620 



PENNSYLVANIA. 



3. That representation in the Congress of the 

 United States, and in the electoral college, is a right, 

 fundamental and indestructible in its nature, and 

 abiding in every State, being a duty as well as a 

 right pertaining to the people of every State, and es- 

 sential to our republican sy- stem of government. _ Its 

 denial is the destruction of the Government itself. 



4. Each State having under the Constitution the 

 exclusive right to prescribe the qualifications of its 

 own electors, we proclaim as usurpation and out- 

 rage the establishment of negro suffrage in any of the 

 States by the coercive exercise of Federal power, and 

 we shall resist to the last resort the threatened 

 measures of the leaders of the ^Republican party to 

 interfere by acts of Congress with the regulation 

 of the elective franchise of the State of Pennsyl- 

 vania. 



5. That we are opposed to any amendment of the 

 constitution of this State giving to negroes the right 

 of suffrage. 



6. That the failure of the Tariff Bill in the last 

 session of the late Congress, more than three-fourths 

 of whose members belonged to the Eepublican 

 party, is an illustration of their infidelity to their 

 pledges and neglect of their professions in relation to 

 the great industrial and financial interests of the 

 country. 



7. That the Eadical majority in Congress, and 

 those who sustain them, have overthrown the Con- 

 stitution, dismembered the Federal Union, and sub- 

 verted republican government by a long series of 

 usurpations, among which are the following : The 

 denial of the right of the States of the Union to 

 representation in Congress ; the treatment of ten 

 States as subjugated provinces, and governing them 

 by military force in time of peace ; the enactment of 

 laws denying indemnity for arrests and false impris- 

 onment, made without authority of law ; the resist- 

 ance of authority of civil tribunals, and their over- 

 throw by substitution of military commissions for 

 the trial of undefined offences : their efforts to de- 

 stroy the Executive and Judicial Departments of the 

 Government by threatened impeachment to control 

 Executive action, and a projected remodelling of the 

 Supreme Court of the United States to force obedi- 

 ence to congressional mandates ; the ejection from 

 their seats in the Federal Senate and House of mem- 

 bers duly and legally chosen ; the purpose of confis- 

 cation, in violation of the declaration of the rights 

 avowed by the Eepublican leaders, and other guar- 

 antees of Federal and State constitutions, tending, as 

 it does, to destroy all protection to private property, 

 advances them tar on the high road to repudia- 

 tion. 



8. That a strict conformity, both by Federal and 

 State governments, to all powers, restrictions, and 

 guarantees, as contained in the Constitution of the 

 United States : a rigid and wise economy in the ad- 

 ministration or public affairs, and the election of ca- 

 pable, honest, and patriotic men to office, are meas- 

 ures absolutely necessary to restore public confi- 

 dence, avert national bankruptcy, and to insure the 

 perpetuity of our free institutions. 



9. That the late Eepublican Legislature of this 

 State has distinguished itself for the number of its 

 unwise and unconstitutional enactments. Some of 

 these laws have been judicially determined to be 

 unconstitutional ; others are unwise, inexpedient, 

 oppressive, and fanatical, and the members who sanc- 

 tioned them should be condemned by the people at 

 the polls. 



The Republican State Convention assem- 

 bled June 26th in the court-house of the 

 city of Williarasport, and placed the Hon. John 

 Scott at their head as presiding officer. A 

 majority of the votes of the delegates was 

 given for Hon. Henry W. Williams, of Alle- 

 ghany, as the candidate for Chief Justice. The 



following was then adopted by the members of 

 the convention as a " declaration of their opin- 

 ions and purposes : " 



1. That, in the name of the nation saved from 

 treason, we demand security against its repetition, 

 by exacting from the vanquished such guarantees as 

 will make treason so odious as to be forever impossi- 

 ble. 



2. That, as in the past we cordially justified the 

 administration of Abraham Lincoln in all necessary 

 acts for the suppressing of the rebellion, we record 

 it as our judgment that the administration of Andrew 

 Johnson has been chiefly faithless, in that it has 

 failed to try to gather up and fix in the organic and 

 statute law the great principles which the war has 

 settled, and without whose adoption as a rule of ac- 

 tion, peace is but a delusion and a snare. 



3. That, in the completion of the task of recon- 

 struction, so firmly as to be perpetual, it is indispen- 

 sable that traitors beaten in the field shall not find a 

 sanctuary in the courts that the law shall not be 

 tortured to justify or palliate the crimes-of which the 

 country's enemies have been guilty, and that the 

 law of the war shall be so distinctly declared by the 

 courts that no disturbing and paralyzing doubts may 

 ever be raised, as in 1861, affecting the essential 

 rights of the Government or personal duties of the 

 citizen. 



4. That this convention, speaking for the Bepub- 

 licans of Pennsylvania, unreservedly indorses the 

 reconstruction measures of the Thirty-ninth and 

 Fortieth Congresses as based upon sound principles, 

 essentially just and wise, and promising an early 

 legal and permanent restoration of the rebel States to 

 their share in the government of the Union ; that we 

 denounce and condemn the efforts of President John- 

 son, through his pliant Attorney-General and a 

 majority of his Cabinet, to evade these laws by in- 

 terfering to obstruct and prevent their enforcement 

 in the spirit in which they were enacted, and that we 

 call upon Congress, soon to meet, promptly and de- 

 cisively to dispose of this new nullification. 



5. That the thanks of the loyal men of this Com- 

 monwealth are hereby tendered to Major-General 

 Sheridan and Major-General Sickles for their pub- 

 licly-declared unwillingness to be made instrumen- 

 tal, in the startling and truthful words of the former, 

 " in opening, under presidential dictation, a broad, 

 macadamized way for perjury and fraud to travel on," 

 to the coveted repossession of political power in the 

 rebel States ; and that this convention confidently 

 expects that General Grant will vindicate his past 

 record by cordially sustaining them in their patriotic 

 efforts to execute the law. 



6. That President Johnson further merits our con- 

 demnation for his reckless pardon, and attempted 

 restoration to political rights, of many of the chief 

 conspirators against the Union ; and that especially 

 his persistent efforts to compel the release of Jeffer- 

 son Davis, without question for his crimes, are a re- 

 proach to the administration of justice and an insult 

 to the whole loyal people of the nation. 



The election of October resulted in the choice 

 of George W. Sharswood, the Democratic can- 

 didate, by a majority of 922 votes. The total 

 vote was 534,570, of which Sharswood received 

 267,H6 and Williams 266,824. A vacancy oc- 

 curred in the representation of the State in 

 Congress, by the death of Charles Denison, of 

 the Twelfth Congressional District, which was 

 filled by the election of the Democratic candi- 

 date, George W. Woodward, late Chief Justice 

 of the Supreme Court. The two parties are 

 represented in the Legislature of 1868 as fol- 

 lows: Senate Republicans 19, Democrats 14; 

 House Republicans 54, Democrats 46. 



