Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1868 — Voting in Georgia. [ARTICLE]

Voting in Georgia.

“A Slaveholder that Was,” and that would evidently like still to be, in a few lively lines from Savannah, informs us that tbe negro was orig inaliy sold to “tbe South” by the ‘ internal Yaukee,” und nfier pronouncing us “moan, low-life liars,” winds up by asking, “Why don't you give tho negro the right to voto North?” Lot us speak of this Stato. If Now York, like Georgia, had inado war upon the Government of the United States, and after a sharp and bloody struggle bad been reduced to submission —and it had become perfectly clear that in order to have a sufficient joyal "party in the State,.the colored population or any other disfranchised class must bo made voters, it would be done. And if the circumstances were such that the question had be on left by tbo Government to tbe State itself to decide whether the disfranchised cTiYss should vote, and the propoai-. tiou had been contemptuously rejected. tbe Government, would liEflaand most necessary to promote the general welfare of New York aud of the country. That is precisely what it has done in Georgia. When that State and others were left without any government Whatever, tbo United States said, “You bavo cost us three hundred and fifty thousand lives and four thousand millions of dollars. Now.we can not put a premium npon rebellion and reward it when unsuccessful by giving you increased political power. The slaves are now free. You say that you don’t wish them to vote. Very well, decide that for youvselves—but if you decide that they shall not, then they must not be counted in the basis of representation. One voter id South Caidtina must not be equal at tbe polls to three men in the State of New York. Decide for yourselves.’’ This was the fourteenth amendment. And the States in question spurned it. Then the Government said, “If you insist upon an actual gain of power by your baffled rebellion, we will settlo the matter for the good ql the whole.’’ And it passed tha reconstruction taws.

Colored suffrage is a matter of State policy in tha largest Bense. — The war waged by “the South” to destroy the Government gave the Government, when successful, the right to regulate tbe suffrage in certain States. It did in them wbat circumstances, iudfiding the action of those States, showed to‘ be essential to the general welfare both of those States and of the country. The war has not given the Governnient a right to regulate suffrage in the State of New York. If it had, we assure “ a Slaveholder that Was,” amt, please Heavenl that never again shall be, that we should strenuously urgb upon the Government the good policy of perfect equality at tbe polls. But ns it is a subject to be decided by the people of the State, we lose no opportunity of urging it upon them. Meanwhile our ..correspondent ought to be able to see that, ae a matter of fact, negroes vote in Georgia to-day because the white people of Georgia refused to decide aiffl-Ti r