1880 - Suffrage Protection

Chicago, Ill., March 12, 1880

Judge Blodgett rendered an interesting decision to-day in the nature of advice to the United States Commissioner upon an election point.

At the recent municipal election at Elgin, Ill, about seventy voters employed in the mild condensing works were notified by their superintendent to vote the no-license ticket. The license nominee thereupon applied to Commissioner Hoyne for a writ of arrest, who, being in doubt, referred the matter to Judge Blodgett, who to-day advised him that the United States Court, in a similar case, had held that the fifteenth amendment and Revised Statute 5, 507 contemplate the protection in the right of suffrage only of former slaves, and that free or white men do not come within the legal safeguards. The writ for arrest will therefore not issue.