Emancipation and Emigration / A Plan to Transfer the Freedmen of the South to the Government Lands of the West by The Principia Club

by Anonymous

PREAMBLE.

Whereas, by the proclamation of emancipation of President Lincoln in the year 1863, about four million of colored people were emancipated from American slavery; and whereas, by the subsequent amendments to the Constitution of the United States, passed by Congress and ratified by more than three-quarters of the States of the Union, nearly a million of said emancipated slaves, of lawful age and sex, were enfranchised and made citizens; and

Whereas, said amendments to the Constitution were practically nullified and rendered a dead letter in the Southern States at the last presidential election, and ever since, by disfranchising the colored Republicans who would not put into the ballot-boxes Democratic tickets, shooting some and intimidating others; and

Whereas, the elements of despotism in the Democratic party are now clamoring for a repeal of the said constitutional amendments, so that they may return the colored Republicans legally to their former condition, or a worse one, and use them for Democratic voters and ballot-box stuffers; therefore,—