The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-03-20
(Number s.l

| tNuAUDoks Ssl we have seen that on the very day of
 the opening fof Congress, following the fall of the Southern Confederacy, De |. cember. 4. 1865, the Reconstruction Com miitee of fifteen, q joint committee of the two houses, twelve Republicans and three Democrats. Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman. was appointed and immedi- ateiy took up the work of preparing a fourteenth article of amendment of the Constitution.
 The various reports of the Comnaittee were discussed until June 13, 1866. On that day the article In its present form was passed and without submitting it | to President Johnson. it was sent to the l Secretary of State. William H. Seward, for transmission to the Governors of l the, States. thirty-seven States in num- Der. Robert M. Patton was Governor of Alabama and copy of the article was | by him received to be submitted to the
 action, favorable or not, of the existing
 General Assembly, when convened tho next November.
 Ten days after the article had been placed In Secretary Stewards hands, | President Johnson addressed to the two | houses a phenomenal memorandum of protest against what they had done l (Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VT. p. 3s1 j.. He argued in this re- l markable paper that two-thirds of Com
 gress was not assembled. and therefore the article had not been lawfully passed: {: l that the fragment of Confress in session
 had excluded eleven states from the halls for the express purpose of passing the | article: that the delusive character of ths enactment became evident when Con gress directed the article transmitted to the excluded States. in common with ] other States thirty-seven in all.
 The second session of the General As.
 sembly met according to law, November, 1866. Governor Patton laid before the
 two houses the article as transmitted to
 him from Secretary Seward. The Gov
 ernor uttered an good faith and in vehe-
 ment language. his objection to the
 fourteenth article of amendment. He
 concluded his elaborate argument with the warning words: I am decidedly of the opinion that this amendment should not be ratified"
 Three weeks passed. The General As- sembly had not even considered the ar ticle. The Governor heard from Washing-
 ton and the news alarmed him.. lie promptly communicated e special mes- sage on the article. He recanted all his previous denunciatton. He now saw with clearer vision. "The stability of our af- fairs will be suddenly broken up," wrote the Governor to the two houses, unless the counsel of his first message be set aside for the wisdom of his last message. The special message was promptly re- ferred to the Senate Committee on Fed eral Relations. The Committee immedl- ately reported a joint resolution: That tho State of Alabama refuses to ratify the proposed constitutional amendment, as proposed by the Congress of the United States of America" That was emphasis equal to the occasion. The joint resolution passed, the Senate without division. The House at once passed it,
 n to g.
 Governor Patton now had his day. "The stability of our affairs'' melted like principle before might melts; like the man-God of Calvary fell before the pow CTS of the synagogue.
 Hardly had the members of the General Assembly reached their homes when Con- gress. by the acts of March, 1887, dis. solved the Union. which it had just ree- ogniSed, destroyed. the States of Virginia, the two Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Aia- bama, Mississippi, Louisiana. Texas and ArkanFas. and from the area organskad i've Military Districts each under a Ma jor General of the United States army with autocratic power to collect and dis
  hang and shoot inhabitants at will, the convict invested with the impossible form of appeal to the President.
 By act of Congress, General Meade or dered an election, of four successive days continuance, February {. 1888, to pass upon a military State Constitution and to elect a State government and County governments. The Constitution was de- feated and no State or County govern. ment was elected.
 Four months later. June %, 1888, Con- gressi legislated the defeated State Con- stitutlon into effect. Under General Meade's order Judge W. H. Smith took the ofiice of Governor and Smith called the defeated Legislators to Montgomery and warned them otratify the article. article. They met fin July, a mot ley group, negroes and carpet oaggers, revenue officers, officers of the Freedman's Bureau, etc., etc. On the first day of their session, they rati- led the article. Governor Smith sent tor ward the act of ratification to Washing lon and on transmitting 1t to Congress President Johnson said he had received he communication from a Mir. Smith oama." ,,
 As soon as Secretary Seward received notice of the action of the bogus LeRis. atuFe of Alabama, he communicated to Congress the fact that three-fourths Of he States, under certain revolutionary had ratified the article (Doc- lmentary History of the Constitution of he United States, Vol g, D. 7S3.) The Secretary was one sot the most fa- | nous of diplomsts in the field of state | ,raft. Only eighteen brief years ago, he | 1ad announced from his seat in the Sen | lte. in reply to Calhouns and webster's | for the obligations of the Con ititution. his famous apotnegm, "there is l ! higher law than the Constitution" fin | he practical affairs of government His invention had now "come to plague the nventoT." Secretary Seward told Con- sress the fourteenth article of amend nent had been fraudulently dealt with m the States. From the Southern Military Districts, Congress by military processes, under direct and arbitrary control of mil tary officers, had created States, elected Governors, Legislatures and Judges, to retain office ,conditionally that the four teenth artible of amendment should be formally ratified by them, or by A sulfi- cient number of them, to make up twen- ty-f1ve ratifyIng States He described these alleged States 'as newly consti- tuted and established legislative bodies" He said, If the resolutions of the I,egis- latures of New Jersey and Ohio,'' recall l Ing the earlier resolutions of ratification. be accepted as invalid and the acts of he "newly constituted and newly estab- lshed bodies avowing themselves and acting as Legislatures' be accepted as srwise.
 The next day, July n, 1883. the rrsR- nent of Congress sitting, eleven States. l Kentucky heinz a,naIiad ,..