Away with the $250 Suffrage!—Equal Rights, and Nothing Less!

Mr. Editor: Permit me, through the columns of the North Star, to call the attention of the proscribed citizens of New York to the importance of agitating for their rights until the last vestige of political inquality is obliterated.

The odious clause providing that no colored person shall exercise the elective franchise, unless possessed of real estate to the value of $250, still disgraces the constitution of our State, degrades our manhood and belittles our more favored fellow citizens. And yet we have not the patiotism, manhood, or public spirit to be up and a doing to wipe out the foul blot, Proscribed New Yorkers arise from your slumber! Shake off your lethargy! Our brethren in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut, are already in the field. Why stand we idle all the day? "Is rest so sweet, or ease so dear," as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?—Forbid it Heaven! Forbid it Almighty God! Have we forgot that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty? That he who would be Free must himself strike the blow?

What though the "bogus" republicans—spurious Americans (who would well fill the ranks of Louis Napoleon's Roman, liberty suppressing army) voted a thundering Navy to the proposition of equal suffrage in 1846, and thus gave the lie to all their professions of Democracy? Yet let us hope that time and events have caused even them to have made some progress in the first rudiments of our country's fundamental principles, viz: That all men are equal—not in stature, intellect, morals or manners, (for we colored Americans know that we have better manners than our white fellow-citizens generally,) but equal in rights. That every man should be left with a "mind unfettered, and space to rise," and he will find his own level in the moral, intellectual, and social scale.

But, says some one, Garrisonians will not vote, and why should they agitate for the right of suffrage? We would answer that the moral power of him who says he will not vote, as long as he does not possess the right, is diminished. Others may say that he makes a virtue of necessity. For my part, I will not vote, though possessed of one—nor would I if the Constitution of the United States was the purest instrument under Heaven—if the condition was property instead of manhood, thereby rendering me a mere automaton, presenting so much landed interest of the State. I scorn the act—spurn the bribe. Nevertheless, we go heart and hand for equal political privileges: the right to vote or not, and let each exercise his influence in community by voting or withholding, according to the dictates of his conscience. As an instance of the influence of withholding a vote when possessed of one, the society of Friends generally, and the New England Abolitionist withold their votes, and yet maintain an equal position in society, because possessed of the right. They exert a moral power. But if they were denied the right, as we are, they would be politically degraded. To use a financial term, we are $250 below par. The State puts its heavy foot upon us, and stamps us with the seal of inferiority; and our fellow-citizens say to us, "we are holier than you." Let us hold local meetings—a State Convention — appoint a State central, and local committees—and agitate through the living speaker, and through the press, until we shall be quoted at "par on change." Mr. Editor speak out on this subject. "And thou, too, Brutus."

Yours for Liberty and Reform,

Brooklyn, L.I., Oct 25, 1849.

J. C.Holly, Joseph Cephas

Joseph Cephas Holly (1825–55), the elder brother of emigrationist James Theodore Holly, was a pragmatic black abolitionist who identified himself as a Garrisonian yet supported political abolitionists, including Douglass. Born to free black parents in Washington, D.C., Holly moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1844 and became a shoemaker. Among the early subscribers to the North Star, Holly wrote five articles on American slavery for the paper between February and June 1848. He addressed antislavery appeals to northern blacks and whites and to southern nonslaveholders, linking the rights of poor whites with those of blacks. In 1850 Holly moved to Burlington, Vermont, and established a bootmaking business with the financial backing of Lewis Tappan. He embarked upon tours of Vermont, serving as an agent for Douglass’s newspaper and speaking on a number of issues related to the needs and rights of African Americans. Although Holly and his brother James held divergent views on colonization and emigration, they lectured together, debating the issues publicly. Shortly after Joseph moved to Rochester in 1853, he was a delegate to the black national convention that assembled there, and he published a volume of poetry, Freedom’s Offering (1853). NS, 4, 18 February, 10 March, 7 April, 9 June 1848, 6 July 1849, 1 February 1850; FDP, 22 January, 5 February, 23 March, 1, 15 April 1852, 17 June, 22 July, 28 October 1853, 12 January 1855; David M. Dean, Defender of the Race: James Theodore Holly, Black Nationalist Bishop (Boston, 1979), 3–20; Geraldine O. Matthews, Black American Writers, 1773–1949: A Bibliography and Union List (Boston, 1975), 148; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 108–10; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:25–26n