JOINT RESOLUTIONS.

697

No. 9.

Of the Senate and House of Delegates of Maryland.

The Committee on Federal Relations, to which

was referred the resolutions from the Legislatures

of Missouri, Virginia and Delaware, having had the

same under consideration, beg leave to report:

Although an interval of more than a year has

elapsed since the Legislature of the State of Louisi-

Dispersing
Louisianna

ana assembled in the State House, in the Capitol of

Legislature.

the State, and had organized by the selection of a

Speaker, and other officers, and was proceeding in

the discharge of its duties, when, on the fourth day

of January, eighteen hundred and seventy-five, the

Hall of the House of Delegates of the said State was

violently invaded by a portion of the army of the

United States, acting under the orders and by the

direction of Lieutenant General P. H. Sheridan;

five of the members of the said House of Delegates

were seized and forcibly ejected by said troops, and

for a time the said Legislative Assembly of the said

State was dispersed, the Legislative Hall occupied

by said troops, armed with muskets and bayonets,

and other persons, not elected by legal voters of the

State, were, by the said troops, installed as members

of the said House of Delegates, in lieu of the five

ejected members. Considering the foregoing facts

and circumstances, the great and imminent danger

of the free institutions, which may result if this gross

outrage upon fundamental principles of republican

institutions shall be permitted to pass unrebuked,

and without the most solemn and emphatic protest,

to become a precedent, we, the Representatives of

the State of Maryland, in General Assembly, do

resolve :

1. That the Constitution of the United States is

the Supreme Law of the land, regulating, governing

Governing
and control-

and controlling both Federal and State Government,

ling.

so far as its powers are expressed, and so far as they

are essential to the execution of its expressed powers.