Any proposal to submit the question of the political or civil rights of the negroes to the arbitrament of the whites is as unjust and as absurd as to submit the question of the political rights of the whites to the arbitrament of the negroes, with this difference,—that the negroes are loyal everywhere, and the great body of the whites disloyal everywhere.
A white loyalist of the South, one who remained loyal during the whole of the Rebellion, says,—
“To permit the whites to disfranchise the negroes is to permit those who have been our enemies to ostracize our friends. The negroes are the only persons in those States who have not been in arms against us. They have not been in arms against us. They have always and everywhere been friendly, and not hostile, to us. They alone have a deep interest in the continued supremacy of the United States; for their freedom depends on it. On them alone can we depend to suppress a new insurrection. They alone will be inclined to vote for the friends of the Government in all the Southern States. They alone have sheltered, fed, and pioneered our starved and hunted brethren through the swamps and woods of the South, in their flight from those who now aspire to rule them.
“The shame and folly of deserting the negroes are equalled by the wisdom of recognizing and protecting their power. They will form a clear and controlling majority against the united white vote in South Carolina. Mississippi, and Louisiana. With a very small accession from the loyal whites, they will form a majority in Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia. Unaided in all those States, they will be a majority in many congressional and legislative districts; and that alone suffices to break the terrible and menacing unity of the Southern vote in Congress.”
It is said that the slaves are too ignorant to exercise the elective franchise judiciously. To this we reply, they are as intelligent as the average of “poor whites,” and were intelligent enough to be Unionists during the great struggle, when the Federal Government needed friends. In a conflict with the spirit of rebellion, the blacks can always be depended upon, the whites cannot; and, for its own security against future outbreaks, the National Government should see that the negro is placed where he can help himself, and assist it.
The ballot will secure for the colored people respect; that respect will be a protection for their schools; and, through education and the elective franchise, the negro is to rise to a common level of humanity in the Southern States.
But little aid can be expected for the freedmen from the Freedmen’s Bureau; for its officers, if not Southern men, will soon become upon intimate terms with the former slave-holders, and the Bureau will be converted into a power of oppression, instead of a protection.
The anti-Union whites know full well the great influence of the ballot, and therefore are afraid to give it to the blacks. The franchise will be of more service to this despised race than a standing army in the South. The ballot will be his standing army. The poet has truly said,—
“There is a weapon surer yet,
And better, than the bayonet;