, of whom nine were appor- 

 tioned on account of the white population and 

 eight on account of the colored population. 

 But the colored voters are not able to choose 

 a single Representative, the white Democrats 

 choosing the whole seventeen. The four North- 

 ern States, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and 

 California, have seventeen Representatives, 

 based on a white population of two and a 

 quarter millions, or almost double the white 

 population of Georgia and Alabama, so that in 

 these relative groups of States we find the 

 white man South exercises by his vote double 

 the political power of the white man North. 



"Let us carry the comparison to a more 

 comprehensive generalization. The eleven 

 States that formed the Confederate Govern- 

 ment hai by the last census a population of 

 nine and a half millions, of which in round 

 numbers five and a half millions were white 

 and four millions colored. On this aggregate 

 population seventy - three Representatives in 

 Congress were apportioned to those States 

 forty-two or -three of which were by reason 

 of the white population, and thirty or thirty- 

 one by reason of the colored population. At 

 the recent election the white Democracy of 

 the South seized seventy of the seventy-three 

 districts, and thus secured a Democratic ma- 

 jority in the next House of Representatives. 

 Thus it appears that throughout the States 

 that formed the late Confederate Government 

 sixty-five thousand whites the very people 

 that rebelled against the Union are enabled 

 to elect a Representative in Congress, while in 

 the loyal States it requires one hundred and 

 thirty-two thousand of the white people that 

 fought for the Union to elect a Representative. 

 In levying every tax, therefore, in making 

 every appropriation of money, in fixing every 

 lino of public policy, in decreeing what shall 

 be the fate and fortune of the Republic, the 

 Confederate soldier South is enabled to cast a 

 vote that is twice as powerful and twice as 

 influential as the vote of the Union soldier 

 North. 



" But the white men of the South did not 

 acquire and do not hold this superior power 

 by reason of law or justice, but in disregard 



and defiance of both. The fourteenth amend- 

 ment to the Constitution was expected t ( 

 and was designed to be a preventive and cor- 

 rective of all such possible abuses. The read- 

 ing of the clause applicable to the case is in- 

 structive and suggestive. Hear it : 



Representatives shall be apportioned among the sev- 

 eral States according to their respective numbent, count- 

 ing the whole number of persons in each State, exclud- 

 ing Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at 

 nil y election for the choice of electors for President and 

 Vice-President of the United States, Representatives 

 in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a 

 State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is de- 

 nied to uny of the male inhabitants of such State, be- 

 ing twenty -one years of age. and citizens of the United 

 States, or in any way abridged, except for participa- 

 tion in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of represent- 

 ation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which 

 the number of such male citizens shall bear to the 

 whole number of mule citizens twenty-one years of age 

 in such State. 



" The patent, undeniable intent of this pro- 

 vision was that if any class of voters were de- 

 nied or in any way abridged in their right of 

 suffrage, then the class so denied or abridged 

 should not be counted in the basis of represent- 

 ation ; or, in other words, that no State or 

 States should gain a large increase of repre- 

 sentation in Congress by reason of counting any 

 class of population not permitted to take part 

 in electing such Representatives. But the con- 

 struction given to this provision is that before 

 any forfeiture of representation can be enforced 

 the denial or abridgment of suffrage must be 

 the result of a law specifically enacted by the 

 State. Under this construction every negro 

 voter may have his suffrage absolutely denied 

 or fatally abridged by the violence, actual or 

 threatened, of irresponsible mobs, or by frauds 

 and deceptions of State officers from the Gov- 

 ernor down to the last election clerk, and then, 

 unless some State law can be shown that au- 

 thorizes the denial or abridgment, the State 

 escapes all penalty or peril of reduced repre- 

 sentation. This construction may be upheld 

 by the courts, ruling on the letter of the law, 

 ' which killeth,' but the spirit of justice cries 

 aloud against the evasive and atrocious conclu- 

 sion that deals out oppression to the innocent 

 and shields the guilty from the legitimate con- 

 sequences of willful transgression. 



" The colored citizen is thus most unhappily 

 situated ; his right of suffrage is but a hollow 

 mockery ; it holds to his ear the word of prom- 

 ise, but breaks it always to his hope, and he 

 ends only in being made the unwilling instru- 

 ment of increasing the political strength of that 

 party from which he received ever-tightening 

 fetters when he was a slave and contemptuous 

 refusal of civil rights since he was made free. 

 He resembles indeed those unhappy captives in 

 the East who, deprived of their birthright, are 

 compelled to yield their strength to the up- 

 building of the monarch from whose tyrannies 

 they have most to fear, and to fight against the 

 power from which alone deliverance might be 

 expected. The franchise intended for the shield 



