Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1868-03-11

and voted against it, it would not have
have changed the result from positive
majority in its favor to majority against.
This feature alone Of this unfortunate cleo
ton, ia sufficient, in the opinion of the
convention to authorize a large majority
of loyai voters, than is in the State known
TO have cast their ballots for it, be-
sides a very large proportion of
the registered voters were deferred by the
most infamous threats from coming to the
polls and casting their votes for the Con-
stitution by few white men, and very few
black men dared thus to cast their votes
lest they should be deprived of food, for
which they are suffering. All this is pro-
ven by the sworn testimony of the most
respectable parties of Alabama indeed,
nearly two hundred laborers have volun-
tarily come forward singly and testified to
their violent discharge, since the election,
by their cruel employers, for having exer-
cised the elective franchise according to
their own will and pleasure. A careful
analysis has been made, as well as could be,
of the number Of votes that were destroyed
by the boxes being seized and thown
ont of the windows, and other modes
of violence used to destroy them, and it is
believed from all this that the number of
votes thus destroyed and detained from the
polls by violence, outrage and frauds, had
they been cast, would have overbalanced
all those counted against the Constitution,
whether by reason of sickness, or absence,
or death. Some time before the Alabama
election, the committee saw the injustice of
the law, and requested Congress to restore
the majority principle in the vote on the
Constitution. The House did not hesitate
to perceive its injustice, and passed the act
and sent it to the Senate. The Senate,
from some unaccountsbe delay from mo-
tives which were hard to fath0m, suffered
the act to sleep on their files for two months
until after the fate of the Alabama election
was announced. They then took ii up and
pa sseS it, and it has now passed both Houses
Of Congress. The principle then, that
majority of the votes cast shall govern, has
been restored, aud your committee can see
no reason why it should not govern in the
present case. The circumstance of the al
most unheard of storm on the day of cleo
ton, the rage of human passion, but little
less malignant, and the wild phrenzy of for
mer masters at the polls, together with the
evident injustice of principles in question
upon which some have acted, seem to your
committee to demand that Alabama should
| be admitted into the Union as one of the
States thereof. But while this free people
are rebuilding mighty nation, in which
there must be no faint of despotism or in
justice, they have examined carefully all
the provisions of the Constitution, and as
precedent which they hope will never be
departed from, but which becomes neces-
sary by the injustice of the sister States,
they have determined that no State shall
be admitted into the Union where the
right to universal suffrage shall not be
made paramount and impossible of viola
ton. Fearing, also, that cunning schemes
might be devised by which peonage, such
as is already established in some of the
South American States, might be created,
we recommend the passage of the act for
the admission of Alabama as State in
the Union.