Year: 1874

1uo icVtor OI AttOrney Oeuerhl Whiinmc "
the Governor of Tennessee, communicating
the refusal Of the President to allow certain
prisoners to be tried in the State courts for an
offence which was crime against the
State. presents . singular conflict between
national and State authority. The prisoners
are, or are assumed to be, the parties who
took certain colored men from the Jail in
Gibson county and lynched them by hanging
them. In other words, If guilty, these men
committed the crime Of murder, not in any
place within the exclusive jurisdiction of the
United States, but on the soil and within the
jurisdiction of State. They are to be in
dicted and tried in federal court, under and
by virtue of the acts of Congress known as


the Enforcement acts" SO called because
they purport ard undertake to enforce the
fifteenth amendment Of the federal constitu-
tion. If that amendment, at the time OF
derstood to authorize legislation by
which the ordinary crime Of murder,
when committed upon a negro, could be tried
in the federal courts to the exclusion OF the
State courts, probably it would not, certainly
it should not, have been adopted. The life of
eye Of the law and Of reason as the life of
white man but to assume that the murderer of
q negro cannot be, and is not likely to be, prop
erly tried and punished in the State courts,
and must be tried and punished in federal
court, is to make the life of negro more So
cred than the life OF any white man. But
there are two very grave questions involved
in this matter One is, whether the Enforce
ment acts have made the crime of murder of
either black or white man, when not COM
mittod within the exclusive jurisdiction Of the
United States, triable in federal court. The
other is, whether the fifteenth amendment
authorizes such legislation.


The fifteenth amen lment is that which
prohibits the States from denying or abridg-
ing the right OF suAraga on account of color,
race or previous condition Of servitude, and
gives power to enforce the prohibition by
appropriate legislation" May 80, 1870,
Congress passed law to enforce this provis-
ion. 1t enacted certain punishments of in
dividuals who may have hindered or OBJ
structed other individuals in the exercise of
the right of suffrage. Whether the constitu-
tional power conferred by the amendment
authorized any legislation but such as would
counteract and nullify the laws Of any State
that might deny or abridge the right Of suf-
frage on account Of color, race &c., is certainly
q question. But, passing this question by we
call the attention of our readers to what this
Enforcement act undertook to do. Its fifth
section punished by fine and imprisonment
any person who should intimidate or attempt
to intimidate any other person having the
right to vote from exercising that right by
bribery or threats. The sixth section punished
with heavier fine and imprisonment and also
with disfranchisement any two or more
persons who should conspire, or go in dis
guise upon the highway, to injure, oppress,


threaten or intimidate any citizen with intent
to prevent or hinder his free exercise or en-
joyment of any right or privilege granted or
secured to him by the constitution or Laws of
the United States or because of his having ex-
ercised the same. The offences created by
this section were made felonies. The seventh


section then made the following provision =
''That if in the act Of violating any provision
| in either Of the two preceding sections any
other felony, crime or misdemeanor shall be
| committed, the offender, on conviction Of
violation Of said sections, shall be punished
for the same with such punishments as are at
tached to the said felonies, crimes and mis-
demeanors by the laws of the State in which
the offence may be committed" The eighth
section gives Jurisdiction to the District
Courts of the United States over oil offences
committed against the act. Now, the natural
and obvious meaning of the seventh section
Of the offences created and punished by the fifth
and sixth sections, murder, for example, is
also committed, the federal Court may increase
the punishment Of the offences committed
against the fifth and sixth sections by admins
tering the punishment attached to murder by
the laws of the State. If the Attorney General
supposes that the seventh and eighth sections
give jurisdiction to the district courts to enter
tain and try an indictment for murder simply


and he proposes SO to indict and try these
prisoners, he founds the jurisdiction upon
law that hardly seems capable Of such con-
struction. He informs the Governor Of Ten
nessee that 'no reasonable doubts can exist as
to the jurisdiction of the courts of the United
States upon the facts as stated by the District
Attorney But he does not explain, nor has
he informed the public in relation to the ex-
traordinary powers that he is now exer-
cising in the South generally, how the
courts Of the United States get jurisdiction to
try and punish the crime Of murder as an
offence against the United States. As an incl
dent or aggravation OF some other offence
committed against the United States we can
understand how court of the United States
may be authorized to punish for that other