Freedmen’s Suffrage

The journal article, Reconstruction and Negro Suffrage, questions whether the rebellious states can question the federal government in regards to freedmen’s suffrage. According to the author, E. P. Whipple, the states in question had no say in the matter. He stated, “President Johnson has just the same right to say that negroes shall vote as to say that pardoned Rebels shall vote.” Whipple thought that only loyal states had a right to decide on voting qualifications. He did not think that qualifications such as education should be applied because then we would be putting the governmental controls back into the hands of the ex-confederates.

I also found the point at the beginning of the article very interesting. Whipple pointed out that although there were some people in the rebellious states that remained loyal to the Union there what no way to separate them from those who were not. I personally had not factored in those who had remained loyal and what would happen with them in terms of reconstruction. Whipple made the point that since there was no way to separate loyal from disloyal, all of the people of the rebellious states would be treated the same, and re-admitted back into the Union the same way as well. This was just something I had never factored in before and found interesting.

I agree with Whipple’s thoughts on the matter. If during the reconstruction period the United States government had left the rebellious states to fend for themselves and decide whether or not their state would allow the freedmen to vote or even to enact voting qualifications the freedmen would have continued to be oppressed by the ex-confederates. I agree that the voting qualifications did need to be in the hands of the federal government.

Through out the article I did see some political motives behind his reasoning; that being that the freedmen’s vote was needed for the Republican Party. He said, “we cannot safely give them anything which approaches a republican form of government, unless we allow the great mass of the free people the right to vote.” To me this says that they loyalist was not concerned with the equality of freedmen being able to vote; partly because they wanted to be able to decide if they could in the North and partly because they wanted to ensure there were enough Republican Votes among the rebellious to states to develop a Republican Government. A government they wanted to form in order to prevent an army occupation.

In this article I do agree that the rebellious states should not have had the decision as to whether the freedmen would be allowed to vote or not, but I do not agree with some of the reasoning behind it. Although the abolitionist may have had the right reasoning a lot of people did not. I though that this article was very interesting and brought out a lot of points I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Source: Whipple, E.P.,  The Atlantic monthly,