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Updated: June 23, 2025
To deny the validity of the slave's title is to deny the validity of his own; and yet in the act of making a man a slave, the slaveholder asserts the validity of his own title, while he seizes him as his property who has the same title. Further, in making him a slave, he does not merely disfranchise the humanity of one individual, but of UNIVERSAL MAN. He destroys the foundations.
You tell the people that it is as unjust to disfranchise a great lord's nomination borough as to confiscate his estate. Take heed that you do not succeed in convincing weak and ignorant minds that there is no more injustice in confiscating his estate than in disfranchising his borough. That this is no imaginary danger, your own speeches in this debate abundantly prove.
Even when fairly administered, this section operated to disfranchise more negroes than whites, for fewer can read and fewer can understand a legal instrument.
But this so-called "understanding clause," or George scheme, is much more sweeping than was intended by its author. The intent of that clause was to make it possible to disfranchise the illiterate blacks without disfranchising the illiterate whites. But as construed and enforced it is not confined to illiterates but to persons of intelligence as well.
AND, OF Our more abundant Grace and Favour to the said Governor and Company, WE DO hereby declare Our Will and Pleasure to be, That if it shall so happen, that any of the Persons free, or to be free of the said Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay, who shall, before the going forth of any Ship or Ships appointed for a VOYAGE, or otherwise, promise or agree by Writing under his or their Hands, to adventure any Sum or Sums of Money, towards the furnishing any Provision, or Maintenance of any Voyage or Voyages, set forth, or to be set forth, or intended or meant to be set forth, by the said Governor and Company, or the more Part of them present at any publick Assembly, commonly called Their General Court, shall not within the Space of twenty Days next after Warning given to him or them, by the said Governor or Company, or their known Officer or Minister, bring in and deliver to the Treasurer or Treasurers appointed for the Company, such Sums of Money as shall have been expressed and set down in Writing, by the said Person or Persons, subscribed with the Name of said Adventurer or Adventurers, that then, and at all Times after, it shall and may be lawful to and for the said Governor and Company, or the more Part of them present, whereof the said Governor or his Deputy to be one, at any of their General Courts or General Assemblies, to remove and disfranchise him or them, and every such Person and Persons at their Wills and Pleasures, and he or they so removed and disfranchised, not to be permitted to trade into the Countries, Territories, and Limits aforesaid, or any Part thereof, nor to have any Adventure or Stock going or remaining with or amongst the said Company, without the special Licence of the said Governor and Company, or the more Part of them present at any General Court, first had and obtained in that Behalf, any Thing before in these Presents to the contrary thereof in anywise notwithstanding.
These people having submitted, and declared their intention to reconstruct the State as a State in the Union, you must amend the constitution of the United States, unless they are convicted of a disqualifying crime by due process of law, before you can disfranchise them.
An attempt was made permanently to disfranchise the illiterate negro by the "grandfather clause," while allowing illiterate white voters to vote forever. Other States allowed a limited time in which to register on a permanent roll, after which all illiterates were to be disfranchised. Oklahoma sought to keep suffrage permanently open to illiterate whites, while closing it to illiterate negroes.
They were intended to disfranchise certain persons, and to enfranchise certain others, and, till decided otherwise, were the laws of the land; and it was my duty to execute them faithfully, without regard, on the one hand, for those upon whom it was thought they bore so heavily, nor, on the other, for this or that political party, and certainly without deference to those persons sent to Louisiana to influence my conduct of affairs.
Do they make Slavery a matter of federal concern by means of the Supreme Court? they are the party who maintain that it is an affair of local law. Do they disfranchise a race? they are the party of equal rights. And the whole wretched imbroglio of creed which is the condemnation of their action, and of action, which is the death of their creed, is dubbed Nationality.
Certainly not. Yet it was as clearly inconsistent with the common law, or the English constitution, to disfranchise those whose freeholds fell below any arbitrary standard fixed by the government, as it would have been to disfranchise all whose freeholds rose above that standard. Lingard says: "These compurgators or jurors were sometimes drawn by lot." 1 Lingard's History of England, p. 300.
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