200 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



particular class of people, none of that class of people shall be 

 counted on in fixing your representation in this House." The 

 natural effect of such a clause would be that if any of the Southern 

 States should be unwilling to trust her governmental machinery to the 

 mercy of the horde of newly-emancipated blacks the vast majority 

 of whom did not have the slightest conception of the responsibilities 

 of citizenship, there would be no alternative but a lessening of her 

 representation in Congress by nearly or quite one-half. The aggra- 

 vation of such a condition was not lessened by another condition 

 which contained practically the existing arrangement, apportioning 

 direct taxes among the states according to the entire population 

 whether any were excluded from representation or not. 



With such a resolution adopted as part of the Constitution, two 

 alternatives would have been open to the South, a grossly dispropor- 

 tionately small representation, or their governments thrown open to 

 the colored man who would in turn be the tool of the unprincipled 

 white adventurer. Conservative members of Congress were not 

 slow to point out this obvious fact. Thus Chandler of IsTew York 

 in the debate on the resolution said that if it were to go into effect 

 " y^^ &-^^ ^^® control of the ballot box to the negro who will here- 

 after by this system of enactments become the majority of the 

 people under the democratic and established law of our whole policy 

 and the constitution and we must bow to the will of the people. In- 

 graft the black man into the term " people " and you surrender the 

 South to the black race and the question comes up not between slave 

 and free but between black and white." 



It was impossible at this time to foresee how successfully the 

 South would be able to use terrorism to prevent black domination. 

 The systematic oppression which has been practiced has alone pre- 

 vented the realization of the prophecy which the carpet-bag govern- 

 ment at one time threatened to fulfill. It is yet too soon for judicial 

 opinion to be expressed upon the ethical and political principles in- 

 volved in the system adopted by the South as a last resort to prevent 

 what they honestly felt was ruining their governments. The pas- 

 sage of the Fourteenth Amendment forced the issue upon them and 



V 



