SPEECHES
AT THE
Constitutional Convention,

BY
GEN. ROBT. SMALLS.

WITH THE
RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE
PASSED BY THE
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

COMPILED BY MISS SARAH V. SMALLS.

ENQUIRER PRINT, 425 KING STREET.
CHARLESTON, S. C.
1896

Months previous to the time that the recent ConstitutionalConvention met, Conservatives and Reformers, announcedpublicly their intention to disfranchise the Negro in SouthCarolina.

For this pamphlet such portions of the new Constitutionhave been selected as affect the colored people, together withthe speeches made thereon by my father Robert Smalls;several editorials from leading newspapers; also a few ofmany letters received by him from all parts of the countrycongratulating him for the manly spirit displayed byhim and the other colored delegates, whenever the rights oftheir race were in jeopardy.

Indeed, it may have been an object lesson, planned by theAll-wise God, to teach the haughty, boastful sons of Carolinathat there are Negroes capable and amply qualified in every respectto protect themselves whenever it becomes necessary todo so; that those few representatives of the race were but a verysmall part of the rising host that time and education are bringingforward day by day in spite of lynching, caste prejudiceor any methods used against them.

No stenographers were employed by the Convention, thespeeches were not written, and are therefore not given in full,but just as they were published in the papers of the State.

SARAH V. SMALLS.

The following plan of suffrage was introduced by Hon.Robert Smalls and referred to the suffrage committee, whichreported it unfavorably, notwithstanding that he went beforethe committee and made a strong speech in advocacy of thesaid plan, and said report was adopted by the Convention:

Section 1. In all elections by the people the electors shallvote by ballot.

Sec. 2. Every male citizen of the United States of the ageof twenty-one years and upwards, not laboring under thedisabilities named in this Constitution, without distinction ofrace, color or former condition, who shall be a resident ofthis State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, orwho shall thereafter reside in this State one year, and in thecounty in which he offers to vote sixty days next precedingany election, shall be entitled to vote for all officers that arenow or hereafter may be elected by the people, and upon allquestions submitted to the electors at any elections; provided,That no person shall be allowed to vote or hold office whois now, or hereafter may be, disqualified therefor by the Constitutionof the United States, until such disqualification shallbe removed by the Congress of the United States; provided,further, That no person while kept in any alms house orasylum, or any of unsound mind, or confined in any publicprison, shall be allowed to vote or hold office.

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