was an ingenious device by which a man who rented land and cultivated it with hired laborers might avoid paying them. The tax law, said to be substantially the confederate act, more than doubled the tax of the freedman, who could not read.1

In addition to the twenty-four pretended general laws levelled at the freedmen, the attorney general cited fifty others enacted under the constitution of 1866,2 hostile to the United States and its loyal citizens and incompatible with the national Constitution. These laws were the production chiefly of the ninth and tenth legislatures of the State, whose members were "public enemies" and carried on active hostilities against the General Government. The State had been so gerrymandered as to make it impossible to elect a loyal member to the legislature. A district court had been created for Davis county, "the rebel name for Cass county," the change of name having been made during active hostilities "expressly to dishonor General Cass, on account of his loyalty, and to honor Jefferson Davis, on account of his disloyalty." Judicial districts had been organized so as to throw loyal judges out of office.

Unnecessary offices had been created in order to find places for prominent Confederates.3 The sale of school lands had been manipulated so as to make them subservient to land speculators; a blow to free public schools. A county of Hood, named in honor of the general in the Confederate army, had been created; guardians and administrators had been empowered to compromise with cred

1 Report of the Attorney-General of Texas, 1867, transmitted to the convention by the Governor, June 19, 1868; Journal of the Convention, First Session; Appendix, 947-955.

2 Id. 956, 962.

3 The office of State Librarian, at $1,000 a year, which was conferred as a pension on the Private Secretary of Jefferson Davis. Id. p. 957.

itors. The laws providing for public printing were an ingenious scheme to subsidize a disloyal paper by covertly paying the highest price for the work. The law establishing the University of Texas was contrary to the civil rights act, and somewhat untimely in a disorganized State that had not established so much as one free public school. A provision had been made for the publication of the reports of the rebel supreme court, and another act made the Clerk of the United States District Court the custodian of the records of the District Court of the Confederate States. The election law was a plain effort to restore rebel officers to office, excepting assessors and clerks.

These, and other acts, the Attorney General complained of, showed distinctly the spirit of rebellion. He had prepared his report in compliance with a petition signed by the military commander of the District and the principal civil officer of the provisional government. His indictment of the constitution of 1866 and the laws enacted under it antagonized the civil administration of the State and led to his resignation. But no one attempted to deny the truth of his report.1 He sustained his indictment in an able opinion in which he examined the objectionable legislation somewhat at length, and established his proposition that the constitution of 1866 and the laws dependent upon it were null and void from the beginning.2

A week after the Committee on Crime and Lawlessness had reported, the Democratic State convention met at Bryan and appointed a similar committee. Its report

1 See Document B, Id. 962-966.

2 This opinion was somewhat unique in its way. It tested the constitution of 1866 and the laws under it by the acts of Congress and the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and attempted to show that, by the principle of American law, the Texas constitution and the acts were null and void. See the opinion in the Journal, 968-977.

386

POVERTY OF THE STATE.

corroborated the details of that made by the convention's committee; it admitted with sorrow the prevalence of crime, but attributed it to altogether different causes from those assigned by the convention's committee, and attributed it chiefly to the general demoralization resulting from the war, and to the absence of any government in the State for several months. The disbandment of the troops, both federal and Confederate, it said, had contributed to the reign of crime; but the chief reason was "the changed condition of society resulting from the emancipation of the negroes." Their indolent habits and their thievish disposition, and above all their turbulent spirit instigated by a body of designing men, were at the bottom of the trouble. The Democratic committee agreed that freedom of speech was not allowed in the State and that its greatest need was an efficient and liberal government.

The last days of August were now approaching, and the convention had spent most of its time in discussing matters more appropriate for a legislative body. It had been in session eighty-five days, had cost the State one hundred thousand dollars, and, on the twentieth, had asked the approval of General Reynolds for an additional appropriation of twenty-five thousand. Considering the condition of the treasury, the rate at which money was coming in, and the prospective wants of the State for current expenses, he was forced to decide that further appropriation for the expenses of the convention must be forbidden, and he returned its resolution without approval. This brought the first session of the convention promptly to an end, and it adjourned on the last day of the month, to assemble again on the first Monday in December. Its committees on the various parts of the constitution had reported. A constitution was read for final passage and signature, and the convention designated nine newspapers in the State

1

which should publish it in large extra editions for distribution among the people. They would then become familiar with its contents and be prepared to vote upon it when submitted to them.

Meanwhile the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment had been going on in other States of the Union. Nebraska, the twenty-second State to adopt it on the fifteenth of June, 1867, was followed by Iowa, on the third of April, 1868, after an interval of nearly a year.2 Three days later, the general assembly of Arkansas ratified unanimously. This act completed the work of reconstruction by the State, and, by the terms of the Congresssional acts, entitled it to admission. A bill to this effect was reported in Congress, on the eighth of May, by Thaddeus Stevens of the Committee on Reconstruction. It recited the late conduct of the State in complying with the reconstruction acts and declared it entitled to representation in Congress upon one fundamental condition,that its constitution should never be so changed as to deprive any citizen, or class of citizens, of the United States of the right to vote, who were entitled to the privilege by

1 Journal, 888.

2 For the ratification see Doc. Hist. of the Constitution, II, 739, 743. The vote in the Iowa House, January 27, 1868, was 68 yeas, 12 nays; absent and not voting, 20. See Journal of the House of Representatives of the Twelfth General Assembly of Iowa, 133. In the Senate the vote was 34 yeas and 9 nays. See its Journal, p. 265. The joint resolution was approved by the Governor April 3d.

8 Doc. Hist. II, pp. 747-750. The new general assembly of Arkansas began its session at Little Rock, April 1st. The Superintendent of the Public Buildings claimed that he had no official knowledge of such an assembly, refused to open the legislative halls. The members promptly sent for a locksmith and took possession of their respective halls on the 2d. Some of the Conservative papers of the State continued to speak of the assembly "as the pretended legislature."

388

READMISSION OF ARKANSAS.

the new constitution of the State.1 Stevens was determined to press the bill to an immediate vote. Its opponents pleaded for time in which to become familiar with the new constitution of the State. They denounced the fundamental condition, as a violation of the rights of a State, and, more particularly, because it made the experiment of negro suffrage a permanent institution.

The chief objector to the condition was Woodward, lately a Judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. The constitution of Arkansas, he said, was not republican in form. At this James G. Blaine pointedly asked him whether, in his opinion, the constitution of Arkansas at the time of its admission, twenty-two years before, which forbade the legislature of the State at any time to take any measure toward the abolition of slavery, was republican in form? But Judge Woodward declared the question irrelevant and would not answer. Stevens cited the admission of Illinois, Missouri, Michigan and Texas, each of which came into the Union upon conditions, as a sufficient precedent for the present case, and pronounced the new constitution of the State "above suspicion." He called for the vote and with greater confidence as he produced a certificate of Seward, the Secretary of State, declaring officially that Arkansas had adopted the fourteenth amendment, and it was filed as a part of the day's proceedings. The bill was then passed by a vote of more than three to one. In the Senate it was amended, though the change was in the language rather than the substance of the fundamental condition. It was sufficient, however, to precipitate a long debate in which that which had already been said on reconstruction was said again.

1 Congressional Globe, May 8, 1868, p. 2390.

2 Arkansas constitution, 1836, Art. VII, Sec. 1, Emancipation of Slaves.

3 110 to 32; not voting, 47. Globe, 2399.