WHITES AND BLACKS OR THE QUESTION SETTLED 41

CHAPTER VI. SHALL THE NEGRO BE DISFRANCHISED? 

That is, shall the Negro be deprived of suffrage? It is necessary, before answering this question, that the chapter on the Negro as a citizen and as a voter be again read or recalled to your memory.

A republic insists on having enlightened citizens; persons who know enough to select intelligently their law-makers and rulers; each individual being a free and independent man, voting conscientiously as he pleases and as he thinks is to his best interest and to the best interest of the community in which he lives, without being hampered by outside interference. Is the colored man, at the present time, such a voter?

Absolute monarchies are-the homes prepared for the ignorant masses. One man there having sufficient power, physically as soldier, and intellectually as statesman, to fight his way to the Czar's "height" or the emperor's "eminence," and from that position deal out such justice and make such rules as he pleases. There is only one "mind" in an absolute monarchy.

In a republic it is intended that" each member thereof shall possess a "mind”. For the founders of the republic declared, in unmistakable words, "all men are created free and equal (in a

republic). With certain unalienable rights: and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

If the colored voters, who, so far as the law can make them, are clothed with the same privileges as the white voters, intend to continue voting as though one head was enough for the more than eight millions, as though they were not expected to read the "platform" of political parties, to study the "personnel" of the ticket, to investigate the important questions agitating the public mind:

If they must always think of before the war times and the "we freed you cry",

If they must be unforgiving and relentless in their hate against those who now employ them and who once owned a number of them,

If they intend that this hatred shall extend against the white man here and his children, even unto the third and fourth generation,

If there is always to be political war,

If these black voters mean to refuse the olive branch of political peace offered by Grover Cleveland, as the leader of Democracy,

If they are going to remain solid always, never dividing, notwithstanding white men made all the parties in existence, and have, with their intelligence, themselves divided and made six or seven different political parties;

If the conduct of the Negro is to be so united and solid in their voting strength,bringing down on themselves the curses of political opponents and the contempt of those whom they take as

political friends,

then by all means disfranchise them, and that speedily.