W[illia]m Shapcott to Frederick Douglass, November 26, 1856

For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

WILL THE NEXT LEGISLATURE GIVE TO THE COLORED PEOPLE OF THIS STATE THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE?

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, ESQ.: DEAR SIR:—In your leader of the 21st inst., you cautiously allude to this question of colored suffrage, and reccommend that the colored men of this State, appeal once more to the powers that be to remove from the statute books of this State, the cruel political disability under which they labor, and flood the incoming body with petitions that they cannot pass by unnoticed. I have not forgotten, Sir, your masterly effort before a similar body, and we have seen the effect so far of all the appeals made to their sense of justice in giving to the African race what by nature properly and legitimately belong to them.

What of hope, you express is based on the Republican nature of the body, comprising the next Legislature. A review of the Legislation on this question for the past few years may not be uninteresting or unprofitable in assisting us to arrive at some definite conjecture of what the present effort will be.

I think previous to 1820 a large class of white male inhabitants of this State labored under the same political disability the African race are now laboring under. A cry was raised by the opponents of this political reform, and withstanding the opposition, the State acted justly and threw down the old barbarous moneyed distinction among men, and placed all white males of Constitutional age on political equality. Some twenty-five years after this period it was thought the Constitution of this State was inadequate to meet the demands of the times and under the sanction of law, a Convention of delegates from all parts of the State assembled for the purpose of revising the old Constitution or making a new one.

It was hoped by the Anti-Slavery portion of our State, that the delegates of that Convention would exercise the power delegated to them and extend the elective franchise to all male inhabitants of this State who had not disfranchised themselves by the criminal laws of this State.

After several weeks of labor and a vast amount of expense to the State, this august body detached the suffrage question from the various questions in this instrument and submitted it to the people of the State for their approval or rejection, together with the new Constitution.

The public journals of the State who favored the adoption of this measure, recommended

public meetings, called in every School District in the State to ascertain how the question stood. I was living in Madison Co. at this time, and on Sunday after the usual services I announced a meeting for the next evening and stated its object. After we retired from the house, I was taken to task by a Presbyterian Deacon, for keeping the community in a constant turmoil on this question. He was a good man and an Anti-Slavery Whig, and gave it as his opinion that the question of giving the right of suffrage to the colored man would be carried by an overwhelming majority, and remarked that the Whig party to a man would go for the measure.

At the expiration of one week we met again in the same place, and a more disappointed man I never saw: says he, I am utterly disgusted with the faithless, perfidious, character of the Whig party, and the cruelty of the whole people of the State of New York.

Now allow me to ask, who are the men to compose our next Legislature? they are men principally from the old Whig party; the Republican party throughout the State have generally nominated men of their own political faith in matters of State policy; and if they are true in the next Legislature to this great principle of humanity, I shall feel happily disappointed and think they have acted on the true principle that charity begins at home (or rather that justice should begin at home.)

It must be conceded that the Republican party of this State have it in their power to restore the manhood of a large class of men in this State, and I conceive the influence of this act will not be confined to this State alone; if the State of New York should acknowledge the manhood of the colored race and place them where they belong, on a political equality with other men, those States who have followed the example of New York in her injustice, will follow her in throwing off this accursed and damning political disability.

I now ask Frederick Douglass, and other intelligent men who are proscribed in consequence of color, to explain on what ground they hope for politicians to come to their rescue. Is the deep seated hatred against color abated one whit since 1846, when the question was submitted to the whole people of the State, or do they conceive that the issue in regard to the extension of slavery in the territories of the United States in 1856 has changed the opinions of politicians in the Legislative halls of New York to that extent that they dare in the light of the sun, and before Israel's God declare by a solemn act of Legislation the colored men of New

York to be free? That the time for the African race to demand their political rights is propitious as far as the professions, and position of the incoming State administration is concerned, must be admitted by every thinking man. If the Republican party are true to their professions and the prayer of the injured descendants of Africa should be granted, we shall be satisfied that the expressions of sympathy for the freedom of the vast territories of the United States, are pure, and unalloyed; but if they dispose of this great and vital question of humanity, as politicians have usually disposed of such questions, where will the confidence of future generations repose in times of great political excitement, or what will be the fate of such apostates as profess the feel for the bleeding and oppressed of distant territories, while they refuse to life the burden from the shoulders of the man who is their neighbor?

Let the advice of Frederick Douglass be carried out; let our Smiths, Garnetts, Clarks, Watkins, Douglass, and others, besiege the halls of Legislation, and by the thunder of their eloquence make the servants of the people feel that the time for professions is past, and the day has dawned, in which it is time to work.—Let every district in the State be represented by petitions, and let the mantle of John Q. Adams, be invoked to fall on some man that will, like the old man faithful, demand in the name of God, Justice, and Humanity, the political rights of the colored people of the State of New York.

If freedom in Kansas is worth anything to the citizens of that distant territory, it is equally valuable to the colored people of New York. If the Legislature of New York will not give the colored man his rights and throw around him the safeguards of citizenship, it will furnish another proof of political hypocrisy; we pretend sympathy for a distant territory, while in our midst we are guilty of the basest and most cruel species of oppression.

WM. SHAPCOTT.

AUBURN, Nov. 26, 1856.