The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1867-12-25
WELCOME, ALABAMA!

i lfc AlaDdnd convention has aCJOurneu.
after having framed republican constitn-
tion which challenges comparison with that
of any of the free States. 1t is fitting
monument to. liberty, built on a soil which
hitherto produced only barvests of sedition.
and having among its architects class of
men two hundred years swamped in the
quagmiresof slave -barbarism and ignorance
There are epochs which operate as resur-
rections of the immortal mind, in which
man rises from the dungeon Of oppression
into which the preiudices of a powerful
caste had consigned him. The Alabama
convention is the result of the reformatory
spirit of the century. 1t is to the South the
mailing of their political thesis to the door
of the crumbling citadel Of aristocracy. It
is the dawn of the republican dynasty of
the Gulf, accepting thankfully the living
lessons of battle. 1t is sublime effort of
the presiding genius of just Government
to marshal all the interests of man into the
army of humanity.
We have seen rebellion desolate one third
of our lovely land, and like great cyclone
sweeping away all moral influences, all gov
ernmental imrnunities, leaving behind a
darkness deeper than the midnight of the
IronAges. But from all this gloom we now
see the genius of law and order rising gar
landed with new liberties, and speaking
from his lips, as Memnon's statute at the
dawn Of every morning, the first sentence
of AIabama's bill of rights " We hold these
truths to be self ecident, that all men are
created equal; that they are endoaced Jy their
Creator soith certain inaliena6le rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit
Of happiness" .
For ninety -one years has the harmony of
those sacred words been silenced by the
clangor of slavery's chains. When the IA
theirs died they might well have said with
Kepler, II leave not my laws to the present
| but to the remote future; century hence
| will yindicate their truth" Almost cen
tury has passed since the Nations bill of
rights was framed Ere it shall have entire
| ly passed, dare we not hope is not the ac-
| ton of the Alabama Constitutional COnven-
| tion an earnest-that the whole land will
put on the faith of '76, and round the CEN
tury by grand triumph of civilization and
| the rights of man? f's
1t will be grand consulnmation when
435, 900 of Gods images take upon them
SELVES the solemn responsibilities of man.
hood, hitherto denied them, and walk hand
N hand with their enslavors to the temple
of freedom, there to enter mutually into
| those sacred covenants of State which recog-
nize no determinations except between guilt
and innocence, and acknowledge the inal-
ienable rights silently pledged by natures
laws to our common humanity.
The Alabama constitution is the counter
part of the great primitive instrument of
the nation But it goes bevond its national
prototype, as it should, else its trainers were
towards and not heroes in this great war
| with error. They had been no fit cham
pIons of truth had they neglected to give
the essentials of manhood that fixity which
places them forever beyond the cavils of the
designing, and causes them to stand as an
impenetrablc bulwark againsf guilty agita-
tors The convention have, therefore, un-
mistakably adjusted the status of all her
citizens-have. as it were, after having en-
tered the realm of progressive freedom and
law, placed at the entrance the @gis of their
hopes on which is inscribed the clause :
That no form of slavery shall exist in this
State, and thereshall be no involuntary serv-
itude otherwise than for the punishment Of
crime of which the party shall have been
duly convicted" so as to break the retreat
of those welded to the errors OF the past,
and warn them of the wolf that loiters with
out the fold Ea
True to the instincts of selfpreservation,
the men who have borne the stripes of tyr.
annical and rebellious masters have guarded
their initial work with the constitutional
checks placed in their hands by national au.
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