The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-11-19
loes the Result of the Late Elections
ImnIv the Abandonment of the Con-

tious Congress is bound to abandon its pre-
sent plan Of reconstruction. It assumes that
the people have decided against negro suf-
frage not only in the North, but also in the
South. It's argument is that, if the people of
Ohio, Kansas, ETC.. vote against granting the
suffrage to colored citizens in their respective
States, it would be very inconsistent for them
through their representatives to force It upon
the unreoonstructed States. Its claim is that
each State shall decide the question Of suffrage
for itself.
We shall attempt to show that negro suf-
frage in the States that are in the Union, and
negro suffrage in the Southern districts, under
the Reconstruction laws, stand upon an en-
tirely different footing; and that the Congress
sional plan of reconstruction is thoroughly
consistent with leaving each State to deter
mine the question Of suffrage for itself For
the convenience of the argument, we shall
commence with the proposition last enun-
slated.
The Republican theory is that there are no
States, in the sense of legally organized politi-
Cal corporations, in the South, but merely
hnorganized, or Professionally organized com
piunities, waiting to be organized into States.
The entire work Of reconstruction rests upon
this assumption. If it be not correct, then
we give up the whole contest. If there has been
no break in the chain of legal continuity so that
the people of South Carolina, under the provi-
siOnal organization of which Governor Orr is the
head are, in the contemplation of the Consti-
tuition and of the law, as truly State of this
we wash our hands of all schemes of ''recon-
struction." They are unconstitutional and
absurd. But we do not so believe. We hold
that the acts of secession, together with the
acts of war which constituted the Rebellion,
destroyed the State organizations of the
seeding States, so that they were no longer
States of the Union, but were merely commu-
mites of rebellions citizens inhabiting the soil
of certain portions of the United States. The
Reconstruction acts are but the carrying tof
that clause of the Constitution which provides
that the United States shall guarantee to each
of the States a republican form of government.
The people of State that has lost its corpo-
rate existence cannot under our system, reor-
ganize themselves. The initiatory proceedings
must originate with higher power.
But we are doubly fortified in our theory;
for il any should deny that the acts Of seces-
sion and war destroyed the constitutional char
acter of the State organic atiOns of the seeding
States, as States in the Union, then the conclu-
sion irresistibly follows that Mr.. Johnson, in
7verthrowing these Rebel State Governments
1t the close of the war, was guilty of revolu-
ionary violence, and the organizations he
Assumed to erect in their stead were mere
usurpations, destitute of all constitutional
validity. And thus we are brought TO the
same conclusion as before, that there are no
States in the South, but merely communities
waiting to be organized into States.
Now, we lay down the broad proposition
that, in organizing community into a State,
Congress has no moral or legal right to
discriminate among its citizens except for
crime. Least of all has it the right to
introduce the absurd idea of color as a
basis of disfranchisement. The Constitu-
tion knows neither white nor black-it knows
only citizens. So Congress- in organizing the
Southern communities into States, knows the
people of these communities only as citizens
of the United States. 1t has no more right to
disfranchise the blacks than it would have to
disfranchise the whites. Were it to constitute
the State of only portion of the citizens, it
would be creating an olgarchical rather than
q republican form of government. There is,
then, in the Congressional forms.of reconstruc-
tion, no forcing of negro suffrage upon
''States," nor upon anybody. There is no
forcing of negro suffrage, more than there is
Of white suffrage. There is no organized State
npon which anything may be forced. Con-
gress simply finds, as result of the Re-
bellion, that in a certain portion of the Union
the people have lost their State organizations,
and are in dissolved and disorganized oondi-
tion They cannot of their own motion reor-
ganize themselves, for there is no legal autho-
rity in their midst to prescribe the first steps
to be taken. Congress, by necessity, as the
paramount authority in the nation, and in
accordance with the constitutional require
Ient to guarantee republican form of gov
eminent to each State, steps in and prescribes
the rules and regulations under which the
people may proceed to reorganize themselves
into States. In doing SO it treats the citizens
as possessed of equal rights. It can do moth
ing else without violating the Fundamental
principles of equity and of American oonsti
tutonal law. After these communities hav
been organized into States, and are admitte