SECTION 1. All elections by the people shall be by ballot and
elections shall never be held or the ballots counted in secret.
SEC. 2. Every qualified elector shall be eligible to any office
to be voted for, unless disqualified by age as prescribed in this
Constitution. But no person shall hold two offices of honor or profit
at the same time, except that any person holding another office may at
the same time be an officer in the military and a notary public.
SEC. 3. Every male citizen of this State and of the United States 21
years of age and upwards, not laboring under the disabilities named
in this Constitution and possessing the qualification required by it,
shall be an elector.
SEC. 4. The qualifications for suffrage shall be as follows:
(a) Residence in the State for two years, in the county one year, in
the polling precinct in which the elector offers to vote four months,
and the payment six months before any election of any poll tax then
due and payable; provided, however, that ministers in charge of an
organized church and teachers of public schools shall be entitled to
vote after six months residence in the State, if otherwise qualified.
(b) Registration, which shall provide for the enrollment of every
elector once in ten years and also an enrollment during each and every
year of every elector not previously registered under the provisions on
this article.
(c) Up to January 1, 1898, all male persons of voting age applying for
registration who can read any section in this Constitution submitted
to them by the registration officer, or understand and explain it when
read to them by the registration officer shall be entitled to register
and become electors. A separate record of all persons registered before
January 1, 1898, sworn to by the registration officer shall be filed,
one copy with the clerk of court and one in the office of the secretary
of the state, on or before February 1, 1898, and such persons shall
remain during life qualified electors unless disqualified by the other
provisions of this article. The certificate of the clerk of court or
Secretary of State shall be sufficient evidence to establish the right
of said citizens to any subsequent registration and the franchise under
the limitations herein imposed.
(d) Any person who shall apply for registration after January 1st,
1898, if otherwise qualified, shall be registered; provided, that he
can both read and write any section of this Constitution submitted to
him by the registration officer, or can show that he owns and has paid
all taxes collectible during the previous year on property in this
State assessed at $300 or more.
(e) Managers of elections shall require of every elector offering to
vote at any election, before allowing him to vote, proof of the payment
of all taxes, including poll tax, assessed against him and collectible
during the previous year. The production of a certificate or of the
receipt of the officer authorized to collect such taxes shall be
conclusive proof of the payment thereof.
(f) The general assembly shall provide for issuing to each duly
registered elector a certificate of registration and shall provide for
the renewal of such certificate when lost, mutilated or destroyed, if
the applicant is still a qualified elector under the provisions of this
Constitution, or if he has been registered as provided in subsection
(c).
SEC. 5. Any person denied registration shall have the right to appeal
to the Court of Common Pleas or any judge thereof, and thence to the
Supreme Court, to determine his right to vote under the limitations
imposed in this article, and on such appeal the hearing shall be de
novo and the General Assembly shall provide by law for such appeal and
for the correction of illegal and fraudulent registration, voting and
all other crimes against the election laws.
SEC. 6. The following persons are disqualified from being registered or
voting:
First. Persons convicted of burglary, arson, obtaining goods or money
under false pretenses, perjury, forgery, robbery, bribery, adultery,
bigamy, wife-beating, housebreaking, receiving stolen goods, breach
of trust with fraudulent intent, fornication, sodomy, incest, assault
with intent to ravish, miscegenation, larceny, or crimes against the
election laws; provided, that the pardon of the Governor shall remove
such disqualification.
Second. Persons who are idiots, insane, paupers supported at the public
expense, and persons confined in any public prison.
SEC. 7. For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have
gained or lost a residence by reason of his presence or absence while
employed in the service of the United States, nor while engaged in the
navigation of the waters of this State, or the United States or of the
high seas, nor while a student of any institution of learning.
SEC. 8. The general assembly shall provide by law for the registration
of all qualified electors and shall prescribe the manner of holding
elections and of ascertaining the results, of the same; provided, at
the first registration under this Constitution, and until the 1st
of January, 1898, the registration shall be conducted by a board
of three discreet persons in each county, to be appointed by the
governor, by and with the advice and consent of the senate. For the
first registration to be provided for under this Constitution, the
registration books shall be kept open for at least six consecutive
weeks, and thereafter from time to time at least one week in each
month, up to 30 days next preceding the first election to be held under
this Constitution. The registration books shall be public records open
to the inspection of any citizen at all times.
SEC. 9. The general assembly shall provide for the establishment of
polling precincts in the several counties of the State and those now
existing shall so continue until abolished or changed. Each elector
shall be required to vote at his own precinct, but provision shall be
made for his transfer to another precinct upon his change of residence.
