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TEXAS ASSERTS HER CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.

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forty-eight freedmen, total fifty-eight, killed by freedmen; and forty-eight killed by parties whose race was unknown.

In view of the fact that eighty of the ninety members composing the convention were Republicans, the following statement of the committee must. be regarded as extraordinary: "There is absolute freedom of speech in very few localities in Texas. Union men dare not generally avow their political convictions. In many places they can hold public meetings only when supported by troops or armed men; and in many others they dare not hold them at all. The dominant rebel element will not tolerate free discussion." It must be regarded as remarkable that an oppressed and brow-beaten party, to whom free discussion was not allowed, could yet carry the election by ten to one against their oppressors! There were ten thousand more whites than colored men registered. Under such circumstances, one would naturally have expected the whites, or Democrats, to defeat the convention project. At the same time, they could have elected a majority of the delegates. They had resolved, in their state convention, to accomplish this result; but, in spite of the terrorism which they are said to have exercised, they polled only about one-fourth as many votes against the convention as were polled for it, and they elected only nine delegates out of the ninety.

The constitution adopted by the convention in December, 1868, was liberal. It made suffrage universal. It contained no proscriptive clause on account of secession and rebellion. In the clauses providing for general education there was no requirement that the two races should attend the same schools, but, on the contrary, the legislature was authorized to establish a complete system of education adapted to the circumstances and wants of the people of the state. The Bill of Rights repudiated nullification and secession as heresies. It declared the Constitution of the United States to be the supreme law of the land. It also recognized the equality of all persons before the law. It forbade the importation of persons under the name of coolies. It declared that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever exist in the state.

The state constitution which was subsequently adopted in 1876, substituted for these clauses the following: "Texas is a free and independent state, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self-government unimpaired to all the states." The clauses in the constitution of 1868 which asserted the equality of all men before the law and declared that slavery should never exist in the state, were rejected or thrust out of the new constitution. It is true that the right of suffrage was secured to all, and that the rights of citizens were affirmed in general terms, and therefore were logically assured to all citizens. But it is also true that slavery was not recognized in any of the constitutions of the

original thirteen states. Texas, as a member of the American Union, cannot re-establish slavery, but there is nothing in the state constitution to prevent her doing so if ante-bellum precedents are to be followed.

The constitution of 1868 was adopted on the 30th of November, 1869, by a vote of 72,395 for it, and of only 4,928 against it. At the same election. Edmund J. Davis, the radical Republican candidate, was elected governor over Andrew J. Hamilton, the conservative Republican candidate, by a majority of 783 in a total vote of 79,338. The Democratic candidate for the governorship, Mr. Stewart, received only 445 votes. The legislature was Republican in both branches- seventeen radicals and thirteen conservatives in the senate, and fifty radicals and forty conservatives in the house.

The radical wing of the Republican party made strenuous efforts to accomplish the disfranchisement of a large portion of the whites, but in this they were defeated by the conservative wing of the party. Gen. J. J. Reynolds, the commander of the district, gave his hearty co-operation to the radicals, and, laying aside the character of an impartial military commander or governor, and departing from his simple duty, which was to preserve the peace and order of society while the people were engaged in framing a constitution, he became an active partisan and the leader of the most ultra of the two Republican factions. On September 4, 1869, he wrote a long letter to General Grant, giving his ideas upon the political situation in Texas. In this letter he arraigns Mr. A. J. Hamilton on the charge of having conspired with the Democrats to defeat the radical wing of the party. He states many facts as conclusive proof of the charge. Among the very unpopular schemes of the radicals was the division of the state. This found few friends.

When it is considered that the whites, nearly all of them anti-Republicans, constituted a large majority of the voters, and that the Republicans were nearly equally divided into two factions, it must be regarded as remarkable that the radical wing of the Republicans should have won the day in the elections. Such a strange result can only be explained by the fact that the military commander, with the army and President Grant at his back, gave his powerful support to the triumphant faction.

Although under the new constitution, all male citizens over twenty-one years of age, excepting idiots, the insane, and convicted felons, were declared to be voters, all the classes that were excluded by act of Congress from voting for delegates to the convention were also excluded by order of General Reynolds from voting for governor, state officials, legislature, and congressmen. By this fraudulent arrangement nearly thirty thousand Texans were denied their constitutional rights. There was, therefore, no valid election. The person claiming to be elected governor was not the governor. The pretended legislature was not a legislature. The pretended congressmen were not entitled to seats in the House of Representatives.

TEXAS ADMITTED TO REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS.

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The legislature thus chosen met on the 3d of February, 1870. It elected J. W. Flanagan, radical Republican, to fill the term in the United States. Senate which would expire on the 3d of March, 1875. Mr. Flanagan is noted as an outspoken spoilsman. It elected Morgan C. Hamilton for the full senatorial term, to commence March 4, 1871. But the next session of the same body, which met at the beginning of the year 1871, proceeded to hold another election to fill the full senatorial term, on the ground that the election of M. C. Hamilton at the former session was illegal - that not being the session next preceding the vacancy, which the act of Congress required. This constitutional after-thought, as the result showed, proceeded from the headquarters of the Fifth military district. Gen. J. J. Reynolds, who had given such material assistance to the radical faction both in Washington and in Texas, was chosen in place of Hamilton; but the United States Senate rejected his claim. It seated Hamilton.

The state was re-admitted to representation in Congress on the 30th of March, 1870, by the act of Congress approved on that day, upon the same terms as those prescribed for the states of Virginia and Mississippi.

