On the record
The makers of the law evidently intended that it should apply to the negro alone, for it was administered on that basis with rigorous severity.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Blaine asserts that the law was intentionally designed to target African Americans, reflecting systemic racism.
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More from James Blaine
With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined.
He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party.
The deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish.
It was the insane folly of the South, in drawing the sword against the life of the Nation, that led irresistibly to the abolition of slavery.
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