SEC. 10. The general assembly shall provide by law for the regulation
of party primary elections and punishing fraud at the same.
SEC. 11. The registration books shall close at least 30 days before
an election, during which time transfers and registration shall not
be legal; provided, persons who will become of age during that period
shall be entitled to registration before the books are closed.
SEC. 12. Elector in municipal elections shall possess the
qualifications and be subject to the disqualifications herein
prescribed. The production of a certificate of registration from
the registration officers of the county as an elector at a precinct
included in the incorporated city or town in which the voter desires
to vote is declared a condition prerequisite to his obtaining a
certificate of registration for municipal elections, and in addition
he must have been a resident within the corporate limits at least four
months before the election and have paid all taxes due and collectible
for the preceding fiscal year. The general assembly shall provide for
the registration of all voters before each election in municipalities;
provided, that nothing herein contained shall apply to any municipal
election which may be held prior to the general election of the year
1896.
SEC. 13. In authorizing a special election in any incorporated city or
town in this State for the purpose of bonding the same, the general
assembly shall prescribe as a condition precedent to the holding of
said election a petition from a majority of the freeholders of said
city or town as shown by its tax books, and at such elections all
electors of such city or town who are duly qualified for voting under
section 12 of this article, and who have paid all taxes, State, county,
municipal, for the previous year, shall be allowed to vote, and the
vote of a majority of those voting in said elections shall be necessary
to authorize the issue of said bonds.
SEC. 14. Electors shall in all cases except treason, felony or breach
of peace, be privileged from arrest on the days of election during
their attendance at the polls and going and returning therefrom.
SEC. 15. No power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to
prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage in this State.
The Convention having under consideration the Legislative Department
Ordinance, when Section 34 was reached, which reads:
“The marriage of white persons with a Negro or a mulatto, or person who
shall have one-eighth or more of Negro blood, shall be unlawful and
void;”
he proposed an amendment adding after the word “void” in the second
line, the words “and any white person who lives and cohabits with a
Negro, mulatto, or person who shall have one-eighth or more of Negro
blood, shall be disqualified from holding any office of emolument or
trust in this State, and the offspring of any such living or cohabiting
shall bear the name of the father, and shall be entitled to inherit and
acquire property the same as if they were legitimate.” He then spoke as
follows:
“MR. PRESIDENT: I hope this amendment will be adopted. Sir, there
is not a colored man or woman of any respectability, not only in
South Carolina, but in the whole country, that does not oppose the
intermarriage of the races. There are very few, if any exceptions, in
South Carolina, where a white man ever married a respectable colored
woman or a colored man married a respectable white woman. The facts in
the case are, that the white woman that marries a Negro man as a rule
has been an outcast by her race, and the colored woman that marries a
white man, has no standing with the respectable women of her race, and
the white man no better with his. I cannot see why you want to prevent
the intermarriage of the races, when they want to legitimize their
actions, unless you adopt my amendment, prohibiting the cohabitation
of the white men with the Negro women. Mr. President, and gentlemen of
this Convention let me give you a little statistic, showing you, if it
is possible, to do so, the wrongs you, or your fore-fathers have done
to my race. Let us stop it, if we can; I fear not, but let us put it in
the fundamental laws of this State.
“The number of Americans of African descent, wholly and in part,
returned to the census bureau in 1890 was 7,470,035. These were divided
as follows: Pure Africans, 6,337,980; mulattoes 956,987; quadroons,
105,132; octoroons, 69,936. The total mixed bloods, white and black,
was 1,132,060 in the whole country, and a third of these are above the
Mason and Dixon line.
“Mr. President, a careful perusal of the census, also history, shows
that more than three-fourths of the mothers of this large number of
mixed blood whom you seek to legislate against, are colored women, if
so, who could have been their fathers? Do not any of you rise and deny
this, because I am no lawyer, but know enough about it that I cannot
impeach my own witness. A careful perusal of the census, also shows in
the State, that this one-fourth that lives beyond Mason and Dixon’s
line shows fully that three-fourths of the one-fourth of the mixed
blood were born in the Southern States. So you see, gentlemen, you are
responsible for the wrongs that have been done; let us in the name of
God, and in behalf of virtue, try and put a stop to this cohabitation.
I could but admire a few days ago, when the gentlemen upon this floor
spoke so highly of the women of this State, I am mindful of the fact
that when they spoke of the women of this State that they spoke of
the white women. I can but echo their sentiment, and do say, that I
believe them to be as pure women as can be found anywhere in the world.
