The Negro and the elective franchise. A series of papers and a sermon

Occasional Papers, No. 11.
The American Negro Academy.
THE NEGRO AND THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE
A SERIES OF PAPERS AND A SERMON BY
Archibald H. Grimké, Charles C. Cook, John Hope, John L. Love, Kelly Miller and Rev. Frank J. Grimké.
PRICE: THIRTY-FIVE CENTS.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY.
1905.
In 1787 when the founders of the American Republic were framing the Constitution they encountered many difficulties in the work of construction, but none greater than the bringing together on terms of equality under one general government of the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding states. The South was willing to enter the Union provided always that its peculiar labor and institutions received adequate protection in that instrument. And this the North had finally to consent to incorporate into the organic law of the new nation. One of these concessions was known as the Slave Representation Clause of the Constitution, which gave to the Slave section the right to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives. This concession did not probably seem at the time like an exorbitant or ruinous price for the North to pay for the Union, but subsequent events proved it to be both exorbitant and ruinous in the political burden which it imposed upon that section, and in the political perils which grew naturally out of the situation, and which were produced by it.
Everybody now-a-days seems to forget, or makes believe to have forgotten, this lamentable chapter in our history, and its application to present day evils—everybody but a few far-seeing Negroes, and a few far-seeing white men at the North. It is well not to forget this chapter ourselves, or to let the country make believe to have forgotten it, as it contains a lesson which it is dangerous to forget.
History repeats itself and will continue to do so just as long as men are men, and the passion for power and the struggle for domination lasts among them. Such a struggle set in between the two sections almost immediately after the adoption of the Constitution. With industrial and political ideas, interests, and institutions directly opposed to each other, rivalry and strife between them became from the beginning unavoidable. Any one not totally blinded by the then emergent needs of the moment could not fail to foresee something of the consequences which were sure to follow such a union of irreconcilable forces and passions under one general government. Each set of antagonistic ideas and interests was compelled by the great law of self preservation to try to get possession of the government in its battle with the other set. And in this conflict of moral and economic forces and ideas the three-fifths slave representation clause of the Constitution gave to the South a distinct advantage, an advantage which told immediately and powerfully in its favor. For the right to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives among the several states placed the political power of the Southern states in the hands not of all the whites but of a small and highly trained and organized minority only, namely; the master class. This circumstance solidified the South, and gave to its action a unity and energy of purpose which the industrial democracy of the North always lacked. As a consequence, Southern men obtained speedy possession of the National Government, and shaped National Legislation and policy to advance best the peculiar ideas and interests of their section. The big end of the National Government lay plainly enough well to the south of Mason and Dixon's line during the first twenty-five years of the existence of the Union. The course of events during this period revealed this bitter fact to New England. For she was outwitted, out-voted and over-matched again and again in national legislation and administrative measures by the slave oligarchy, which ruled the South and dominated in national affairs.