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Speeches at the Constitutional Convention / With the Right of Suffrage Passed by the Constitutional Convention

Chapter 2: Introduction.
By Robert Smalls
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About This Book

The pamphlet assembles selected constitutional provisions, a proposed plan of suffrage, and speeches delivered by a Black delegate defending universal male voting rights without racial distinction, alongside contemporary editorials and congratulatory letters. It presents the delegate's arguments against measures designed to disfranchise Black voters, invokes historical context and instances of violent suppression, critiques discriminatory registration practices, and calls for fair elections and legal safeguards for electors. The reproduced suffrage clauses specify voter eligibility, residency and disqualification rules, ballot procedures, and election administration as debated at the convention.

Introduction.

Months previous to the time that the recent Constitutional Convention met, Conservatives and Reformers, announced publicly their intention to disfranchise the Negro in South Carolina.

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

Indeed, it may have been an object lesson, planned by the All-wise God, to teach the haughty, boastful sons of Carolina that there are Negroes capable and amply qualified in every respect to protect themselves whenever it becomes necessary to do so; that those few representatives of the race were but a very small part of the rising host that time and education are bringing forward day by day in spite of lynching, caste prejudice or any methods used against them.

No stenographers were employed by the Convention, the speeches 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.