The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1866-11-28
aALEIeH, N. G., WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 2g, 1866

department or Office thereof" This authori-
! ty has always been understood to apply to
to any powers conferred on the government
of the United States, by amendments subse-
quently made. and has repeatedly received
the consideration of the Judiciary. II the
design of this fifth section is simply to re-
affirm the long established principle of power
necessarily implied under the provision just
| recited, it is needless surplusage; but If, as
! its special insertion indicates, it is intended
to amplify the various powers which would |
be reasonably implied from the sections
which precede it, and to give Congress pc
culiar authority over the subject embraced in
the proposed fourteenth article, it is mis-
chievous and dangerous.
| If there be any feature in the American
| system Of freedom which gives to it practi-
cal value, it is the fact that a municipal code
| is provided under the Jurisdiction OF each
| State, by which all controversies as to life,
\ liberty or property, except in the now lim-
/ tied field of Federal jurisdiction, are deter
mined by Jury of the country or neighbor-
hood where the parties reside and the con-
test arises; but if Congress is hereafter to be-
come the protector Of life, liberty and prop
erty in the States, and the guarantor of equal
: protection Of the laws, and by appropriate
| legislation to declare system of rights and
remedies which can be administered only in
the Federal Courts. then the most common
and familiar officers of Justice must be trans
ferred to the few points in the State where
these Courts are held, and to judges and
other officers, desiring and holding their
commissions, not from the authority and
| people of the State, as heretofore but from
the President and Senate of the United
States. The States, as by so much, are to
cease to be selt-governing communities as
heretofore, and trespasses against the person,
assaults and batteries, false imprisonments,
and the like, where only our own citizens are
parties, must be regulated by the Congress of
the nation and adjudged only in its Courts. I
cannot believe that the deliberate Judgment
of the people of any State or section will ap-
prove such an innovation for, although its
annoyances may be ours to-day. they must
expect them to be theirs tomorrow.
| The people of this State with singular
approach to unanimity, are sincerely desi-
rious of restoration Of their constitutional
relations with the American Union. In the
face of circumstances, rendering it nearly im-
possible. they have paid its government the
taxes of former years, laid when another de
| tacto government, whose powers they could
not have resisted, il they would, was making
levies in money and in kind almost greater
than they could bear, they acquiesced in the
extinction Of slavery which annihilated more
than half their wealth; they have borne
with patience the exclusion of their senators
and representatives from the halls of Con-
gress, where they have had no one to contra
dict or explain the most exaggerated mis-
representations. or even to make known their
grievances How long this unnatural con-
dition ofour relationsi is to continue, it seems,
we shall be allowed to have no share in de-
termining. No time has been set. and no
condition proposed, on which it may be ter
minated. In the meantime, trust, we shall
meet events as they arise with a reasonable
and manly fOrtitude, ready at all times to
fulfill our duties as patriotic citizens, but un-
der no circumstances willing to sacrifice the
honor and rights of the State, as member
of the UniOn-nOt in the sense of the advo-
Gates of secession, but as taught by Ietlrell, and
Marshall, and Story, and Kent, and Webster,
and in which moderate men every where
North and South, before the war, were sup
posed to concur.
Anxious as was to avert the late war, and
have at all times been to compose our troubles
on the basis of the Union as our fathers franz
ed it, can perceive in this proposed amend
ment nothing calculated to perpetuate the
Union; but its tendency seems to me better
suited to perpetuate sectional alienation and
estrangement, and have, therefore, no hest
tation in recommending that it be not rati-
fed
Most of the African race among us were
lately slaves Their masters cared for their
subsistence. Their habits illy fit them to
provide for their indispensable daily wants.
Nothing can be more absurd than the sup
position that the great body ofthem can par
ticipate in governmental affairs with any dis
cretion. A very few of them are discreet and
virtuous, and have considerable intelligence
and when the State shall be left free to man
age her internal affairs without extraneous
interference, do not doubt that the question
as to what share ought to be granted them in
; the elective franchise. will be candidly con-
sidered. To grant universal suffrage to them
now, is manifestly absurd.
What ought to be done in reference to this
race, if its consideration could be approach
ed, apart from passion and politics. would
embarrass the wisest statesman and philan-
thropist Unhappily, our present condition
/
present it blends itself with our national af.
fairs. From the earliest period of our his
tory under the National Union, it has been
the cause, the pretext, for sectional strife,
Disnni ,nists, North and South, have con-
stantly used it to ALLEVIATE one section of our
country from the other. When these strifes
at last eliminated in war, and slavery was
suddenly abolished, and the South thereby
greiveously impoverished and constrained to
accommodate itself to violent change, more
suddenly introduced than the teachings of
experience would seem to warrant, all patri-
otic men looked for national repose as set.
of. The one great theory of our government,
which was supposed to be settled, was that
each State should manage its own internal
: affairs. But so far from the abolition of
slavery having composed our sectional diff
ferences, it has only intensified them,-the
negro being the subject Of strife. The North
Gained that humanity required its interpo-
sition to protect the recently emancipated
slaves from aggression on the part of the
white people of the South, and new and
strange tribunals were instituted among us
to manage their race, claiming and exerci-
sing, long after hostilities had ceased, exclu-
sive jurisdiction, civil and criminal, over
whites and blacks, as to all matters to which
a freedman was party, and resting their
decision and modes of proceedings on no
known rules
1t behooves every patriotic mind to solve
the problem-what is best to be done to
avoid this sectional strife in relation to the
negro Is it possible, in entire consistency
Al Al n . = r .