The Mountain Democrat

NEGRO SUFFRAGE.—A portion of the Abolition papers and leaders are zealously urging that the right of suffrage be extended to negroes by the United States Government. They very naturally fear that Abolition rule must soon end if white men alone are allowed to vote—that it can be perpetuated only by a class of ignorant and idle stipendiaries who can be made to understand that in voting for the Abolitionists they vote for their own support in idleness and sloth. President Johnson, it seems, does not readily embrace this new doctrine—indeed it is reported that he is inflexibly opposed to it. He believes with Douglas that "this is a white man's Government, founded by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever." He claims to be a State Rights Democrat of the Jackson school and professes a regard for the Constitution, and that instrument seems to stand in the way of any and all Federal interference with the question of suffrage. Section 3, article 1, of the Constitution reads as follows: "The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature." "Now," says the New York World and it appears difficult to escape the argument, "Now, if the Federal Government cannot prescribe the qualifications for the elective franchise in the election of its own officers, it cannot prescribe the qualifications for the election of the officers of a State." The President of United States takes the same position.—He says, and all right thinking men agree with him, that "the States, and not the Federal Government, must regulate the elective franchise."