Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-10-22
WILLIAMS DEFIANCE OF THE
CONSTITUTION

AS the TRIAL OF the pafVleS lIcSdAy
arrested in West Tennessee by Federal
officials, will fully test the constitution
atty and scope of the Enforcement
act, it is a matter of interest to know
how far such questions have been
touched upon hitherto by competent
tribunals.
Justice Field, of the Supreme Court,
said in the case of Bartmeyer VS.. the
State of Iowa:
No one says the fourteenth amend
ment interferes in any respect with the
police power of the State. Certainly
no one who desires to give to that
amendment It's legitimate operation,
has ever asserted for it any such effect.
1t was not adopted for any such pur-
pose.
In thefamous New Orleans slaughter
house case, Justice Miller spoke most
emphatically, as follows;
Was it the purpose of the fourteenth
amendment, by the simple declaration
that no State should make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privi-
leges and immunities of citizens of the
United States, to transfer the security
and protection of all the civil rights
which we have mentioned from the
States to the Federal Government.
And, where it is declared that Congress
shall have the power to enforce that ar
:. -. ,,,No,,I11 - 49,, hgva
the power of Congress the entire do
main of civil rights, heretofore belong
ing to the States? We are convinced
that no such results were intended by
the Congress which proposed these
amendments, nor by the Legislatures
of the States which ratified them.
In the case of the Grant parish pris-
oners, Justice Bradley. of the Supreme
Court, expressed himself still more de-
cidedly, if possible, in this line of ar
gument. 1t will thus be seen that at
least three Judges of the Supreme
Court of the United States have ruled,
with all possible distinctness, against
Attorney General Williams outrageous
Interpretation of the Enforcement, as
applied to the cases which have brought
about the present embarrassing con-
fiict ofState and Federal jurisdiction in
Tennessee.
In addition to the decisions Of JUS
tees Field, Miller and Bradley, Circuit
United States Judges Cooley, of Michi-
gan, and Ballard, of Kentucky, are IN
hesitating in their charges to the Grand
Juries of their respective courts in de-
claring the actual uneonstitutionality
Of the Enforcement Act. Judge Bal
lard said to the Grand Jury, ''bring no
Ku-Klux cases before this court" and
he further held, in effect, that the
United States Courts had no iurisdic-
ton conferred by the Constitution to
GUST the natural and rightful power of
the State. And the distinguished
Judge Redfeld, of Boston, says, in the
american Lalo Register, of which he Is
the editor, concerning Justice Brad
ley's Grant parish decision: "There
can be no question, in the mind
of any good lawyer, who has
made the limitations between State and
national authority a study, that the
grounds upon which Mr.. Justice Brad
ley holds the provisions of the law upon
which the indictment rested IN this
case, to be unconstitutional and a
usurpation of the field of exclusive
State legislation, are most unquestion-
able"
We have already stated that opln-
ions, based upon these rulings, have
been prepared by Attorney General
Heiskell and Chancellor Cooper, at the
request of Gov. Brown. Judge EN-
mons, before whom the legal questions
involved viii be argued. is, webelieve, re-
garded by the bar of this State as dis
posed to be anything but partisan in
his decisions; so there is good reason
to hope that justice Will yet be done,