The white man has been the offender.
I have no desire to recall the story of the methods by which
the political majorities, consisting in many communities
largely of negroes and led by immigrants from the North, were
subdued.
This is not a sectional question.
It is not a race question. The suffrage was conferred on
the negro by the Southern States themselves. They can always
make their own rules. If the negro be ignorant, you may define
ignorance and disfranchise that. If the negro be vicious,
you may define vice and disfranchise that. If the negro be
poor, you may define poverty and disfranchise that. If the
negro be idle, you may define idleness and disfranchise that.
If the negro be lazy, you may define laziness and disfranchise
that. If you will only disfranchise him for the qualities
which you say unfit him to vote and not for his race or the
color of his skin there is no Constitutional obstacle in your
way.
So it was not wholly a race or color problem. It was largely
a question of party supremacy. In three states, Alabama,
South Carolina and Florida, white Democrats charged each other
with stifling the voice of the majority by fraudulent election
processes, and in Alabama they claimed that a majority of
white men were disfranchised by a false count of negro votes
in the black belt.
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