I have not been strongly in favor of female suffrage, but since your
discussion on the Divorce Law I feel I shall have to vote for the
suffrage in order that they may pass a law or laws that will make
you as pure as they are. We have, sir, as pure colored women in South
Carolina and in this country, as any race upon this earth. Sir, that
evil, known as slavery caused all of this. This wrong was done by you
all, owning them as your slaves. Sir, no act of yours will prevent a
white man from marrying a colored woman or a colored man from marrying
a white woman, who have the means to go in another State. There are
many States in the Union, that do not prevent them marrying and they
can go and get married and you cannot help yourself. I have in my mind
distinctly, a colored man and a white woman who were in love with each
other, and who wanted to get married, but this man recited to her the
law on your Statute book that prohibited the intermarriage of the
races. This lady stated that there were no such laws in the district of
Columbia, New York or Massachusetts. She was as pure a lady as there
is. I only cite this because it is a matter that you cannot control
except directly in the State. This entire matter, sir, has no right in
the Constitution of the State, if your women are as pure as you stated,
and I have reason to believe that they are, they can be trusted; then
why the necessity of this being placed in the Constitution? Can you not
trust yourselves? Is it because that these wrongs have been perpetrated
here, since the formation of the Government, that you feel that you
can’t be trusted? When I say you, I mean the white men of the entire
State. I fear not; hence I trust the amendment will be adopted. These
wrongs have been done, and are still being done, it is not done by
colored men, it is done by white men. If a Negro should improperly
approach a white woman, his body would be hanging on the nearest tree
filled with air holes before daylight the next morning--and perhaps
properly so. If the same rule were applied on the other side, and white
men who insulted or debauched Negro women were treated likewise, this
Convention would have to be adjourned sine die for lack of a quorum.
“The gentleman called me to order stating that I had reflected on the
Convention. I do not wish to reflect on the Convention. I do not wish
to reflect on the Convention, but do say, that if he has clean hands
he will keep his seat, because I do not mean to reflect on any man who
objects to the intermarriage of a Negro or Mulatto woman with a white
man, and is willing to prohibit the cohabitation, which is the root
and branch of this evil. Stop this evil, and there will be no occasion
for your intermarriage law. Sir, I oppose the intermarriage of the
races as strongly as you do, and I feel that I echo the sentiment of
the respectable class of both sides; because with few exceptions, we
find these marriages are among the lower element of both races, and,
therefore, they degrade and not elevate either race. But sir, don’t
tell me that you will make a law to prevent lawful marriages and give
full license to illicit marriages. Watch the census of each decade,
you will clearly see that this vice is decreasing among our people; as
they are progressing educationally they are raising themselves out of
this degradation, that your race has placed upon them. Now sir, I say,
prohibit intermarriage of the races, also make a law as binding against
cohabitation. Then you will make your men as true as your women. And
our race will be freed from a vice, that is as degrading as the system
of slavery. Again sir, in behalf of my race, I hope that the amendment
to the section under consideration will be adopted and become a part of
the Constitution of the State.”
The introduction of this amendment caused a great deal of discussion,
which showed plainly that South Carolina had no idea of punishing white
men for wrong done to colored women, nor would she allow the wrong to
be rectified, and the original Section 34 was adopted, and is now the
fundamental law of the State.
On page (20-22) we have selected two editorials on this amendment, also
a telegram on page 23.
The following is clipped from Section 6 on Education. There are in this
State several thousand soldiers who fought for the perpetuity of the
Union, yet they are compelled to pay the poll tax ten years longer than
these who sought to destroy it.
“There shall be assessed on all taxable polls in the State between
the ages of 21 and 60 years (excepting Confederate soldiers above the
age of 50 years) an annual tax of $1 on each poll, the proceeds of
which tax shall be expended for school purposes in the several school
districts in which it is collected.”
Claflin College was advocated for colored students, taught by Negroes;
the best, wherever they could be found, should be secured.
The committee on order, style and revision had the work ready, and
all that was needed was the signature of the members to make the
Constitution final. The members went up in county delegations and
signed the new organic law.
President Evans and Vice President Jones signed the new Constitution as
the officers present, and then came Abbeville and the other counties on
down. When Beaufort was reached, Delegate Smalls asked to be excused
from signing the Constitution, as he would not sign a Constitution with
such an article on suffrage. He was unanimously excused. He was the
only member of the Beaufort delegation present.
Some one during the progress of the signing sent up a resolution that
members not signing the Constitution should not be paid. Gen. Smalls
said he would walk home rather than sign the instrument. President
Evans did not press the resolution, and members generally thought
lightly of the matter, and it was not even put to the Convention.
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