Wyoming democrat. [volume] (Tunkhannock, Wyoming Co., Pa.) 1867-1940, 1868-07-01

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Carpet-baggers.
The following is the protest, in full, of
the Democratic members of Congress
against the admission of the ''carpet-bag'
members from Arkansas:
The recognized presence ofthree persons
on the floor of this House from the State
of Arkansas, sent here by military force
acting under Brigadler-Ge General of the
army, bnt nevertheless claiming to be mem
bers 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 imper-
ative duty in this, the first case, to remon.
strste most solemnly, and to protest as, SOL
emnly against this perilous aud destructive
innovation o! our hitherto constitutional
self-goyernment. The so called reeonstuc-
tion acts, which created the military gov
ernment in Arkansas and like governments
in other Southern States, to share with us
the legislative power of the Northern and
Western free people, We have reason to
believe, have been held to be unconsttu-
! tional by the Supreme Court of the Uni
ted States, the public declaration of which
fact was avoided only by the extraordinary
and strange device of this Congress in
snatching jurisdiction from the court in the
McArdle case, when such pablo decision
was about to be made of the three great
branches of the government. And it
seems then, that after the Executive We
toed these acts as unconstitutional, the Ju-
dietary adjudicated them to be so, while
| Congress, the creation OF but twenty-seven
of the thirty seven States of the Union
override these equal and co ordinate bran
ches Of that government, first by voting
down the vetoes, next .by multiplying the
judgment Of the Constitution in an era of
profound peace, when not an armad man
rose against the government from the Po-
tomac TO the Rio Grandc.
In ten States our American historical
way OF creating the organized law has been
utterly suGver!ed by the sbayonet, Even
until the Declaration of independence,
with scarcely an exception, and even amidst
the revolution, conventions have been con-
voked through. and constitutions created b,
electors of the States, the only authorized
deposltors OF the sovereign power of every
State, without exterior d.ctaion, as unler
the existing Federal Constitution. The
hardest and harshest test oath required
from l776 to the peace of 1888 was an ab
juration oath of allegiance to George the
Third, while some of the new so-called
bayonct-made constitutions for the South
propose absurd and cruel tests, absurd as
in Arkansas, where is interviewer in the
organic law mere party test, between the
| Radical reconstructonists and the Demo
cratic Conservatives, such as would ex-
clude from voting, if living th-re, the
thousand and tens of thousands and han
dreds of thousands of Democrats in the
free States (article section 4, J or cruel
as in Alabama, where no white man can
vote who will not forever fore-swear his
own race and color and perjnre himself by
swearing in defiance of law and of God
that the negro is his equal and forever to
be his equal at the ballot-box, in the jury
box, with the cartouch-box, in the school,
in the college, in house aud home, and by
thefireside in short in every way and ev-
erywhere (art7, sec f. Now in these and
| other Southern States in the midst Of the
war; Preidsnt Lincoln in bis proclamation
Of December, 1863, offered amnesty and
pardon to rebels then in. arms, if they
wonld lay down their arms and take the
oath of fidelity, while now no Union man
in Arkansas or Alabama can vote, unless
in the first place he swears allegiance to
the magesty of this Cons ress, and in the
next swears off his Americanism and Afr
canizes himself. Hitherto constitutions
with US have been the outgrowth of popu-
lar will, springing from the exuberance OF
our enterprise and energy in the settle
ment OF the forests or pralries of our coun-
! try but here, before us now, are nine con-
stitutions, with one, if not three more yet
to come from Texas which have all been
imposed upon the people by five military
satrap or pentarch, in a manner never be
fore known under our laws, but borrowed
at best from imperial Roman colonization,
or from the worse precedents of the French
Revolution. France is then recorded to
have had five constitutions in three years;
so frequently made and 80 freq ucntly chan
ged that they were ironically classed by
the French people with the periodical lit
erature of the day.
Louisiana, colony of that France, has
had four constitutions in four years, and a
constitution there has now become peri
odical literature il France. In the ago
nies and throes of the great revolution,
laws were statute laws, and which can new
er be created by constitutions, are appen-
ded more or less to the constitutions, and
these bayonets created one branch of the
government which no Executive, no Sen
ate, no House Of Representatives, no Judi
ciary, have ordained irrepealable and ire
versible laws in the very organism Of that,
such as cannot thus be created by the Ex
ecutive, the Senate, and the House of Rep
resentatives of legitimate governments,
when acting in unison and all combined
all this has been done without regard 20
preceding constitutions, to pIecedeDts, or
the common law of the States or laws of
nations. The military power, which un-
der legitimate institutions can only be used
In times of peace TO conserve and preserve