Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 36.djvu/347

Rh XVIII, of a proposed constitution: (i) No negro or mulatto shall migrate to or settle in this State after the adoption of this constitution. (2) No negro or mulatto shall have the right of suffrage or hold any office in this State. (3) The general assembly shall pass all laws necessary to carry into effect the provisions of this article. In the convention the first was adopted by a vote of 59 to 7! the second by a vote of 42 to 18. and the last by a vote of 45 to 18. This article was submitted to a special vote of the people, each section was approved by a majority; the constitution itself was defeated by a majority of 16,051 votes; but the vote on article XVIII, was as follows: The first section was approved by a majority of 100,590 votes; the second by a majority of 176,291 votes, only 35,649 voting against it, and the final section was passed by a majority of 154,524 votes. Where was the lash for them who, under the Illinois act of 1853, reduced freedom to bondage, and by these provisions prohibited the negro all entrance into the State? The answer is obvious. What politics could reside in such intrusion? But did he who, in one decade, threw his mantle over the killing of Lovejoy, acquire in the next a right to corroborate his wrath by that of the Almighty? Nor had he not been of counsel for a Kentucky master, seeking to recover fugitive slaves ? If slavery was malum per se, how did that master's sin surpass his own? Lincoln's biographer, Mr. Joseph H. Barrett, is much comforted to have such good proof, "after all that has been said to the contrary, that he had no objection to a good client with a bad cause." What! Philanthropy could turn coat for a fee! No man has a right to be indifferent to the transgression going on around him. But the transgression which concerns him most nearly is his own. For indifference here, he does not quite compound by "bloody instructions" for the rest of mankind. Prophecy is relieved of much that were afflictive, when the prophets, instead of dwelling sadly on their own sins, confine their message to dwelling gratefully on the sins of others. They who were "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity," undoubtedly had no eyes for their own. On June 1, 1862, Colonel (afterwards General) Thomas Kirby Smith, of the Union army, wrote home, of "the spacious lawns and parks, and cultivated grounds kept trim and neat" in