The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-07-29
AN INFAMOUS ExpED1ENr IN RESERVE.

, photographers of that gentry as Harrison
Ainsworth and Dickens, to send out periodi-
cally rowing commissioners into suburban and
rural districts, for the purpose of picking up
miscellaneous items in the way both of valu-
able information and portable valuables
American carpet-baggery, which is evidently
modelled after that ancient guild, pursues a
practice which is strikingly similar to the one
above described. A considerable number of
its rowing commissioners, who recently re-
paired to the central rendezvous at Washing
ton, in the disguise of congressional repre-
sentatives from Southern States, have lust
been sorting out and comparing the contents
OF their respective wallets. Among the
items of valuable information brought to
light on this occasion, none excited so much
interest in the conclaye as the fact that the
only certain means of carrying even the re-
constructed States at the coming election for
Grant and Colfax and carpet-baggery, would
be to stlfie the voice of the people utterly by
referring the choice of electors to the existing
carpetbag legislators. The telegraph, after
noting that a proposition to this purport,
| preached at "an informal MEETING
OF Southern members" was received with
great favor, remarks, in the cool, dry man.
ner peculiar to Geographic humor, that 'there
appears to be no constitutional or legal diff
Guilty in the way of securing the Southern
States for Grant by this plan" WE'LL there
happens to be only this constitutional and
legal difficulty about the matter-that the leo-
islatures by which it is proposed that the
votes of seven Southern States shall be cast
for Grant, the congressional candidate for the
Presidency, are nothing more nor less than
the open and shameless spawn of congress
slonal usurpation, legislative counterfeits and
monstrosities which appertain to the States |
which they pretend to represent only in the |
sense In which the leech and the vampire ap-
pertain to bodies whose blood they suck.
The Constitution provides that ''each State
shall appoint in such manner as the legisla-
ture thereof may direct, a number of cleo
tors, equal to the whole number of senators
and representatives to which the State may
be entitled in the Congress" Constitutional
lawyers have admitted that, under the letter
OF the above provision, State legislature
could keep the appointment of electors in its
own hands by passing law directing that
they should be chosen in such a manner.
But 1t has been on all hands agreed that the
choice of electors by the popular vote. the
method which has almost universally pre-
vailed from the beginning, was more in accor-
dance with the spirit of the Constitution. as
being more conformable to the conditions of
republican system of government In no
State of the Union did Legislature adoptand ,
persist in the practice of appointing electors ,
by Its own votes except in South Carolina
and 1t was always favorite denunciation on 8
the part of Northern radicals to inyeiob 6
against the South Carolina legislature, as the =
creature of a slave oligarchy, and not justly f
entitled to speak the voice of the true people I
Of the State. Whatever that legislature may
nave formerly represented, everybody knows S
hat all the carpet-bag legislatures in the n
south at this time represent radical oil 4
yarchy, whose headquarters are at Washing Z,
on and there is no doubt that one of the in =,
smous devices which are to be used. if need n
'e, for securing to this oligarchy permanent VI
of the government, is to refer the n
prominent of electors to those spurious
legislatures. Only a hint from the lead h
Dg radicals in Congress is necessary to II
induce In this and at least five tc
theirs Of the reconstructed States the 81
reliminary legislation requisite to this W
urpose Georgia is the only one of those
tates about which there can be any doubt in a
lis connection. Radicalism overwhelmingly
redominates in the Legislatures of the other
(, whose electoral votes could be secured VI
eyond peradventure by the hagitious ex- - -
edlent which has been suggested. Yet the ~
ntral oligarchy will hesitate, and with good -
'ason, to give the signal for carrying out Va
is plan. Unless deemed absolutely indis-
nsable to success, it will not be adopted ue
adoption would be to confess DESPAIR of nc
curing the reconstructed States for Grant 1iC
1lle their people were allowed any voice in 'o'
choice of electors. In the meantime the I
'rthern people may we'll be startled at the He
ere suggestion Of such an expedient Are me
ey prepared patiently to see it EMPLOYED. fol-
possible emergency, as the deciding ele- of
mt In the presidential election? If so Mr.
y are prepared to submit to the nulli6ca- Jan
by fraud and force of the electoral votes Th
their own States, and to surrender the Hu
nee of President and the presidential old
ce to the supreme control of a congress- h.
nal caucus. Der