their imperfections, as they do in their prayers and conversation, and go far beyond us. They are, therefore, not in a situation to be offended with us for calling their attention to their own errors, suggesting their consequences and soliciting from them a change to wiser and more appropriate conduct, to secure the results which all good men wish to attain. We desire to see the American clergy occupy the highest and best ground which can be attained by good intentions and most persevering labor, in the pursuit of Christian truth. We wish them to become what their religious professions indicate that they ought to be. They will then be vastly more useful and happy themselves, and prove a blessing to those they attempt to teach.

121.-THE PROPOSED FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION.

The thirteenth amendment of the Constitution had been ratified in 1865, receiving the votes of Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Georgia, being all the secession States, except Mississippi and Texas. But if these nine States were not restored, or reorganized so as to act and bind their people, this amendment did not receive the votes of three-fourths of all the States and cannot be valid, and slavery is not forbidden by the Federal Constitution. But we claim they were constitutionally States, and the amendment is valid.

On the 13th of June, 1866, Congress proposed another, called the fourteenth amendment, which was sent to the several States for their action. It is as follows:

ARTICLE XIV.

Section 1.-All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which sball abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.-Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons

in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3.-No person shall be a Senator, or representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or giving aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.-The validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law, including debts incurred for the payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States, nor any State, shall assume to pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims, shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.-Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

This amendment was designed, not only to prescribe rules for the secession States, but to control all others, and establish negro citizenship, and confer upon them the right of suffrage, notwithstanding such State constitutions may not permit it. The object was to strip the States of many of their essential and constitutional rights. The provision authorizing Congress to remove disabilities, was designed to induce rebels to turn Republicans, to secure the benefit of it.

On the 16th of June, 1866, this amendment was transmitted to the several States by the Secretary of State. Tennessee, it is claimed, adopted it on the 12th of July, 1866, and thereupon Congress passed a joint resolution, approved by the President, admitting her into the Union, and her Senators and members to seats.

Prior to March, 1867, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, ten in all, rejected it. Iowa, California, and Nebraska have not acted upon it. Twenty States have ratified it. This proposed amendment has not been sufficiently ratified to become a part of the Constitution, nor is it expected it ever will. But Congress may, by declaring ten States out of the Union, in order to carry their points, insist that it has been adopted. Failing in this, Congress seeks to accomplish substantially the same thing, in the ten secession States, under their reconstruction acts, by forcing most of the provisions of the amendment into their proposed State constitutions. This is what is being done at the present time in these States by Congress through the active agency of the negroes, a limited number of Republicans, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the bayonet authority. All this is in violation of the pledge of Congress, commonly called the Crittenden Resolution, passed nearly unanimously July 25, 1861.

122.-LATER PHASES OF CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. Under Mr. Lincoln's plan of December, 1863, Louisiana and Arkansas were reorganized, one-tenth of the old voters being loyal men, and having exercised the power of reorganization. Mr. Lincoln subsequently changed this plan, allowing all loyal men who had taken the amnesty oath, and were voters under the State constitution, to elect delegates to a State convention to amend and alter their State constitutions. Mr. Johnson adopted this plan, and issued his proclamation on the 9th of May, 1865, appointing William W. Holden provisional Governor of North Carolina. On the 13th of June he appointed William L. Sharkey Governor of Mississippi; on the 17th, James Johnson, like Governor of Georgia; on the same day, Andrew J. Hamilton, for Texas; on the 21st, Lewis E. Parsons, for Alabama; on the 30th, Benjamin F. Perry, for South Carolina; and on the 13th of July, William Marvin, for Florida. This embraced all the States, except Virginia, where the old State organization had been kept alive, under Mr. Lincoln's auspices; and Tennessee, where a political convention had proposed amendments to her old constitution,

which were adopted and treated as a part of it. It thus appears that the necessary steps had been taken for reorganization in Louisiana and Arkansas, and in all the other seceding States, those pointed out as in Mr. Lincoln's plan of July 13, 1864. In nearly every case the radical Republicans thwarted the necessary proceedings as far as practicable. From July 4, 1864, to March, 1867, a period of almost three years, Congress passed no law on the subject of restoration or reorganization. But they refused to admit Senators or members from any secession State, thus leaving every thing in the utmost confusion. The act of the 3d of March 1867, was followed by another on the same subject on the 23d, and a further one on the 19th of July of the same year. These three acts have the same objects, and the last two are intended to render the first more effective. They are designed to secure such a reconstruction as will make the secession States Republican, under the control of negroes, through the agency of the Freedmen's Bureau, and Republican employés of the Government. Even in Virginia, the old government of which Peirpont, a Republican, was Executive, seems to have been reduced to the ranks, and compelled to seek such reorganization as the negroes may permit. These three acts passed by Congress were so framed as to exclude from voting and office nearly all the former resident white men, and confer the control upon negroes and the canting new-comer white men. The whole has been put under the control of the military tyranny which exists there, above the direction of the President and the control of the people, even at the ballot-box. The names of negroes who are mere myths are registered for the purpose of voting, and many having an actual existence do not know by what name they were registered; while thousands of white men, always loyal and true, are thrust aside and not permitted to register their names, unless they promise to become the tools of the Republican party.

The conventions called have been largely filled by negroes whose ignorance is painful to the observer, if not uncomfortable to themselves. The constitution framed by a pepper-andsalt convention in Alabama has been rejected, by not receiving a majority of the registered voters. The next step probably will

be for Congress to admit the State with a rejected constitution, which will, at no distant day, end in rejecting Republicanism and all its works in that State. The absurdities and inequalities of this Alabama constitution are thus exposed by Governor Parsons:

"The convention has provided for a Senate and House of Representatives, the former to be composed of thirty-three Senators, and the latter of one hundred Representatives. They proceed to apportion representation upon the basis of fifty-nine counties in the State, entirely omitting three of the sixty-two counties into which the State is divided. To thirty-five of these fifty-nine counties, with 208,282 whites, and 111,159 blacks, in all 391,441, they have apportioned one Representative each. To the remaining twenty-four counties, with 152,407 whites, and 328,310 blacks, in all 580,717, they have given sixty-five votes. If representation had been apportioned to the entire population of the State in the same ratio awarded to the eight counties to which three Representatives were given, the House of Representatives would have consisted of one hundred and twenty-eight Representatives, instead of one hundred. On the other hand, if the same ratio of Representatives were awarded to thirty-five counties where the white population predominates over the black more than two to one, the House of Representatives would have been composed of eighty-eight instead of one hundred members. Thus it is made apparent that there is a difference of forty per cent. between the ratio of representation in the eight counties where the black population predominates and the thirty-five counties where the white population outnumbers the blacks more than two to one.”

This shows to what length the Republicans will go in order to perpetuate their ascendency. There is not even a pretence of equality or fairness in this distribution of representation. There are other things in this rejected constitution that are little inferior in absurdity and injustice to those mentioned.

But bad as the Alabama production is, the convention, called under these reorganization laws, in Arkansas, excels it. It is thus described by that calm and truthful paper, the Journal of Commerce :

"It combines the extremes of freedom and tyranny to an extent hard to parallel in history. After giving the ballot to women