The following statement in regard to the public debt of Texas is taken from the Poland report of 1872: In 1860, there was no public debt; in 1861, the debt was $328,866; the Confederate debt was $362,866; in 1871, October 1st, it was $454,887; the floating debt was $917,878; and the prospective liabilities were $11,500,000.

According to the minority report of the same committee, quoting the comptroller's report, the debt was not less than three millions. The debt and liabilities were stated at seventeen millions. The taxation imposed in 1871 was stated by the tax-payers' convention at $5,361,000. In 1875, the bonded and floating debt was stated on official authority to be $4,721,914, besides claims on the state, of doubtful validity, amounting to $829,687. As the Democrats, or white people, of Texas had at that time, 1872, come permanently into power, the work of reconstruction in that state may be considered as having then come to an end.

CHAPTER XXXII.

IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON.

SPRING OF 1865 - SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX - SECOND INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN -SCENE IN FORD'S THEATRE THE ASSASSINATION JOHNSON'S ACCESSION PRELIMINARIES TO IMPEACHMENT GROUNDS FOR THE IMPEACHMENT-MAJORITY REPORT OF JUDICIARY COMMITTEE - PRETEXTS FOR IMPEACHMENT - DISMISSAL OF STANTON ALLEGED CONSPIRACY BETWEEN GEN. LORENZO THOMAS AND THE PRESIDENT IS "SWINGING ROUND THE CIRCLE" A MISDEMEANOR?—THE SENATE AS A COURT INSTANCES OF IMPEACHMENT-SPLENDID ARRAY OF COUNSEL-ATTORNEYGENERAL STANBERY-THE EXCITEMENT AND VOTE-MINOR HISTORY OF THE TRIAL-DOUBTFUL SENATORS— MR. WARDEN'S RECITAL-SENATOR GRIMES AND PRESIDENT JOHNSON-MEET WITH REVERDY JOHNSON-SENATOR HENDERSON'S DOUBTFUL VOTE-THE AUTHOR'S PART-DAY BREAKS FOR THE PRESIDENT.

T is two o'clock in the afternoon of Palm Sunday on the 9th of April, 1865, that the two great generals of the respective armies which have been confronting each other for four years meet in the parlor of William McLean, at Appomattox Court House. General Grant proposes in

the form of a military note the terms of surrender. settled. General Lee returns a formal answer.

They are discussed and The rolls of officers and

men are to be made in duplicate. The officers are to give their parole not to take up arms against the government of the United States until properly exchanged. Each company or regimental commander is to sign a like parole for the men of his command. The arms and property are to be parked and stacked, and transferred to the officers appointed to receive them. The side-arms of the officers, and their private horses and baggage are not embraced in this stipulation. The surrender is made. Then the men return home. They are not to be disturbed by the United States authorities so long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they reside.

A pathetic account is given by an eye-witness of the farewell between General Lee and the weather-beaten officers whom he had commanded through the long and weary years of the war. As to the silent, poignant

JEFFERSON DAVIS' ARREST AND RELEASE.

579 parting of these veterans, the statements cannot be exaggerated. It was beyond all description beautiful, touching, sympathetic, and chivalric. Much apocryphal writing has been published, however, about the capture of exPresident Davis with a few friends, near the village of Erwinsville, by General Wilson's cavalry on the 10th of May. Much discussion also was had at the time about his imprisonment in Fortress Monroe. There he was kept in confinement until May, 1867. We know what followed. He was taken from this bastile to be tried on the charge of treason. Such men as Charles O'Conor and Horace Greeley were willing to be his bondsmen and his advisors. For a year and a half the cause remained upon the docket. It was finally dismissed.

The Presidential election of 1864 was a foregone conclusion; not because the Democratic candidates, General McClellan and George H. Pendleton, were not representatives of the best thought of the peace-loving Union devotees; but because the Confederacy was on the eve of a collapse. The downfall of the Confederacy was presaged. Mr. Lincoln was chosen for a second term. Andrew Johnson was elected in the place of Hannibal Hamlin. The political agitation through the country, however, did not cease.

On the 4th of March, 1865, President Lincoln was again inaugurated. The Confederacy did collapse within a month. After the evacuation of Richmond, the President visits that city. He does his best with the authorities for reconciliation. He returns to Washington. On the evening of the 14th of April, 1865, he attends Ford's Theatre, on Tenth Street in Washington, with his wife and a party of friends. The play is drawing toward the fifth act, when an actor named John Wilkes Booth dashes into the President's box, levels a pistol at his head, and shoots him through the brain. The assassin then leaps from the box to the stage, and escapes. The President lingers until the next morning, when he dies. This atrocious murder cannot be reckoned simply as a homicide. It is almost equivalent to the homicide of a great people. It causes consternation and despair. In the conspiracy by which the President was killed, Lewis Payne (or Powell) was particeps criminis. He bursts into the bed-chamber of the great Secretary of State, William H. Seward. He springs upon the couch of the sick man like a tiger thirsting for blood. He stabs him almost unto death, and escapes. We know the result of the trials which followed, the fate of Payne and his fellow-conspirators, David E. Herold and George A. Atzerodt, and others inculpated, and the terrible fate which overtook Mrs. Mary E. Surratt. It was at her house that the plot was alleged to have been formed. She had no plea against the panic-no plan offered her escape. Others besides herself were sentenced, in the fury which ensued, without much deliberation.

Thus passed away this prudent, clement, and great President. The difficulties of the South were magnified. The voice of lamentation which

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