The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1868-07-15
A Forcible Protest.

We publish to-day the full text of the
protest of the Democratic members Of the
House of Representatives against the ad-
mission of the pretended members from
the Africanized State of Arkansas. It is
worthy of attentive perusal. If the North
ern people are not dead to the promptings
of self-respect and honor, they must be in
fuenced by this document to ponder seri-
ously the condition of the country.
In this document the Democrats of Con-
gress declare their purpose not to sit down
quietly, under all the outrages which Radi-
calism may perpetrate, but to "right this
wrong There is hope for the South, and
for the whole country, in this manly decla-
ration. That there is no wrong without a
remedy in law is the teaching of our Eng
.lish constitutional or common-law lawyers.
Surely we have not so improved upon the
institutions as that we must submit for all
time to come to whatever wrongs an infu-
rated band Of unprincipled partizans shall
attempt to fasten upon us. Thus speaks
the Richmond Dispatch
PROTEST AGAINST THE ADMISSION OF THE AR
KANSAS REPRESENTATIVES..
In the House of Representatives on Mon
day, Mr.. Brooks, on behalf of the Demo-
cratic, members, offered the following pro
test; which was ordered to be printed in
the official journal of Congressional de-
bates: ts,s,~5
The recognized presence of three per-
sons on the floor of this House from the
State of Arkansas, sent here by military
force, acting under Brigadier General OF
the army, but nevertheless claiming to be
members of this Congress, and to share
With US, the representatives from free
States. in the imposition of taxes and Gus
toms and other laws upon our people,
makes it our imperative duty in this, the
first case, to demonstrate most solemnly,
and to protest as solemuly, against this
perilous and destructive innovation upon
the principles and practices of our hitherto
constitutional selfgovernment. The So
called Reconstruction acts which created
the military government in Arkansas, and
like governments in other Southern States,
to share with us in the legislative power
Of the Northern aud Western free people,
we have every reason to believe have been
held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court of the United States, the public de-
claration of which fact was avoided only
by the extraordinary and strange device of
this Congress in snatching jur:si csion
from the Court in the McCardle case when
such public decision was about to be
made. Of the three great branches of the
Government it seems, then, that after the
Executive vetoed these acts as unconstitu-
tioaal, the Judiciary adjudicated them to
be SO, while a Congress-the creation of
but twenty-seven of the thirty-seven States
OF the Union-override these equal and CO.
ordinate branches of that Government,
first, by voting down the vetoes next, by
multiplying the Judgment of the court. In
an era of profound peace, when not an
armed man rises against the government
from the Potomac to the Rio Grande,
there, in ten States: our American histori-
cal way of creating the organic law has
been utterly subverted by the bayonet.-
Ever since the Declaration of Independence,
with scarcely an exception, and even amid
the battles of the revolution, conventions
have been convoked through and constitu-
tons created by the electors of the States,
the only authorized repositories of the
sovereign power of every State, without
exterior dictation, as under the existing
Federal Constitution, the hardest and
harshest test-oath required from 1776 to
the peace of 1888 was an abjuration oatll
of allegiance to George the Third while
some of the now so-called bayonet-made
Constitutions from the South propose alb
surd and cruel tests-absurd, as in Arkan-
sas, where is interviewer in the organic
law mere party test between the Radical
reconstructionists and the Democratic
Conservatives, such as would exclude from
voting, if living there, the thousands and
tens Of thousands and hundreds of thou
sands Of Democrats in the free States Tar
ticles eight, section 4 J or cruel, as in Ala
bama, where no white man can vote who
will not forever forswear his own race and
color, and periure himself by swearing, in
defiance of the law of God, that the negro
is his equal, and forever to be his equal, at
the ballot-box, in the jury box, with the
cartouche-box, in the school, in the college,
in house and home, and by the Preside; in
short, in every way, everywhere. Article
I, section A. Now in these and the other
Southern States, in the midst of war, Pres
ident Lincoln, in his proclamation Decem-
Der 6, 1863, offered amnesty and pardon to
rebels then in arms if they would lay down
their-arms and take an oath OF fidelity /;
while now not Union man in Arkansas
or Alabama can vote unless, in the first