Were He To Enfranchise Them And Send
Them About Their Business, They Would Come Back Upon His Hands.
Were He To Enfranchise Them And Pay Them Wages For Work, They Would
Get The Wages, But He Would Not Get The Work.
They would get the
wages; but at the end of three months they would still fall back
upon his hands in debt and distress, looking to him for aid and
comfort as a child looks for it.
It is not easy to get rid of a
slave in a slave State. That question of enfranchising slaves is
not one to be very readily solved.
In Pennsylvania the right of voting is confined to free white men.
In New York the colored free men have the right to vote, providing
they have a certain small property qualification, and have been
citizens for three years in the State, whereas a white man need
have been a citizen but for ten days, and need have no property
qualification - from which it is seen that the position of the negro
becomes worse, or less like that of a white man, as the border of
slave land is more nearly reached. But, in the teeth of this
embargo on colored men, the constitution of Pennsylvania asserts
broadly that all men are born equally free and independent. One
cannot conceive how two clauses can have found their way into the
same document so absolutely contradictory to each other. The first
clause says that white men shall vote, and that black men shall
not - which means that all political action shall be confined to
white men.
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