Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1871-01-29

work of canvassing the ballots in said
boxes contained, or as viii enable them
to fully perform the duties in respect to
such canvass provided in this act, and
shall there remai,. until every duty In re-
spect 10 such canvass, certificates, re-
turns and statements, shall have been
wholly completed, any law of any State
or Territory TO the contrary notwithstand-
ing 1t is also provided that the Circuit
Courts shall remain open for the transac-
| ton of business under those provisions OF
the act which impose penalties and fines
for interference with the duties of the
Supervisors: that United States Marshals
shall appoint special deputies for the pro-
| lection of the Supervisors; that the mill
| tary and naval forces of the United States
together with the civil posse comitstus,
shall be at the, immediate command of
the Marshal for execution of these pro-
| visions"
We have given this lengthy extrac
from this authoritative exposition of the
objects and purposes of the carpet-bsg-
gers, that the reader may the more fully
appreciate the peril through which con-
stitutional government is now passing.
The Washington Patriot says: SIT Is a
perfect confirmation of our darkest
auguries as to the revolution which GER
tain Radical manipulators ar now con-
templating. The arpet-baggers find that
in spite of constitutional amendments
and requisite legislation their reign is
at an end, and, with an exceedingly -inse-
cure hold on the freedman vote, they are
in hopeless minority with the whites.
Hence, they come TO Congress and de-
mand that new and more thorough
reconstruction be resorted to, and that
the rehabilitated States, which are, in
contemplation of law, as integral parts
of the Union as the most persistently
loyal of the old thirteen, should be releg-
ated to their late condition of anarchy
and military tenure. Here, however, it
would seem, they are encountered by the
assurance that popular sentiment would
revolt at this course of revolutionary
policy, and that new experiment of
Southern forcible reconstruction would
inevitably lead to the utter defeat of the
Republican party in the North. Whilst
we are glad that the perception of truth
is thus clear to those who scan the planet
airy movements of the Northern sky,
we are by no means sure that the expert
ment will not be made, and the risk run,
for the simple reason that these fanatical
politicians, no one of them rising near to
the level of craftsmanship, may regard the
disease which Is wasting the very vitsls
of their party as so desperate that they
must, in their laundering surgery, take
the fatal risk and resort to desperate
remedies The ulcer is certainly Deep
seated and very purulent. Our own judg
ment, more than once expressed, is that
the Morton committee is one step, taken
after full elaboration, on the line on
which Radicalism proposes to move; and
that, unless some happy accidental influ-
ence neutralizes or averts the initial mis-
chief, its report will be followed by legis-
lative action of the most extreme sort.
Nor is the threatened danger mitigated by
the hints thrown out that there is be an
uniformity of discipline applied to the
whole country, and that under the
pretext of legislating alike for all
the States, the new reconstruction, in the
guise of a modified election law, is to ex-
tend to mutinous Missouri and New York,
and logged, unreasonable Kentucky, as
strictly as to uncovenanted North Caro-,
lima and Georgia. This is, in fact, her,
aided in the article to which, as an in
dex of Radicalism, we have referred. To
elections for members of Congress and
such SIS are directly connected with them,
and to communities with populations ex.
ceeding twenty thousand, the doubtful
power of Congress has already been ex-
tended, and now it is suggested that 4
Federal supervision, with officers called
Supervisors of all elections, every
where, is to be instituted. In other
words, that the registration of all ''voters
who being registered, would be entitled to
vote for Representative or delegates in
Congress, i. e., substantially, all voting
whatever, is to be conducted under the
unlimited control of the Federal power,
to be sscertsined, if need be, with mill
tary auxiliaries. Luckily, the current
session of Congress must be brief one,
with an amount of undone work floating
about, such as possibly San Domingo, OF
Mr.. Summers bill, which he says, and
Mr.. Yates and Pomeroy say ditto to
him, is the most important measure that
can come before Congress, to legislste
negroes into theatres, and churches, and
schools. 1t is possible that these, to say
naught of appropriations, unjust
land grabbing legislation, steamship
subsidies, and other plumber, may
crush this new scheme of revolution
down. But there is something very peril
Gus in the quick, conVulsive clutch of a
drowning man, and Radicslism may, like
the blind athlete of the Bible, in its dying
agonies pull down all that is left of the
Constitution on itself and us. 1t is in all
its phases, this packed committee bust
ness being the entering wedge, danger
now close upon us, which can hardly be
measured in words. Six years after the
last gun was fired and the last sword
sheathed, as long as it was from the peace
of 1888 to the formation of the Constitu-
ton, when the wound of civil
war is healed, the cicatrix COM
plete, not only is the almost super
fluous bandage to be torn off, the crutch
rudely taken away, but the muscles
are to be torn asunder by apoisonel knife,
the limbs broken agsin on the new wheel