blind him from shooting right, can, and will, under proper
instruction, which is given in prints and on the stump to all other
voters, vote rightly.
(2) The first and most potent step in the direction of humiliating the
Negro and relegating him to a condition of mental serfdom, is to
deprive him of the ballot. It is the only token of real power which he
possesses, aside from his brawn, which the white American really
covets; and once shorn of that, he would, like Samson, be passive, in
the hands of the Philistines.
(3) Another suggestion which may be urged in behalf of the suffrage
rights of the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" is, that he is
a hopeless minority; nor could he, by any means, control the destinies
of this country, if the intelligent voters of the land would but be
vigilant and prompt in the exercise of the franchise, imposed in them.
It is a sad reflection that the alleged fraud and corruption which
existed under "carpet-bag rule" in the South during the reconstruction
period could never have existed had the white voters of the South, who
were yet clothed with the elective franchise, given their countenance
and affiliation to the Negro voters, instead of standing aloof from
them and leaving them to be swayed by a set of _educated men_, many of
whom were neither "to the manor born," nor particularly interested in
the welfare of the several communities in which they operated.
(4) We must never lose sight of the fact that the welfare of the
Republic is not resident altogether in the _brains_ of the voters. The
_heart_ plays a very conspicuous part in the casting of a pure and
salutary ballot. As between a voter possessing a pure, kind and
patriotic heart but an uncultivated mind, and another endowed with all
the learning of the universities, but swayed by ulterior and
unpatriotic designs, one would experience little or no difficulty in
making choice of the former, even though clad in a black skin.
(5) The fact that a Negro is a "non-property-holding Negro" should not
militate against his right to exercise his rights of citizenship; for,
many of the most useful and valuable of our voters, of both races,
are "non-property-holding" voters. The fact of holding property is
frequently predicated on conditions altogether fortuitous--a reverse
of the wheel of fortune, a large or expensive family--a drought or
flood, as well as many other contingencies all play conspicuous parts
in preventing good and true citizens from accumulating property, even
to the extent of an humble homestead; while fire, cyclone and flood
often reduce a man of great possessions in a day to the conditions of
a "non-property-holding" citizen; and did his right to vote depend on
his property holding, he would be utterly bereft of it. On the
contrary, it is no extraordinary thing to see a man of less than
average intelligence endowed with "worldly goods" through a turn of
the wheel of fortune or the expansion or contraction of a "margin,"
where men win or lose all on the casting of a die.
It does not seem to have occurred to many of those who are exceedingly
anxious to deprive "ignorant and non-property-holding Negroes" of the
ballot, that ignorance in a white man is just as vicious as ignorance
in any other class of citizens; yet they go on eliminating, by laws of
questionable validity, the hard working, wealth producing Negro of the
South, while in most instances the ignorant, dilettante and faneant,
with a white skin, is not only permitted to vote, but even protected
in the exercise of the function.
Upon the whole, after mature reflection, an affirmative answer would
seem to be the proper one to the foregoing proposition. Under our
present Constitution, yes; the "ignorant and non-property-holding
Negro" ought to vote.
TOPIC VI.
IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?
BY ATTORNEY R. S. SMITH.
[Illustration: Atty. R. S. Smith]
ATTORNEY REUBEN S. SMITH.
Reuben S. Smith, attorney-at-law, No. 420 Fifth Street, N.
W., Washington, D. C., was born in Jackson County, Florida,
April 1, 1854. He received his early education in the common
schools of Marianna, in that county, and at Howard
University, Washington, D. C. Before coming to Washington he
taught school for a time and in 1876 served as an alternate
delegate-at-large from Florida to the National Republican
Convention, held at Cincinnati, Ohio. As a resident of the
national capital he served as a clerk in the United States
Treasury Department, in the office of the sixth auditor and
in that of the second auditor. He was also Washington
correspondent of several newspapers, but after graduating
from the law department of the Howard University, in 1883,
was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the District
of Columbia, and has since been successfully employed in the
practice of his profession. He has not only established a
lucrative private business, but has acted as attorney for a
life insurance company and other corporations. In November,
1899, he was unanimously elected moderator of the conference
of the Congregational churches of Virginia, Maryland, West
Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is Superintendent
of the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church Sunday School.
Mr. Smith was a delegate to the National Republican
Convention held at Chicago in 1880, and a special agent of
the eleventh census of the United States (1890), assigned to
the work of collecting the statistics of the recorded
indebtedness of the State of Florida. It is therefore
evident that he is a man of versatility as well as
ability.--_Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States_.
