The negroes have not asked for the privilege of voting;
the vast majority of them have no idea what it means. This bill not only
thrusts it into their hands, but compels them, as well as the whites, to
use it in a particular way. If they do not form a constitution with
prescribed articles in it and afterwards elect a legislature which will
act upon certain measures in a prescribed way, neither blacks nor whites
can be relieved from the slavery which the bill imposes upon them.
Without pausing here to consider the policy or impolicy of Africanizing
the southern part of our territory, I would simply ask the attention of
Congress to that manifest, well-known, and universally acknowledged rule
of constitutional law which declares that the Federal Government has no
jurisdiction, authority, or power to regulate such subjects for any
State. To force the right of suffrage out of the hands of the white
people and into the hands of the negroes is an arbitrary violation of
this principle.
This bill imposes martial law at once, and its operations will begin
so soon as the general and his troops can be put in place.
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