suffrage committee as well as the
editors of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_ and the _Picayune_, the
leading daily papers of the State. Extracts from the letter were sent
out by the local representative of the Associated Press and widely
published throughout the country. These New Orleans editors expressed
to Mr. Scott their approval of the letter and their substantial
agreement with its main features, and promised to publish it in full,
which they not only did, but accompanied it by editorial reviews. This
letter stated in part:

"The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of
the South that restriction be put upon the ballot.... With the
sincerest sympathy with you in your efforts to find a way out of the
difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in the South can make a
law that will provide an opportunity or temptation for an ignorant
white man to vote and withhold the same opportunity from an ignorant
colored man, without injuring both men.... Any law controlling the
ballot, that is not absolutely just and fair to both races, will work
more permanent injury to the whites than to the blacks.

"The Negro does not object to an educational or property test, but let
the law be so clear that no one clothed with state authority will be
tempted to perjure and degrade himself by putting one interpretation
upon it for the white man and another for the black man. Study the
history of the South, and you will find that where there has been the
most dishonesty in the matter of voting, there you will find to-day
the lowest moral condition of both races. First, there was the
temptation to act wrongly with the Negro's ballot. From this it was an
easy step to dishonesty with the white man's ballot, to the carrying
of concealed weapons, to the murder of a Negro, and then to the murder
of a white man and then to lynching. I entreat you not to pass such a
law as will prove an eternal millstone about the neck of your
children."

Later in the same appeal he said: "I beg of you, further, that in the
degree that you close the ballot-box against the ignorant, that you
open the schoolhouse.... Let the very best educational opportunities
be provided for both races: and add to this the enactment of an
election law that shall be incapable of unjust discrimination, at the
same time providing that in proportion as the ignorant secure
education, property, and character, they will be given the right of
citizenship. Any ot