The subject of this sketch also served as assistant
sergeant-at-arms of the Philadelphia National Republican
Convention of 1900. He has been attorney in several
important cases in the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia, involving damage suits against large corporations,
and has been generally successful. He has also been retained
in many equity, real estate and contested will cases,
wherein he has been equally successful. He has been almost
exclusively engaged in civil practice during his experience
of fourteen years as a practitioner before the Supreme Court
of the District.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith are domiciled at No. 715 Second Street,
Northwest, where they have resided for the past twenty
years. Two children survive to them: Master Jerome
Bonaparte, a student at Howard University and Miss Rosa
Virginia, a pupil in the Washington High School.
At first glance the above question would seem to be fully answered
with one word comprising but two letters, namely, N-o. And yet, upon
second thought, it will be seen that that answer would not apply, for
the reason that the alleged criminal Negro seldom reaches a
court-house in the South before alleged summary justice is visited
upon him by an unreasoning Judge Lynch.
The fact that the question is asked whether the criminal Negro is
justly dealt with in the courts of the South, would imply that there
is at least a doubt as to the genuineness of the justice meted out to
him there. In legal phraseology, a criminal is one who has been duly
convicted of crime. This being so, it would seem that my first inquiry
should be, whether the Negro who has been legally ascertained to be a
criminal is justly dealt with in the South, in the matter of his
punishment therefor? This line of inquiry leads me into the
investigation of the convict lease system which obtains in certain
Southern states, and other unlawful abuses of colored criminals there.
It is not my purpose in the limited space allotted to consider this
phase of the subject at great length, but rather to briefly point out
its manifest injustice.
One of the greatest wrongs of the South is its convict lease system;
and its lynch law, and its disfranchising statutes are like unto it.
Although the emancipation proclamation, written and promulgated by the
immortal Lincoln, has been operative for more than thirty-six years,
yet a species of slavery still exists there, fostered and nurtured by
the statutes authorizing the convict lease system. So vile became this
evil in Anderson county, South Carolina, that the leading officials
there denounced it as brutal and barbarous, a crime against nature and
nature's God--a crime against civilization and humanity.
Some of the specific charges against the system were that these
unfortunate beings, without regard to sex, were huddled together in
prison quarters like so many cattle. It has been a foul blot upon the
escutcheon of the South, second only to the murderous stains made
thereon by the lynchers. It is a disgrace even to the civilization of
medieval times. For cruelty and outrage it is unparalleled in the
annals of civilized society. Siberia itself is preferable to the
convict camp. Given the worst form of human slavery plus the
barbarities of prison life; add to this the horrors of a Spanish
prison, and you have somewhat of an idea of the iniquitous institution
of the barbarous convict lease system.
But as if compounding crime, it is asserted with many of the
appearances of truth, that Negro boys and girls, upon trivial charges,
are convicted and sent to the convict camp for the express purpose of
securing to the lessees of convicts the benefit of their unrequited
toil until they reach their majority. Thus confined among confirmed
criminals they naturally partake of the character of their
environments, and conceive and multiply vice and criminology. This
system punishes the real criminal unjustly. The ill-gotten gain it
offers furnishes the incentive to thrust the innocent into prison
pens.
Then, too, it is claimed with the appearance of truth that
unscrupulous white men in certain Southern localities actually trump
up charges against Negro men and procure their convictions and
sentence to the convict camp for the double purpose of affording the
lessees the comparatively free labor of the alleged criminals and to
deprive them of the right to vote. While heartily approving of such
reasonable punishment as shall deter crime, I can command no language
strong and severe enough to condemn in fitting terms the cruelties and
deviltries heaped upon the Negro in certain sections of the South in
the name and for the sake of those who profit by the convict lease
system.
It is undisputed that some of those sent to the convict camp have been
properly found guilty; some have been illegally convicted; some
deserve proper punishment, while some, by reason of their tender
years, should have been put into reformatories, where they might have
been rescued from a life of crime and brought up as law-abiding
citizens. Such institutions may have been intended to protect society
from the dishonest and vicious and to repress crime, but they are
really made hotbeds of vice; and where sufficient vitality remains in
the unfortunates, they actually propagate and multiply criminals.
But if the question should become so varied as to inquire whether the
Negro in the South charged with crime is justly dealt with in the
courts thereof; in other words, is he afforded a fair trial there?--it
could not be fully answered without taking into consideration the
heinous crime with which the Negro is generally charged. There is
nothing more revolting than rape, unless it be mob-rule. There is no
true man, white or black, who would not rejoice to see condign
punishment visited upon the brute legally proven guilty of this most
diabolical crime.
The South justifies lynching on the ground that it shields the victim
of the crime from the publicity to which a trial of the perpetrator
would expose her. That is to say, the lynchers prefer to violate the
organic law, which provides that no one shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law. They put the mob
above the judicial system of the country, and arrogate to it greater
power to protect the honor of the outraged female and uphold the
majesty of the law than a court of justice. It is a sad reflection
upon the administration of justice even to intimate that the mob which
ruthlessly defies the law is better qualified to administer justice
than the court established by law to try and determine the guilt or
innocence of persons charged with the commission of crime.
