Negro Suffrage- The Radicals and their schemes- What the President will do, etc.

The Radicals "scheme" to guarantee African American suffrage in the District, and the possible outcomes of such legislation worries the Dispatch.

Washington, January 21.- Evidences are accumulating to-day that the radical leaders in Congress who got up the program to destroy the President's policy by demonstration before the session, and at its beginning, are hatching all sorts of extraordinary schemes in the nature of a fearful central absolutism If the President signs the District bill, as the radicals say he surely will, then they consider that the course is clear for a like bill for all the States under the clause of the Constitutional guaranteeing a republican form of government to them. Under the new amendment to the Constitution the radical leaders are operating by concert upon the President, but opinions differ among them as to what he will do. It is the first step that costs. It will be remembered, in this connection that the President, in a recent address to a Carolina deputation, said he was for giving the negro a fair trial in this country ; that whatever were his views as a Tennessean, or in respect to negroes in his District, he was opposed to forcing negro suffrage upon the Southern States by legislation of Congress.

“Negro Suffrage- The Radicals and their schemes- What the President will do, etc.,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed June 1, 2023, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/41.