come before the convention. Should it be conferred upon the colored race? If the convention abolished slavery and provided proper guarantees for the protection and security of the persons and property of the freedmen, Congress would hardly refuse to admit the Florida representatives and senators to their seats, because the freedmen were not allowed to vote. The public good of the State and of the Nation at large would not be promoted at this time by conferring the elective franchise upon the negro. The two races were not prepared for so radical a change in their social relations. There was little reason to believe that any large part of the freedmen desired to possess the elective privilege. They sought only the same protection for their rights as that given to the white man. If properly protected, they doubtless would soon adapt themselves to the new condition. They might also be stimulated to labor, said the governor, "by making vagrancy an offence punishable by temporary, involuntary servitude. They must be excluded wholly from any participation in the affairs of the government.1 The convention acted on this and other suggestions in the message and made the vagrancy act apply to negroes who were the subject of complaint by white persons, under oath, before any justice of the peace or before the Circuit Court. When accused, the offender, unless satisfying the Court, was required to give bond to the governor to the amount of not more than five hundred dollars for good behavior and future industry for one year. Failing to give security, he should be indicted as a vagrant, and, on conviction, pay a fine equal to the bond, and be imprisoned for not more than twelve months, or, at the discretion of the Court, be sold for the same period.2 The act, by re

1 Id., 209-211.

2 Ordinance of November 4, 1865; Id., 212.

220

RATIFICATION CONDITIONAL.

quiring only complaint and conviction by hostile white men, practically made every negro in the State a vagrant.

The President was notified that the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment would depend upon the action of Alabama and Georgia. If these ratified, the Florida legislature would do the same; otherwise there would be difficulty.1 The President promptly pronounced the condition "improper and inadmissible."2 Not until the twenty-eighth of December did the legislature act, when, by a joint resolution, which evidently contained all the ideas of negro suffrage which the Governor had expressed in his message, it ratified the amendment, with the understanding that it did not confer upon Congress the power to legislate on the political status of the freedmen in the State. Meanwhile the amendment had been under consideration in northern legislatures, and on the fourth of January, New Jersey and Iowa adopted it.*

3

Early in December, 1865, the provisional governor of Texas received from Secretary Seward a copy of the Thirteenth Amendment to be submitted to the legislature." But this was not the first notice of the amendment he had received. The President had called upon him in October

1 Governor Marvin to Secretary Seward, November 18.

p. 215.

2 Seward to Governor Marvin, November 20. Id., p. 215.

Id.,

3 Documentary History, II, 624-626. The ratification is also given in Senate Executive Document, No. 26, p. 219. In the Senate, December 27, 19 ayes to no nays; in the House, December 28, 36 ayes to 2 nays.

4 New Jersey, January 23, 1866. See the ratification in Documentary History, II, p. 627. The vote in the Senate was 11 yeas and 10 nays; in House 34 yeas and 24 nays.

Iowa ratified unanimously in both Houses, January 24, 1866. See Bulletin, No. 7, pp. 629-633. (Doc. Hist., II.)

5 December 9, 1865; Governor A. J. Hamilton to Secretary Seward; Senate Executive Document, No. 26, p. 96.

for a report of the work of the State convention, but it was the seventeenth of November before the Governor issued his proclamation for the election of delegates on the eighth of January, and named the seventh of February for the meeting of the convention.1 In his message to this body, he justified his action in not calling the convention in September; at that time the majority of the people of the State were not registered as voters, and there was no money to defray the expenses of the convention. Excepting its recommendation on negro suffrage, the message was similar in character to messages issued by other provisional governors, and made similar suggestions.2

The pro-slavery element in the convention was strong, as shown by the large vote on the twenty-sixth,3 against the ordinance abolishing slavery. By a slightly smaller majority, the ordinance of secession was declared null and void.4 This ordinance provoked a long and somewhat angry debate. Should the act of secession be "annulled," or "repealed," or simply "renounced?" Should it be declared "null and void from the beginning,' or simply "void from this time?" By a majority of two votes it was decided to be null and void from the beginning. But the larger and final vote declared that it was simply "null and void." The significance of the vote consisted in the disclaimer of the right of secession. The Confederate war debt was declared void."

5

1 President Johnson to Governor Hamilton, October 30; the Governor to the President, November 17, 1865. Id., 242.

2 Journal of the Texas Convention, p. 627.

3 56 yeas and 26 nays; thus making Texas the 34th State to prohibit slavery. Journal, 100.

4 March 15. Journal, 184.

5 Journal, 158.

6 55 to 21. Journal, 184.

7 Journal, p. 190.

222

NEGRO SUFFRAGE IN TEXAS.

The radical Union men were in the minority, but the convention enrolled many violent and impracticable members.1 The relatively small majority for the measures upon which the restoration of the State to Federal relations depended, suggests the almost hopeless diversity of prevailing opinions.

The convention made no change in the qualification of the elective franchise, but continued the old exclusion of "Indians not taxed, Africans and their descendants.'

Governor Marvin of Florida had marshaled the principal arguments against negro suffrage, but it was in the Texas convention that the most forceful appeal was heard for negro suffrage, made anywhere North or South at this time. The appeal for the extension of the right of voting to the colored citizens of the State was not for the purpose of establishing any new principle, it was said, but to give practical effect to the American theory of government and to return to the usages adopted by the founders of the republic. The Jeffersonian ordinance of 17843 for the government of the Northwest, had not discriminated against the negro, and the ordinance of 1787 gave free male inhabitants the right to vote. While the Articles of Confederation were in force, free men of color had voted in some States," and the Federal Convention had refused to limit the suffrage to free white inhabitants, a proposition for this purpose submitted by South Carolina receiving the vote of only one other State. In Massa

1 Governor Hamilton to the President, February 11, 1866. Senate Executive Document, No. 26, p. 242.

2 Texas Constitution, 1845; Article III, Section 1.

3 See pp. 1-4, Vol. II.

4 Ib.

Vt., Mass., N. J., Pa., N. C.

• The statement is erroneous.

Probably the speaker referred

to the refusal of Congress, June 25, 1778, to adopt the amendment

NEGRO SUFFRAGE IN TEXAS.

223

chusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, every free man had at some time been permitted to vote.

Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia and the southern States generally, excepting South Carolina, had given free men the right. For nearly forty years the colored man voted in Tennessee;1 and the legislature of Colorado, in its first session in 1861, had given the right to vote without distinction of color or race. To every State in the Union the United States guaranteed a republican form of government. Had not the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in Congress already proposed an amendment to the National Constitution, which provided among other things, that whenever the elective franchise should be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color should be excluded from the basis of representation.2 This amendment, or an equivalent, would undoubtedly soon be ratified and would apply to all States where the suffrage was based on color, although practically the effect would be chiefly felt in the late slaveholding States.

If the colored race were to be counted on the basis of representation but were disfranchised, the whites, in the late slaveholding States, would be represented in Con

to the Articles of Confederation urged by South Carolina, to limit the "privileges and immunities of citizens," in the fourth article, to free "white" persons. See Elliot, I, 90. But doubtless the statement, as preserved in the text, counted as a fact with some members, and doubtless with the speaker. He seems to have thought that the National Constitution conferred or limited the franchises. 1 1796-1834. For an interesting account of the method pursued in Tennessee to deprive the free negroes of the franchise, by the constitution of 1834, see Caldwell's Constitutional History of Tennessee, 144.

2 The reference is to the Fourteenth Amendment, at the time under discussion in Congress, and passed as a joint resolution on the 16th of June, 1866. See pp. 235-277.