In the dark ages of English history, it frequently happened that the
person charged with the commission of crime was first executed and
afterward his trial was had, and if a verdict of not guilty was found,
his bones were disinterred and given a state funeral. But the Negro
charged with the commission of crime in the South is frequently not
granted a trial before or after execution; so that the Negro is not
justly dealt with in the courts of the South, even after he has been
hung, drawn and quartered, or burned.
In some instances where the Negro is fortunate enough to confront his
accusers in a court in the South, the caste prejudice against him too
often reduces his trial to a mere mockery of justice.
The cornerstone of the Republic is justice, to establish which, under
liberty, its founders set foot upon these hostile shores in the early
part of the seventeenth century. From that time to the present the
slogan of every campaign, the rallying cry of every battle, has been
justice in some form or other. And yet, in the alleged interest of
innocence, justice, in certain localities, is often outraged, law
dethroned, and mob rule exalted.
Whether or not the Negro charged with crime is justly dealt with in
the courts of the South can only be answered relatively, for in some
localities fair trials are granted even to Negroes charged with the
commission of crime. But for the most part, it must be admitted that
Negroes brought into the courts of the South accused of crime against
white people are not accorded a fair trial.
The reason of this unjust dealing with the Negro in the courts of the
South is not far to seek; he is looked upon as an alien; then, too,
the doctrine that he has no rights which a white man is bound to
respect is exploded in certain localities only in theory, for in
practice it is still unmistakably prevalent.
The crying need of the times is a wholesome respect for law and order,
and a righteous condemnation of mob rule everywhere. Every pulpit
North and South should speak out against mob rule and lynch law. The
eloquent divine in Greenville, Miss., who recently denounced with
righteous indignation the damnable outrages of mob violence in that
state, was as a voice crying in the wilderness. For some reason his
brethren of the cloth have not seen fit to join him in a crusade
against this abominable sin. If the Southern clergy could only be
induced to preach against this evil occasionally, there would soon be
created throughout the sin-ridden districts such a healthy public
sentiment and respect for law and order that these crimes against the
state would soon become things of the past; nor could there be found
throughout our broad land a miscreant, who, under the influence of the
spirit of lawlessness, would take the life of our Chief Magistrate;
nor would there be anywhere such an illiberal public sentiment as
would openly criticise our Chief Executive for dining a representative
member of the race whose feasts even Jupiter did not disdain to grace.
But let us consider the alleged crime for which lynching is attempted
to be justified. L. H. Perkins, Esq., of the Kansas Bar Association,
in an address to its annual meeting, in July, 1901, said:
"Lord Coke observes: 'There are crimes that are not so much as to be
named among Christians.' It is difficult for us in Kansas to believe
that certain crimes exist; crimes against nature, practiced by force
upon defenseless childhood, disclosed in criminal records of great
cities; but there is one crime in Kansas that we have learned to know.
It ought not to be named, much less permitted in a Christian land. The
crime and its fit punishment, can scarcely be discussed; but how else
can it be expunged? Shall it be by fire? Must he who writes the story
of this new-born age still further shock the world and foul the fair
name of America by pictures of a howling mob, profaning every law of
God and man; with every bulwark of our rights thrown down, the gates
of hell unchained, and passion, loose, unbridled as hurricane,
roaring above the prostrate guardians of the peace, annihilating in an
hour the civilization of six thousand years?
"Death in flames! Savage, bloodthirsty vengeance! Three things this
savory orgy lacks: salt and sweet herbs and a good appetite.
"There is a law that in the last extremity, in the presence of
impending death, all barriers are removed, all ranks are leveled, all
rights are equalized. Supreme necessity is supreme law. Can it be
possible that some such overmastering impulse at times dethrones the
public mind, and, while the fit is on, the latent cannibal runs riot
in the land? It seems it must be so; and, if it be, 'twill be until we
rise to the necessity.
"We may excoriate the cannibal, but which of us will now affirm the
provocation is not great? Poor, helpless woman! Why don't she learn to
shoot? This monstrous crime pursues her like a nightmare. It is an
ever present peril to every woman in the land. Must she shun every
alley and fly from every bush lest lascivious eyes be on her and
unbridled, brutal passion block her way? Of all the hobgoblins abroad
in the night, in fact or fancy or in song or story, there is none so
hideous as the stealthy form of the lecherous brute that leaps forth
out of darkness and drags defenseless woman to her ruin.
"And can it be that we who make the laws; we who have wives and
daughters and sisters and mothers who are dearer than life itself; we
who honor woman, not for her strength but for the very attributes that
render her the prey of force; can it be that we can make no laws that
will protect her, or satisfy the public that justice will be done?
