Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/547

Rh good patriot could hesitate a moment to declare himself emphatically in favor of the constitutional amendments. What reason could there possibly be for putting off this act of good faith, true patriotism and sound policy, to an indefinite future, either by direct opposition or insidious equivocation? And yet, such opposition was made and organized by all the contrivances known to the art of political trickery.

It is our duty to tell the plain truth. It so happens that in some parts of the State the Radical party has fallen under the control of politicians who desire to monopolize the local offices, and who find themselves endangered in the possession of the spoils by the removal of political disabilities from those who might vote against them; and those spoilsmen, together with a class of narrow-minded persons, whose only political capital and wisdom consist in the resentments and battle-cries of the past, formed the scheme of maintaining their ascendancy at any price. To this end the State convention of the Radical party was to be packed and controlled, the passage of any resolution favoring the adoption of the constitutional amendments was to be prevented and the nomination for the governorship of a man representing them to be secured. And in order to pack and control that convention, means were resorted to so outrageous as to be almost without precedent in the history of political parties.

A basis of representation was invented dividing the white and the colored voters into two distinct classes, and to the colored voters, who had never exercised the right of suffrage, a representation was given in the State convention at the rate of one delegate to ninety voters, while the whites had to content themselves with a representation at the rate of one delegate to one hundred and forty constituents. And measures were taken at the same time, by all the appliances of demagogism, to unite the whole