The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-09-02

Is DelOE6, huu Will tuciI EcClpLoOai
rightsi And is not the Constitution ot
the United States, which is declared by
the Court to be "the fundamental law
of each and all of them" az absolutely
applicable and as thoroughly bound to
discharge its duties to both the State
governments and their people, as if
they had never been crushed under an
insurrection
The greatest sufferers of the rebellion
are the unhappy people who refused to
countenance it by their votes, although
constrained by secret military societies
everywhere putting them under duress,
threatening life, liberty and property
to coerce them. Taken by surprise.
they could neither resist themselves, nor
would the General Government, al
though bound to protect, and interpose
10 save them. Yet the majority, i'll all
the States but one, stood out against
the secession ordinances; and now al
most the whole people claim their rights
under the Constitution, in virtue of the
amnesty proclamations, and the soldiers
laid down their arms, and gave their
parole toe, under the capitulation which
pledged that they should never be dis
turbed. This was an absolute pardon,
sanctioned by Lincoln, and binding the
faith of the nation. What right has
Congress to deny them their citizenship
under the Constitution of the United
States, and of their States, which they
have been prompt to accommodate to
the conditions imposed by the war, and
which he had proclaimed to be neces-
sary preliminaries to its conclusion
emancipation, renunciation of the seces-
sion ordinances and the Confederate
debit
The Supreme Court has already pro-
nounced its decree upon the efficiency
of the Presidents pardoning power and
amnesty in the decision in Garland's
case, which is familiar to the whole
country. Has Congress any authority
to set aside the Executive pardon, made
absolute and indefeasible by the su-
preme fundamental law of the land 7
Congress, which had the hardihood to
grant pardons for offences imposed by
its own er post facto laws, offences
which it had no right to create, has
not ventured in terms to deny the Pres
idents power of pardon-under what
pretext does it assume to subject to
the most grievous punishment millions
of people-multitudes of them innocent
of thought to harm the Union-mul-
titudes of them its devout friends but
nevertheless by conscription dragged
into the opposing ranks and their
means extorted to supply them, betray-
ed and abandoned by the Government
to its and their enemies-how can they
Justify the punishment of such or any
others, absolved by the proclama-
tion of amnesty and special
Executive pardons Yet the
whole white race of the South are un-
Justly sacrificed to the negro race of the
ostracized States. The negroes are
made the instruments of forcing upon
them governments abhorrent to them,
constitutions devised by caucus com.
mittees in Washington, to bind them
forever under negro rule. Is this no
punishment to the exalted race that
fought the battles, that made us a ma
tion independent of foreign rule 7 Is it
no punishment to our whole kindred of
the South to have their ablest and best
classes disabled by penal, or post Jdcto,
unconstitutional statutes, passed to dis
franchise them, to deprive them of the
suffrage, which Is given to the negroes
and to disqualify them for all public
trusts The people of the South who
created its governments rise and say
in written petitions, and in one voice
when consulted: "Continue the mill.
tary government of our own race which
you have put over us, rather than this
unnatural. intolerable subjugation."
Let it be remembered that negro
sovereignty over the South, which, in
comman ding that section, has con-
troll even in the North, was never sub
mitted to the people of the North as a
question to be decided in the election.
When it was suggested in the Demo
cratic Convention that the lurking de-
sign of establishing negro suffrage was
entertained by the Republican party, it
was universally denied by its candidates
before the people. The present Con-
gress made their programme for the
election rest on the amendment to the
Constitution known as the fourteenth
amendment, reported from Mr.. Stevens
committee, recognizing the constitu-
tional right of each Southern State to
establish suffrage for itself, but pro-
viding in case the negroes were exclud-
ed from voting, they should not be
counted in the ratio of representation
that is to say, that no State which ex-
cluded any class of people from the suf-
frage on account "of race or color or
previous condition." should be entitled
to representation in Congress or the
Electoral College, based upon the ex.
cluded persons. Upon this pronounced
principle, voted by the entire Republi-
can party in both branches of Congress,
they went before the people, and by
adroitly representing that in case the
State of Alabama, for instance, con-
tanning a half a million of blacks,
and half a million of whites, should
exclude the blacks from suffrage, its
voting population of one-half million of
whites ought not to have representa-
tion in Congress based on the numbers
of both white and black, which would
give them equal representation with
one million of white men in d Northern
State-making one white man in Ala
bama equal to two in any Northern
State. 1t was on this principle that
their existing majority in the present
Congress was returned. But they had
no sooner reached their seats than they
violated their pledges and the Consti-
tuition together. They enacted negro
suffrage universally for the whole South
in their reconstruction acts; they made
it paramount in all the Conventions to
establish the State constitutions, and
in order to give supremacy to this ne
gro vote, they disabled a sufficient num-
Der of the white race to give the negro
vote the majority. In giving the right
of registry of voters to its own agents,
the present Congress holds the power,
and if reelected will retain it, to make
the vote OF the ten States dependent on
its will. If this power now assumed by
Congress over the suffrages of the States
be maintained and transmitted, as it is
reported by Kelly, of Pennsylvania, and
Sumner, of Massachusetts,, and others,
it may be the government is consoli-
dated in the heads of Congress, with the
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