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Did it hold out to them the promise of gradual citizenship, and, in order that this citizenship should be intelligent, establish schools for their education? Was it jealous or in any way solicitous about the economic and industrial freedom of these people? In its bearing upon the present disfranchising enactments of the South, the answer to these questions is important.
In 1915, moreover, the disfranchising act of Oklahoma was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, and henceforth the Negro could feel that the highest legal authority was no longer on the side of those who sought to deprive him of all political voice. Eleven years before, the Court had taken refuge in technicalities.
Thus a court created by this new constitution of Mississippi declares that it, in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment, discriminates against the Negro race "by reason of its previous condition of servitude and dependence," and at the same time upholds that instrument. The constitutionality of these disfranchising enactments has not been made a direct issue in the Supreme Court of the United States.
This is accounted for, however, by the pressure of the previous question, in which fifteen Democrats joined forces with the radical Republicans to force the undivided issue upon the House. A large minority of the Republican members were thus prevented from voting against the clause disfranchising the late rebels until 1870.
The burgher right was made entirely dependent upon property, which was a facile method of disfranchising the multitude of poor immigrants and of keeping them down. Purchase was the one and only means of getting this right. To keep it in as small and circumscribed class as possible the price was made abnormally high.
William Lloyd Garrison, jr., "a worthy son of a noble sire," pointedly says: "Whoever laments the scope of suffrage and talks of disfranchising men on account of ignorance or poverty has as little comprehension of the meaning of self-government as a blind man has of the colors of the rainbow.
The strength of the tories appeared in nothing more conspicuous than in their inquiry concerning controverted elections. The borough of Hindon, near Salisbury, was convicted of bribery, and a bill brought in for disfranchising the town; yet no vote passed against the person who exercised this corruption, because he happened to be a tory. Mr.
Thus, for example, the African race may, in fact, be disfranchised in the States, and yet enumerated as part of the basis of representation, by means of a provision disfranchising all who were slaves, or all whose ancestors were slaves.
The worst of all policies is that of hanging, exiling, or disfranchising the wealthy landholders of the South, in order to bring up the poor and depressed whites, shadowed forth in the Executive proclamation of the 29th of May, 1865.
Oliver had adopted the plan of representation prepared by the long parliament before its dissolution, a plan which, by disfranchising the lesser boroughs, and multiplying the members of the counties, had rendered the elections more independent of the government: Richard, under the pretence of a boon to the nation, reverted to the ancient system; and, if we may credit the calculation of his opponents, no fewer than one hundred and sixty members were returned from the boroughs by the interest of the court and its supporters.
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