The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1868-10-30
BLAIR's POSITION.
His Explanation of the Broadhead Let
ter.

The Lafayette, Indiana, Courier, of Sat
urday last publishes the following letter
from General Frank P Blair to a citizen of
Lafayette:
To James Howes, Esq, Lafayette, Indiana
DEAR SRI have received your letter,
in which you ask me il would endeavor to
have the constitutionality of the reconstruc-
ton acts tested by the Supreme Court be-
fore proceeding to treat them as null and
void. In answer, say that the vital priu-
ciple of the reconstruction acts has already
been decided to be unconstitutional, null
and void, by the Supreme Cert, the whole
bench concurriDg in the case of Milligan
and Bowles, which went up from the State
of Indiana on a writ of habeas corpus.
In that case it was decided, in the plain
language of the Constitution, that the Gov
ernment could not establish martial law In
time of peace, or try citizen by military
commission, or court martial, The recon-
struction actsg sO-called, stand on martial
law, and nothing else. 1t is the essence OF
these acts. They were prepared and put in
execution in time of profound peace, in de-
fance of the unanimous decision of the Su-
preme~ Court, to which 1 have referred, and
they, and all that has been done under them,
are null and void.
A case was made under these acts-the
case of McCardIe, of MississipPi-and was
brought before the Supreme Court; and it is
we'll known that the Court was ready to de-
clare these acts unconstitutional, when Con-
gress passed another act to deprive the Su-
preme Court of it's jurisdiction. and openly
attempted to intimidate the judges by
threats Of remoddeling the Court.
The Supreme Court, in another case
that of Cummings, of Missouri--decided
that the disfranc hisement of the white peo-
pile Of the Southern States by an act of Con-
gress, vas bill of attainder and an ez post
f1cto law, both of which were forbidden in
express terms by the Constitution. Even
the Radicals admit, in the Chicago plat
form, that the States alone have the right
to decide who shall be entitled to suffrage
within the States; and yet Congress has as
sumed to take the right from the white peO-
pie and give it to the negroes within the
| Southern States.
! The reconstruction acts violate the Con-
stitution in all these particulars, and it has
been already so decided by the Supreme
| Court. The Constitution says the military
shall always be subordinate to the civil au-
thority, but these acts have superseded all
| civil authority, and erected military Gov
ernmeuts at the South. Do you want de-
cision of the Supreme Court to show that
| this is unconstitutional? Are those who
say that the military is subordinate to the
civil authority revolutionists? Are those
who demand the restoration Of the trial by
jury, which has been suppressed in the
South by the reconstruction acts, revolu-
tionists? Are those who claim the beoeft
Of the great writ of right, the babess corpus,
which is denied to 5000. 600 Of our people
by the Infamous reconstruction acts, to be
branded as reyolutionisls?
Shall we be called revolutionists because
we proclaim, in the very language Of the
Constitution, that Con gress soall pass no
bill of auander or ez pos; JactO Law? or
shall We thus be branded for claiming what