The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1869-07-13

ed who sat under guard and with arms
on their persons until they had done a
satisfactory amount of slashing. Be it
remembered that in Jefferson coanty
the Radical candidates for the Legis-
lature were instructed to support BORE
MAN for the Senate, and the outrageous
disfranchisement in that county be-
comes easy of explanation.
1t is not likely the public will ever
know the full extent of unjust disfran-
chisement in our State that had special
reference to the last Senatorial election.
But many other causes have led the
registrars to excesses in the use of the
power reposed in their hands. They have
frequently pandered to the ambition OF
local Republican candidates; the elec-
tions of clerks and constables, sheritfs
and supervisors, all county and town.
ship officers have been decided by the
rough but sure process of striking the
names of legal voters from the lists. In
some counties we hear of men against
whom no charges of rebellion could pos
sibly be sustained, appearing at the
polls and there learning for the first
time, that in secret conclave, the regis
trars had disfranchised them. Gilmer
county furnishes an instance, and not
the only one, in which hoporably dis
charged Union soldiers,--a GLASS whose
right tovote is placed by the law itself
beyond the power Of the boards were
prescribed for no known reason, save
an intention on their part to vote
the Democratic ticket. In CalhoSn
county, ninety eight names were taken
from the lists at one time, aud the par.
ties notified that their cases would be
heard in the following April, sir months
after the pending election. Many cases
are on record of parties who were
allowed to vote the Republican ticket
at three or four successive elections after
the registration law was passed, but who
were promptly disfranchised when they
manifested a disposition to support
Democratic measures and candidates.
1t were an endless task to cite the in
stances where disfranchisement has been
carried through without the slightest
J regard to the intent of the registration
law itself. Time and space would
almost fail in the enumeration of cases
of prescription without summons, testi-
mony, charge, trial or some one of the
essentials named in the law as it stands
and demanded by every consideration of
decency and justice. Almost every To-
cality in the State has its history of reg
istration fraud and tyranny, through
which the liberties of young men and old
men, the prominent members of their
respective communities, respected, wor
thy and honest citizens, with lives
wholly blamcless in the laws estima
ton. have been stricken down delib
erately and yet recklessly, as if no citi-
zen had any rights which the registra'
was bound to respect. To such an ax-
cent have these erormitfes been carried,
that the very name of registrar has, in
many sections, become term of re-
preach, and the officer himself holds a
place in public esteem which he could
scarcely lower if instead of trampling
upon the rights of his neighbors, he
picked their pockets or robbed their
hen roosts.
We submit that if our professedly
liberal Republican journals are sincere
in their desire to do away with political
injustice here, they ought to advocate
TIE immediate reformation of our regis
tration system. To no purpose do they
advocate giving the ballot to actual
rebels, wen they connive at the dis.
franchisement of men whose votes, even
by existing tests, are as good and lawful
as their own. To repeal the Constitu
tional Amendment may be the work of
years. If they are honest in pushing
that measure to its completion, how can
they regard with complacence the pre-
scription of men who are clear of ali af-
fliation with rebellion, who are dis
abled by no law, and who are merely
denied the ballot because they do not
use it as Radical registrars think they
should We recall a tregisrar who last
fall declared that "a man who
voted the Democratic ticket was rebel
and ought to be disfranchised ;" we
recall large number of dsfranchise-
ments in Greenbrier county, under that
very ruling; we ask every Republican
who pretends to respectability if he is
not ashamed of the gospel of loyalty"
as thus practically preached' If he
does not see in the responsibility of
registrars an evil that ought to be cor
rected and that right speedily1 Let
our Republican journals who advocate
the ultimate removal of those dsabili-
ties which they think have legal exist !
ence, speak out for the immediate re-
moval of those disabilities which, un.
der their own laws, ought not to exist.
Let them give the voter at least the |
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