Note 52 — Chapter V · THE PARTIAL DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO

See “The Fifteenth Amendment. An Account of its Enactment,” p. 5. A. Caperton Braxton. Everett-Waddey Co., Richmond, Va.

The Reconstruction Act forced through Congress in August, 1864, by the radical wing of the Republican Party, and vetoed by Mr. Lincoln by a pocket veto, expressly limited the franchise to adult whites. The platform of the Republican Party on which Lincoln was renominated and reëlected in November, 1864, made no reference to Negro suffrage. During this year (1864) the Union people adopted new or amended old constitutions in Arkansas, Connecticut, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia, but no mention was made of Negro suffrage except to exclude it. Id.

In December, 1865, when the question of the establishment of Negro suffrage in the District of Columbia was submitted to the voters there, the vote stood, in Georgetown, 1 vote for and 812 votes against the measure, and in Washington, 35 votes for and 6,521 votes against the measure. Id., p. 27.

In September, 1865, the question was submitted to the voters of the Territory of Colorado. The vote stood 476 for and 4,192 against it. Ib.

In June, 1866, the people of Nebraska adopted a constitution which limited suffrage to whites. In October, 1867, the proposition for Negro suffrage in Ohio was voted down by over 50,000 majority. In November of that year the people of Kansas and Minnesota “voted it down by large majorities.” Id., p. 29.

In November, 1868, the people of Iowa voted to strike out the word “white” from the Constitution. In this State by the census of 1870 there were 289,162 whites and 1,542 blacks. The vote, however, on this measure was 22,000 less than that for the Republican ticket. Id., p. 39, citing Tribune Almanac for 1869, p. 75.

In November, 1868, the people of Minnesota once more voted on the measure, and this time it was carried through by only about three-fifths of the majority given the Republican ticket. By the census of 1870 there were in that State 114,344 adult white men and 246 adult Negro men. Id., p. 40.

In 1868, in Missouri, the measure was voted down by 18,000 majority. Ib.

In Michigan, in 1868, when the Republican Party carried the State by nearly 32,000 majority, the question of Negro suffrage was voted down by nearly 39,000 majority. Ib.

In 1869 the people of New York defeated the proposed measure by over 32,000 majority, and the Legislature of that State rescinded a former act of the previous Legislature, which had, by a majority of two, ratified the Fifteenth Amendment. Id., p. 65.

On the 4th of March, 1869, in Indiana, seventeen Senators and thirty-six Representatives resigned from the Legislature to break a quorum and prevent the ratification of the amendment. Every one of these, with a single exception, was subsequently reëlected by the people. Id., p. 66-7.

Meantime, under the “Reconstruction Acts,” the amendment was forced on the South. Seven of the Southern States ratified it by the Negro vote, the whites being generally disfranchised, while in three of them—Virginia, Mississippi and Texas—ratification was assented to as a condition of readmission to the Union. Ib.

See also Eckenrode’s “Reconstruction in Virginia,” Johns Hopkins Press, 1904.