Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1868-02-23

A delegation of Radicals from Ala
bama arrived in Washington on the 20th
inst to urge upon Congress the admis-
sion Of Alabama into the Union under
the vote recently taken. The Washing
ton correspondent of the Cincinnati
Commercial says They complain that
in many counties the Registers were in
sympathy with the Rebels, and did not
give the cOlored men an opportunity to
vote; that in one or two counties men
walked twenty miles and had to go home
without voting They also say that ifthe
State is not admitted under the recent
vote, reconstruction will have to be post
poned for long time, if not abandoned
Then they say they cannot possibly go
through the labor and expense Of a new
canvass Immediately" These are the
arguments by which Congress is to be in
duced to do what an organ of the Repub~
liean party denounees as a double fraud
No better Illustration of the feeling
which this proposition inspires in honest
men Of whatever party in politics, could
be pointed to than the following article
from the Springfield { Mass Republican,
the leading Republican journal in New
England T-
The Last move of the misunderstanding
distructionists in Congress is also their
worst. II is difficult 10 conceive a meas
ure that would do more To destroy the
prestige Of the Republican party, and pre-
pare the public mind TO welcome its defeat
ia November as a national blessing, than
The double fraud of admitting Alabama to
representation on the ground of her adop-
ton of the constitution by a majority of
the persons registered, should be necessary
for its ratification. We say double fraud.
for the original plan of rushing the State
in, TO get ahead of the Supreme Court, and
secure It's voice in the Electoral College.
was itself fraud, even had the constitution
been accepted by majority of the artificial
and highly doctored constituency created
under the reconstruction acts. The pre-
sent proposition is a fraud in its nature
and in its terms. fraud at heart and a
fraud on It's face. We cannot believe that
it will command the assent of Congress. or,
at the worst, that it can secure the two
thirds vote necessary to pass it over a GER
tain and a righteous veto. OF the resoIu-
ton of Senator Sherman, simply, there ia
nothing to be said in argument against it.
and even formal reprobation is hardly
necessary. 1t appears to be, it il, a
fraud. Ii contains a lie that would sink,
or ought to sink, any party. The Ala.
bama constitution was framed on the con-
dition that it should be such az to COM
mand majority of registered voters; the
election was held on the condition that it
should have effect only as such majority
was obtained. That majority the constitu-
ton does not obtain and we have no right
J to assume, in view of the result, that ma
iority are in its favor nay even, we are
not legally justified in assuming that those
who voted for the constitution would have
done SO had not its rejection, according to
the terms of Congress, been manifestly in
eVitable. The party opposed, meanwhile,
stay away from the polls, in the exercise
of an undoubted privilege, and relying on
the provision that ratification shall only be
effected by majority, which they know
cannot be obtained-otherWise they might,
We must admit, have voted it down. 1t is
now gravely proposed to accept the vote
cast as sufficient; and disregsrding wholly
the terms upon which the election was held,
and disregarding also the fact, that, of the
great majority which stayed away, the
whole must, by every honest principle OF
law and craftsmanship, be held to have
voted in the negative. Is not this review
Of the case enough to stamp the proposition
of Senator Sherman as one of the meaner
devices, TO say the least, of reconstruction
craftsmanship? But We shall be more ready
TO argue that it is a fraud, when We hear
some one intimate that it is not"