Negro Suffrage. Should the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments be repealed? Speech of Hon. Edward De V. Morrell, of Pennsylvania…

“Should the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments be repealed?”

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Speech on African American voting rights and the “negro question” by Pennsylvania Congressman Edward De V. Morrell (1863–1917) of Philadelphia, provocatively subtitled “Should the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments be repealed?”

In response to resolutions suggesting for their repeal, Morrell adamantly opposed undoing these constitutional amendments, here harkening back to the turmoil of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, just 35–40 years earlier: “The struggle with which these vast armies of men engaged in for four long years resulted in what? The very changes in the Constitution which, together with the thirteenth amendment, it is now quietly proposed to annul. ... Why did we fight? Why have we died? If the one great initial result of what was sacrificed and suffered is so easily to be undone?” (pp24–25)

A lengthy Appendix reprints statistics pertaining to African-American farmers, the racist vitriol of Wade Hampton, the opinions of James A. Garfield, and numerous other statesmen. Some pencil annotations scattered throughout, likely by the owner of the bound speech, Rev. Laurence A. Deering, possibly a Roman Catholic priest from Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The sections annotated concern issues of black education, illiteracy and crime.

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