Belief 3 - Reading 13 of 31, The Reconstruction Convention

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Belief 3 - Reading 13 of 31

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IGNORANCE AS A POLITICAL DISABILITY

Harper's Weekly, June 10, 1865, page 354 (Editorial)

In the reorganization of the late rebel States, if it is proposed to make ignorance a disqualification for the franchise, let us be careful that we do not confound two very dissimilar things. If reading the Bible or doing a sum in the rule of three are to be the test of fitness, let every body be brought to the test. But is this the wish or the proposition of the gentlemen who are so anxious that the colored citizen shall be educated before he votes? We have looked and listened very carefully, but we can not discover that it is. We have heard nothing of disfranchising ignorant white men. We are, therefore, constrained to the belief that it is not the ignorance of the blacks, it is their complexion which is the real disability. Now ignorance and degradation at the South are not peculiar to the late slaves. The poor whites are hardly less wretched and ignorant. "The blacks are not all qualified to vote," remarks the Tribune. And how many of the whites are qualified by the same standard? The Tribune suggests that the blacks be told "to qualify themselves by intelligence and thrift to vote wisely and safely," and then they shall come to the ballot-box.

What are intelligence and thrift? The fine society, the persons whom the Tribune calls "the gentlemen of the South, the intelligent property holders," were polished and rich. Did they vote wisely and safely? The Senators, Governors, Representatives, the college-bred planters and their sons, the most highly educated class at the South, did they vote wisely and safely or would they now?

We do not deny, of course, that those who were yesterday the slaves of the fine and polished society, the men who were bought and sold and outraged and imbruted by "the gentlemen of the South, the intelligent property-holders," are to-day generally ignorant and often wretched. But they are as well fitted to be trusted with political power as the ignorant foreigners who constantly arrive among us, and the still more ignorant and degraded poor whites of the Southern States. As a practical fact of experience these two last classes, with "the gentlemen of the South," form a political alliance which is profoundly dangerous to the peace and true welfare of this country. If they are not to be disfranchised by reason of their ignorance, and nobody suggests that they shall be, why should we disfranchise on account of ignorance a body of faithful native citizens who would hold that alliance in check?

For what is the condition of the masses of the poor white citizens of the Southern States, who are to be the trustees of the colored citizens until the latter have qualified themselves "by intelligence and thrift" for a share in political power?

In Mr. George M. Weston’s valuable little tract, "The Poor Whites of the South," there is much valuable information upon this point. In Mr. Olmsted’s works it also abounds. In a paper upon the present condition of Louisiana in the Christian Examiner for May, 1865, we read that the condition of the negroes is more deplorable than that of any but the poor whites. The pictures of the war correspondents in the late slave States confirm the universal story. Mr. Weston cites J.H. Taylor, of Charleston, who says in De Bow’s Review for January, 1850: "The great mass of our poor white population begin to understand that they have rights…They are fast learning that…they can elevate themselves and their families from wretchedness and ignorance to competence and intelligence. Mr. William Gregg, in an address before the South Carolina Institute in 1851, says: "A large portion of our poor white people are wholly neglected, and are suffered to while away an existence in a state but one step in advance of the Indian of the forest. …It is painful to be brought in contact with such ignorance and degradation." Governor Hammond, of South Carolina, describes the same class in the same way, and they were half of the white population of the State. In a paper, published by Mr. J.H. Lumpkin, of Georgia, in 1852, he speaks of them as "our poor, degraded, half-fed, half-clothed, and ignorant population." Mr. Charles T. James, of Rhode Island, a cotton manufacturer, who had carefully studied the condition of the Southern States as adapted to manufactures, says: "Boys and girls by thousands, destitute both of employment and the means of education, grow up to ignorance and poverty, and, too many of them, to vice and crime." It appears also, in illustration of comparative intelligence, that of native white persons over twenty years of age about one in four hundred is unable to read and write in New England, one in one hundred in New York, and about one in eight in North Carolina.

Certainly if ignorance is to be a political disability, here are candidates who are not qualified. Yet we wait to hear from the opponents of suffrage for the blacks that these whites shall also be disfranchised. Are we told that the ignorant whites are made voters by the State Constitutions? What then? It is for the United States in this emergency to decide whether it will be satisfied with the requirements of these Constitutions. Why are we all debating the subject but because there is a question? If there be a question, what is it but who shall vote in the reorganization of the States?

Is it said that if ignorance in voters be a bad thing, to double the number of ignorant voters will not purify the election? But why, then, have any ignorant voters? Or if you will have them, why leave half or more of their fellow-citizens helpless in their hands? It is surely better to enfranchise the whole rather than a part of an ignorant population. If there must be an oligarchy, let it, at leas, be composed of the intelligent. Moreover, in the case of the Southern States, the surest way to extirpate the ignorance is to enfranchise all the people. The whites have had the political power from the beginning. What have they done to diminish the ignorance of the blacks? Continue the sole power in their hands, and what will they do to diminish it? Enfranchise Robert Smalls, and, if he can not read, he will take care to educated his children. Let Robert Toombs make the law for Robert Smalls, and what chance of education have his children?

If education, proved by some test of reading and writing, is to be the condition of suffrage in reorganizing the States, let the test by impartially applied. Let the Government be just. Let us, above all, be spared the tingling shame of seeing our country, at this period in her history, deliberately denying rights because of color.

Harper's Weekly, June 10, 1865, page 354 (Editorial)

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