The Daily clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1866-1888, 1868-07-04
Protest against the Admission Of
the Arkansas Representative.


In the House of Representatives on
Monday, Mr. Brooks, on behalf of the
Democratic members, offered the fol
flowing protest; which was ordered to
be printed in the official journal of
i Congressional debates
The recognized presence of three
persons on the floor of this House from
the State of Arkansas, sent here by
military force, acting under Briga-
dier General of the army, but never
theless claiming to be members of this
Congress, and to share with us, the
representatives from free States, in the
imposition of taxes and customs and
other laws upon our people, makes it
our imperative duty in this, the first
case, to demonstrate most sOlemnly,
and to protest as solemnly, against this
perilous and destructive innovation
upon the principles and practice of
our hitherto constitutional self-gov
eminent. The So called Reconstruc
ton acts which created the military
government in Arkansas, and like gov
ernments in other Southern States, to
share with us in the legislative power
of the Northern and Western free peo-
pie, we have every reason to believe,
have been held to be unconstitutional
by the Supreme Court of the United
States, the public declaration Of which
fact was avoided only by the extraor
binary and strange device of this Con-
gress in snatching Jurisdiction from
| ho IN ho MaHorI1 NH
such public decision was about to be
made. Of the three great branches Of
the Government it seems, then, that
after the the Executive vetoed these
acts as unconstitutional, the Judiciary
adjudicated them to be so, while a Con
gress--the creation of but twenty
seven Of the thirty seven States of the
Union-override these equal and CO.
ordinate branches Of that Government,
r first, by voting down the vetoes next,
r by multiplying the judgment Of the
court. In an era Of profound peace
, when not an armed man rises against
the Government from the Potomac to
, the Rio Grande, there, in ten States,
p our American historical way of Gre
+ ating the organic law has been utterly
. subverted by the bayonet. Ever since
the Declaration of Independence, with
scarcely an exception, and even amid
! the battles of the revolution, conven-
: tons have been convoked through and
constitutions created by the electors
of the States, the only authorized de-
I positories Of the sovereign power of
I every State, without dictation, as un-
I1or no ovicf1nc Lo1npa1 Constitution
p the hardest and harshest test oath re-
! quired from 1776 to the peace of 1888
: was an abjuration oath of allegiance to
, George the Third while some of the
, now SO called bayonet- made COnstitu-
2 tons from the South propose absurd
: and cruel tests-absurd, as in Arkan
o sas, where is interviewer in the organic
! law mere party test between the
q Radical reconstructionists and the
Demo cratic Conservatives, such as
, would exclude from voting, if living
7 there, the thousands and tens of thou
o sands and hundreds of thousands of
} Democrats in the free States articles
eight, section 4 or cruel, as in Ala
bama, where no white man can vote
, who will not forever forswear his own
1dCC dl1O COIOI, Z AllhoCl1 ny
swearing, in defiance of the law of
, God, that the negro is his equal, and
forever to be his equal, at the ballot
f box, in the jury box, with the cartouch-
! box, in the school, in the college, in
house and home, and by the freside :;
> in short, in every way, everywhere
Article Z, section 4.
Now in these and the other South
! ern States, in the midst of war, Presi-
dent Lincoln, in his proclamation De
! cember s, 1868, offered amnesty and
: pardon to rebels then in arms if they
I would lay down their arms and take
! oath of fidelity; while now not Union
man IN Arkansas or Alabama can vote
unless, in the first place, he swears al
: legiance to the majesty of this Con
? gress, and, in the next, swears off his
Americanism and Africanizes himself.
Hitherto constitutions with US have
been the outgrowth of popular life,
springing from the eXuberance of our
enterprise and energy in the settle
ment of the forests or prairies of our
country; but here before us now we
have nine constitutions, with one, if
! not three, more yet to come from
Texas, which have all been imposed
upon the people by five military sa-
traps, or pentarchs, in manner never
: before known under our law, but Dor
rowed, at best, from imperial Roman
colonization, or from the worst pre-
cedents of the French Revolution
France is then recorded to have had
five constitutions in three years, so
frequently made and so frequently
changed that they were ironically
classed by the French people with the
periodical literature of the day. Louis
lana, colony of that France. has had
four constitutions in four years, and a
constitution there has now become
periodical literature, as in France in
the agonies and throes of the great
revolution. Laws, mere statute laws,
which can never be created by consti-
tuition, are appended, more or less, to
all these constitutions and these BAY