Our Position on Great Questions

The Planet refutes an argument printed in the Washington Post on the disenfranchisement of African American voters.

The Richmond, Va. Daily Times, in its issue of the 7th inst., under the caption of “Good Advice to Negroes but Virginia is Democratic” discussed the letter of Mr. Edward S. Tafft, an alleged Republican.
The document in question appeared in a recent issue of the Washington Post, and the writer justifies the disfranchisement of the American citizen of African descent in South Carolina.
Such statements should of itself dispose of both Mr. Tafft and his argument, but he mixes truth with error in such an ingenious way that we presume it would not be out of place for the Negro to state his estimate of his conclusions.
He charges that while the colored people vote for white men, they select the worst members of the opposite race as their leaders, and elevate to power a class of politicians who are unscrupulous and in search of plunder.
This is his charge. Let us analyze it.
No man or body of men either as leaders or private citizens would overturn the foundation of the government itself, ignore great principles and consign to serfdom a class of people that both God and man have pronounced free and equal.
The colored man has followed men whom the Democratic Party declared to be the best in the Southland, and what has been the result? Look at the Southern States and you have your answer.
They followed Gen. Wm. Mahone, the hero of the Crater in Virginia.
They voted for Gen. Fitz Lee, the favored “nephew of his uncle.” General Robert E. Lee.
They followed B. R. Tillman, in South Carolina, and are now standing by Gen Wade Hampton and allies in the same state. They followed Kolb on the one hand in Georgia and Atkinson on the other. They stood by Chalmers in Mississippi; Forrest in Louisiana, and Hogg in Texas, and yet this hypocritical Republican dares to charge the Negro with having espoused the cause of the unscrupulous demagogues of the South.
The truth is that as soon as a Democrat ceases to act with the machine-wing of his party he is put down as a demagogue, and a trickster.
Talk about good government, under the Democratic Party! Where is it? From the national government down to those of the states, what has been the record.
The state treasury of Virginia was looted. A Democratic official long since dead, stole more than two hundred thousand dollars. How much more will never be known? It seems that the examiners got tired counting.
Gen Mahone discovered fraud after fraud in the management of the state’s finances.
More money has been stolen, misappropriated and otherwise made away than was expended during the entire time of management of the “carpet-baggers” in South Carolina.
Tillman’s exposures of the condition of affairs in South Carolina prior to his accession to office is astounding.
Kolb’s declarations concerning Georgia is an object lesson while the Southern states present a condition of degeneracy and corruption that could not have been out-done during the palmist days of Rome’s decay.
And this is the showing presented by the government of the white man.
They yell about Negro supremacy and the effort of the colored man to secure social equality, and yet these same howling hypocrites live upon a plane of absolute equality with Negro women whose houses they furnish and whose illegitimate children they educate.
This alleged Republican tells the Negro that there is but one hope, and he encouches it in the following language:

There is but one hope for the Negro, and that hope is dependent upon his publishing to the world a declaration of absolute political independence.
He must free himself from those whose only purpose is to use him to further ends of greed and avarice. HE must gain a large measure of self-respect and be content to move in a social sphere which does not encroach upon that established by the white man, and he must be satisfied, if he would live in the South, to pursue the even tenor of his way without cherishing political ambition.

We presume he intends to state that the violation of any one of the promises he lays down dissipates the hope dependent upon the exercise of all of them. Well, so be it.
We have already shown that we are politically independent. Our self-respect is too well-known to admit of a question, and our failure to encroach upon the private social relationship of the white man or the black one either is recognized by all who choose to observe our past and present demeanor. We do cherish political ambition and shall continue so to do in common with every other citizen. It is a right accorded us by the constitution which we have no desire or intention to relinquish or cast aside.
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“Our Position on Great Questions,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed December 11, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1428.