Twentieth Century Negro Literature. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
was also delegate to the National Republican Convention in 1872, in 1884 and 1896.
All citizens who are industrious, honest, brave and patriotic should vote, without regard to their color; for, a man may possess all these characteristics and yet be "ignorant." Ignorance is only relative anyway.
(a) The Negro is a citizen. See XIV Amendment to Constitution, etc.
(b) He is industrious, and by his industry has not only helped to develop the resources of the United States but he has produced much of the property which is unjustly held by many white voters, and withheld from him; especially in the South.
The property of the South is due not more to the capital invested in the agricultural and manufacturing enterprises of that section than to the labor of the Negro, who furnishes the foundation of all wealth—labor—there.
(c) The untutored Negro has shown himself to be honest; he has never betrayed a trust imposed in him. During the great Civil War he was true to the trust imposed in him by his master at the front, who confided to his care the sustenance and even life of his wife and little ones. This was the supremest test of his honesty, which he sacredly discharged. Since the war, he has faithfully adhered to and followed the fortunes of the Republican party, by the mandate of which he was emancipated; even though in doing so he has suffered all the evils which a hostile opponent can invent to plague and swerve him from what he considers the path of gratitude and honor.
(d) He is brave; as the records of our wars will prove. His blood has stained many battlefields where, under "Old Glory," he fought for the Union and Liberty; not only on American soil, but also in foreign lands. The Negro, in contending in war, for the life and liberties of this Republic, has literally covered himself with glory.
(1) That he is patriotic goes without saying, in the light of what has been written in the foregoing paragraph. With all his coarse and homely ignorance, the heart of the American Negro, when yet a slave, throbbed with patriotic love and loyalty; and this, too, at a time when his college-bred and intelligent (?) master was doing his uttermost to destroy this glorious fabric of Union.
It is only reasonable to assume that a man whose ignorance does not blind him from shooting right, can, and will, under proper instruction, which is given in prints and on the stump to all other voters, vote rightly.
(2) The first and most potent step in the direction of humiliating the Negro and relegating him to a condition of mental serfdom, is to deprive him of the ballot. It is the only token of real power which he possesses, aside from his brawn, which the white American really covets; and once shorn of that, he would, like Samson, be passive, in the hands of the Philistines.
(3) Another suggestion which may be urged in behalf of the suffrage rights of the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" is, that he is a hopeless minority; nor could he, by any means, control the destinies of this country, if the intelligent voters of the land would but be vigilant and prompt in the exercise of the franchise, imposed in them. It is a sad reflection that the alleged fraud and corruption which existed under "carpet-bag rule" in the South during the reconstruction period could never have existed had the white voters of the South, who were yet clothed with the elective franchise, given their countenance and affiliation to the Negro voters, instead of standing aloof from them and leaving them to be swayed by a set of educated men, many of whom were neither "to the manor born," nor particularly interested in the welfare of the several communities in which they operated.
(4) We must never lose sight of the fact that the welfare of the Republic is not resident altogether in the brains of the voters. The heart plays a very conspicuous part in the casting of a pure and salutary ballot. As between a voter possessing a pure, kind and patriotic heart but an uncultivated mind, and another endowed with all the learning of the universities, but swayed by ulterior and unpatriotic designs, one would experience little or no difficulty in making choice of the former, even though clad in a black skin.
(5) The fact that a Negro is a "non-property-holding Negro" should not militate against his right to exercise his rights of citizenship; for, many of the most useful and valuable of our voters, of both races, are "non-property-holding" voters. The fact of holding property is frequently predicated on conditions altogether fortuitous—a reverse of the wheel of fortune, a large or expensive family—a drought or flood, as well as many other contingencies all play conspicuous parts in preventing good and true citizens from accumulating property, even to the extent of an humble homestead; while fire, cyclone and flood often reduce a man of great possessions in a day to the conditions of a "non-property-holding" citizen; and did his right to vote depend on his property holding, he would be utterly bereft of it. On the contrary, it is no extraordinary thing to see a man of less than average intelligence endowed with "worldly goods" through a turn of the wheel of fortune or the expansion or contraction of a "margin," where men win or lose all on the casting of a die.
It does not seem to have occurred to many of those who are exceedingly anxious to deprive "ignorant and non-property-holding Negroes" of the ballot, that ignorance in a white man is just as vicious as ignorance in any other class of citizens; yet they go on eliminating, by laws of questionable validity, the hard working, wealth producing Negro of the South, while in most instances the ignorant, dilettante and faneant, with a white skin, is not only permitted to vote, but even protected in the exercise of the function.
Upon the whole, after mature reflection, an affirmative answer would seem to be the proper one to the foregoing proposition. Under our present Constitution, yes; the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" ought to vote.
TOPIC VI.
IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?
BY ATTORNEY R. S. SMITH.
ATTORNEY REUBEN S. SMITH.
Reuben S. Smith, attorney-at-law, No. 420 Fifth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C., was born in Jackson County, Florida, April 1, 1854. He received his early education in the common schools of Marianna, in that county, and at Howard University, Washington, D. C. Before coming to Washington he taught school for a time and in 1876 served as an alternate delegate-at-large from Florida to the National Republican Convention, held at Cincinnati, Ohio. As a resident of the national capital he served as a clerk in the United States Treasury Department, in the office of the sixth auditor and in that of the second auditor. He was also Washington correspondent of several newspapers, but after graduating from the law department of the Howard University, in 1883, was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and has since been successfully employed in the practice of his profession. He has not only established a lucrative private business, but has acted as attorney for a life insurance company and other corporations. In November, 1899, he was unanimously elected moderator of the conference of the Congregational churches of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is Superintendent of the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church Sunday School.
Mr. Smith was a delegate to the National Republican Convention held at Chicago in 1880, and a special agent of the eleventh census of the United States (1890), assigned to the work of collecting the statistics of the recorded indebtedness of the State of Florida. It is therefore evident that he is a man of versatility as well as ability.—Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States.
The subject of this sketch also served as assistant sergeant-at-arms of the Philadelphia National Republican Convention of 1900. He has been attorney in several important cases in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, involving damage suits against large corporations, and has been generally successful. He has also been retained in many equity, real estate and contested will cases, wherein he has been equally successful. He has been almost exclusively engaged in civil practice during his experience of fourteen years as a practitioner before the Supreme Court of the District.
Mr.