"Concede that in the sight of God the crime of rape is worse than
murder, yet is it plain that the punishment should be death? In the
interest of woman herself were it not better that the brutal ravisher
have somewhat more to bear if he do also murder? Else would not the
motive to silence forever the most dangerous witness be complete?
"I offer the suggestion of three degrees for rape--the first to cover
only ravishment by brutal violence and force; the second all the
intermediate grades save statutory rape, which alone shall constitute
the third degree. I am no firm believer in the justice of our age of
consent, and would leave corporal punishment for statutory rape to the
discretion of the trial court. The terms of imprisonment as now
prescribed are doubtless long enough, but let us add to them the sting
and shame of the ancient whipping post. For the third degree, in the
court's discretion, not more than seven lashes. For the second degree
two floggings of twenty lashes each, soundly administered within
twelve months. And for the first degree, three several floggings of
forty lashes each within twelve months, and then castration. There is
much reason in this ancient penalty, and the time has come when it
should be revived. If, as some say, this morbid and unbridled passion
is disease, then treat it like appendicitis--remove the cause."
Mr. Perkins is on the right track. I am glad that he neither endorses
lynching nor takes stock in the absurd report from certain sections of
the South that all Negroes are ravishers of white women. I think his
suggested remedy against rape a good one for white and black.
But to return to the consideration of the other phase of the question,
I desire to say that Mrs. Helen Douglass, the widow of the lamented
Frederick Douglass, is accepted authority on the convict lease system,
and consequently I am indebted to her for most of the data used in
this article touching that subject. In a well prepared lecture on
convict leases, Mrs. Douglass introduces her theme as follows:
"We know what happens when manufactories are shut down and a vast
amount of accumulated material is suddenly thrown upon the market. For
250 years the South had been manufacturing a peculiar article; had
been literally stamping this article with its own lineaments and
putting it upon a market created especially for it. The war came! The
manufactories were closed; the material was on hand; what should be
done with it? Never in the world, perhaps, has there been a clearer
demonstration of the irrevocable nature of law, as affecting society,
and the awful power of habit as the sum of reiterated choice."
At the Prison Reform Convention, held in Atlanta in 1888, Dr. P. D.
Sims of Chattanooga, Tenn., said that, the impoverished condition of
the South succeeding the War of the Rebellion, caused it to drift into
the convict lease system, for which there were many excuses, but no
justification. The lessee buys from the State the discipline of
prisoners solely for gain; that neither the State nor the lessee had
regard to the element of reform or consideration of a philanthropic
character; that although many good men were engaged in it, the system
was wrong. He presented the statistics of thirty-nine State prisons,
showing that in the non-leasing prisons, the annual mortality was
fifteen per thousand, while in the leasing, it was sixty-four per
thousand, and that in the former, escapes were but five per thousand,
and in the latter, they were fifty-one per thousand. He appealed to
the South to change the system.
The lease system was adopted in Georgia in 1869, both Democrats and
Republicans favoring it. The first year there were 350 convicts to be
hired, and the second year the number doubled. An investigation showed
that one company paid nothing to the State for the labor of its
convicts, and that although the law provided for a chaplain, the State
had none; that convicts were worked on Sundays contrary to law, and in
some instances whipped to death. The evils of the system became so
flagrant that a Senator on the floor of the Senate Chamber declared
that the rich and powerful were allowed to go free, while the poor
white person and the ignorant Negro were shown no mercy. It was proved
that even a governor of the State was himself a lessee, working State
convicts for private gain, under a $37,000 bond in force until 1899,
although he was the convict's only protection against the wrongs of
the lessee.
The ease and facility with which colored persons were sent to the
penitentiary kept a goodly supply of prisoners on hand. While it was
burdensome to taxpayers to keep them within walls, it was unjust to
mechanics to allow them to learn trades; ergo, they were leased out to
grade streets, to work on railroads, in mines and the like, where
their physical powers might be availed of, but where they could learn
nothing, save yes and no, axe and hoe.
By an act passed in 1876, by the legislature, the Marietta and North
Georgia Railroad Company was leased 250 convicts for three years, to
grade its road where the people were too poor to pay for it. The rest
of the convicts the governor was authorized to lease to three
penitentiary companies for twenty years for $500,000, to be paid in
annual installments of $25,000. In a test case by two of these
companies, in the Supreme Court of Georgia it was decided that the
lessees acquired a vested right of property in the labor of these
convicts, which the legislature could not disregard unless their labor
was required by the State, in which case the lessee demanded
compensation. The Supreme Court consequently granted an injunction
restraining the keeper from delivering said convicts to said railroad
company, thereby securing to the lessees a legal right of property in
the labor of the convicts till the contract is legally terminated.
In an investigation of 1896, presided over by Governor Atkinson, Capt.
Lowe, a lessee, testified: