The charge is frequently made that “the negro votes from instinct with the Republican party,” which is as much to say that, instead of using his reason, his common sense, or whatever other aid is given him to discern the right and avoid the wrong, he supports Republicanism from a kind of blind, unthinking, animal preference. We know that a large proportion of the Democracy are unable to give an excuse for the prejudice that is in them, unless it is hatred of the negro and fear of his rivalry in national politics, but the colored voter is void of any such motive to which to appeal. The South, from the hour he became a citizen until the present day, has given colored men the choice of the alternative to vote the Democratic ticket, or suffer the consequences of favoring the organization that gave him his freedom. The eloquent colored orator, Prof. Langston, who spoke at Lansingburgh last Saturday, discussed this very point, and thoroughly overturned the notion that colored men vote the Republican ticket from “instinct.” “They vote like men,” said the speaker, “with their rights and lives at stake. They look around them and see nothing but menace to their rights and personal danger from their old masters, the southern Democracy. Now and then a Hamburg massacre tells them of the character and extent of their danger. The peaceable exercise of the ballot is denied them. They are shot down at the polls, or murdered by Democrats at the midnight hour, when at home and unsuspecting danger. What else can the negro do but look to the Republican party for protection, for the recognition of his rights, for the moral sympathy the freedman is entitled to on his first introduction to a new life. It is this consideration that makes the negro vote with the Republican party and not with the Democratic party. It is this that makes him afraid of the specious phrases in [Samuel Jones] Tilden’s letter of acceptance respecting the ‘protection of all citizens whatever their former condition.’ But there is no condemnation of the murderers of the negroes at Hamburg or in Mississippi [Meridian Massacre of 1871, Vicksburg Massacre of 1874, Clinton Massacre of 1875, Yazoo City Race Riot of 1875, among others.]. Tilden fears that he would offend the southern Democrats, should he condemn such outrages, and he is accordingly silent upon these points. The letter of acceptance is significant for its omissions upon such vital questions of the day. The colored man turns to the Republican party, to its platform, to the letter of acceptance of Mr. [Rutherford Birchard] Hayes, and finds in them all a recognition of his rights, a condemnation of his murderous oppressors, and the spirit and pledge of protection. The colored voter does just as a white man would do under the same circumstances; resolves to support his friends and protectors. The negro does not vote from ‘instinct’ but from the desire to help make supreme the principles of the party whose feet are planted on the Declaration of Independence.”
The very omission mentioned by Prof. Langston shows conclusively that Tilden is in the hands of his party, whose record is daily written in negro blood all over the South. His election would only endure a more terrible proscription of Republican voters, white and black, in the South, than this country has yet seen. It cannot be that the people will consent to the disgrace, to say nothing of the danger, of permitting the Democracy to regain its lost power.
Troy Daily Times. August 8, 1876: 2 col 2.