DELAWARE. 



203 



voted, and also gives the residence of each 

 voter. The laws of Delaware give to every 

 citizen the right to challenge any name in- 

 scribed by the assessors on their list, and to 

 demand the insertion in either list of the name 

 of any citizen who has been improperly omit- 

 ted. The Clerk of the Peace, in making out 

 the alphabetical lists of voters for the use of 

 the inspectors of elections, exercises quasi- ju- 

 dicial powers when he determines the fact of 

 naturalization and determines and certifies to 

 the residence of electors; but the prerequisite 

 of assessment demanded by the Constitution is 

 determined by the assessors and the Levy 

 Court. The Judge decided, consequently, that 

 their lists are subject to the scrutiny of the 

 Federal officers which the act of Congress em- 

 powers the Circuit Judges to appoint for the 

 supervision of national elections. The Demo- 

 crats had submitted the names of candidates 

 for supervisors, protesting at the same time 

 against the appointment of such officers ; and 

 Judge Bradford appointed supervisors of elec- 

 tions from each party, subject to a revision of 

 his action by the Court in bane. 



The supervisors, alter having as many names 

 added to the lists as the assessors could attend 

 to during the time of their sessions, still had a 

 long list to present to the Levy Courts. A 

 great number of citizens, mostly colored, who 

 had not paid taxes nor voted for several years, 

 or had bqen previously assessed, were added 

 to the lists. It had been the practice of the 

 managers of both parties to see that the names 

 of poor voters were inscribed in the assess- 

 ment-lists, and to take care that their taxes 

 were paid. Owing to divisions among the 

 Republicans, and to repeated defeats at the 

 polls, this party had for some years remitted 

 its activity, and allowed the names of its poor 

 voters to be dropped from the lists by the as- 

 sessors, who usually belonged to the opposite 

 party. Formerly it was the custom to apply 

 to the assessors for the addition of omitted 

 names, the Levy Courts confining their atten- 

 tion to the rectification of mistakes in the lists. 

 Having a large number of supplemental names 

 to present to the Levy Courts, delegations of 

 citizens soon after the opening of these courts 

 requested that certain days should be set apart 

 for the sole business of correcting the assess- 

 ment-lists ; and considerable dissatisfaction was 

 created among the Republicans by the refusal 

 of this request, and also by the delays in add- 

 ing the names presented, occasioned by the 

 necessity of examining the lists of the two pre- 

 ceding years, to ascertain whether the proposed 

 were any of them delinquents, and therefore in- 

 capacitated under a statute passed a few years 

 previously. 



Several United States deputy -marshals were 

 arrested on election-day, or were subsequently 

 indicted for offenses against the State laws, 

 which they were accused of having committed 

 on that day. Those cases in which an indict- 

 able offense was charged were promptly trans- 



ferred to the United States Court on writs 

 of habeas corpus, it being held that these offi- 

 cers were not indictable before the State courts 

 for any acts committed by them while in 

 discharge of their duties; but the Wingate 

 case was remanded by Judge Bradford to the 

 Mayor's Court, the State tribunals having the 

 power to require bonds for keeping the peace 

 or otherwise act in cases where no indictable 

 offense is charged. 



The case of the negro, William Neal, who 

 was tried and convicted of murder, and sen- 

 tenced to death, was taken up by the United 

 States Supreme Court in a way which, like the 

 treatment of the deputy-marshal cases, was 

 deeply resented by the State authorities and 

 jurists of the dominant party. After a regu- 

 lar trial and conviction the counsel of the 

 prisoner applied to the United States Courts 

 to stay the execution of the sentence pending 

 an investigation of the Supreme Court into the 

 constitutionality of the mode of trial, and ob- 

 tained an order to that effect from the Federal 

 Judge. This lawyer, Anthony Higgins, had 

 previously applied to the State bench to trans- 

 fer the case to the Federal Courts, a demand 

 which the Judges, Comegys, Houston, and 

 Wales, all concurred in denying. The plea 

 upon which he invoked the interference of the 

 Federal judiciary was that there was no negro 

 on the jury which tried Neal, and that the 

 trial was vitiated by the studied omission of 

 colored men from the jury-lists, which amount- 

 ed to a breach of the Fifteenth Amendment 

 of the United States Constitution. 



Touching the mooted question of the limits 

 of Federal and State authority and jurisdiction 

 respectively which had repeatedly cropped up 

 in the course of the year, and the unwelcome 

 assertions of the power of the central Govern- 

 ment conveyed in the several rulings of the 

 Federal Court noted above, Governor John W. 

 Hall used the following expressions in his 

 message to the Legislature : 



The repeated exercise of jurisdiction by Federal au- 

 thorities over affairs purely of a domestic or local 

 nature, such as the appointment of officers to super- 

 vise the assessment of persons in this State, and the 

 interference with the administration of criminal jus- 

 tice, by challenging the State methods of constituting 

 and organizing juries, have forcibly suggested allusion 

 to this "subject. It was hoped that these, and kindred 

 other arbitrary expedients, which were ostensibly de- 

 vised for the attainment of temporary ends, would 

 disappear with the excitement out of which they were 

 born. But in this we have been disappointed. The 

 reaction of public sentiment which followed the par- 

 tial subsidence of the unreasoning passions of men, 

 did not reenthrone in the popular heart that senti- 

 ment of patriotism which alone is capable of subordi- 

 nating the lusts of ambition to the sober dictates of 

 reason, and of inspiring and shaping a governmental 

 policy in accordance with the genius and spirit of our 

 free institutions a policy which raised this country 

 from the condition of a few feeble States to the great- 

 estpower among the nations of the earth. 



This unwarranted assumption of power clearly be- 

 longing to the States, which was first demanded as a 

 temporary concession to the exigencies growing out 

 of physical strife, is now claimed as a permanent 



