834 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 11

her Treasury, and her thousands of intrepid sons whose
ashes rest on famed Antietam.

Resolved, That believing in the doctrine that to the States
belong the unrestricted powers over the elective franchise
any attempt on the part of the General Government to force
upon the people of a State the adoption of universal suffrage,
is an usurpation of authority, an interference with the fran-
chise not sanctioned by the Constitution of our fathers, and
a stigrna upon the purity, wisdom and justice of the founders
of the Republic.

Resolved, That whilst we would throw the aegis of pro-
tection around every resident of our State, we cannot, in the
language of our distinguished Senator, "regard the right, to
vote as inherent to man's nature, or its deprivation a reduc-
tion to political slavery," but from the experience of the past,
and from the national prosperity that has flowed from the es-
tablished regulations of the earlier statesmen of the Republic,
we believe in the salutary doctrine, that to the white citizens
alone should this inestimable privilege be committed.

Resolved, That in the sudden emancipation of the slaves
of the South without compensation to their former owners, in
the compulsory adoption of this amendment to the Constitu-
tion by an humbled, prostrate and vanquished people, we re-
gard the action of the General Government as unjust, and
rapacious, unworthy of the dignity of its character, a viola-
tion of usage, sanctioned by time, legalized by statutes, con-
firmed by repeated compromises, and justified by the spirit
and letter of the Constitution.

Resolved, That in the protracted exclusion of the Southern
representatives from the halls of the Nation, in the establish-
ment of the Freedmen's bureaus, in the subordination of
civil to military authority, in the futile, unconstitutional
attempts at reconstruction^ in the sudden elevation of the
negro to the political rank for which he is unfitted by nature
and the absence of culture, and in the threatened confisca-
tion, worthy of the days of Attila, the patriot blushes for the
indignities to a noble race, the unmanly persecution of an
humbled and generous foe, and the shameless violation of
the broken promise and plighted faith of the nation.

EDWARD J. CHAISTY,
JOHN R. BLAKE,
ALGERNON S. PERCY,
JOHN W. HARDEN,
CHARLES F. WENNER.

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