512 



MISSISSIPPI. 



liberty, heartily to unite their energies in the 

 coming political struggle against the Kadical 

 party, and never cease their labors until that 

 odious and dangerous faction shall have been 

 hurled from power." 



Some of the " enormities of the Radical 

 party " were summed up in the following reso- 

 lution : 



Resolved, That the history of the Radical party 

 proves that they are unprincipled enemies of liberty, 

 in this: That they have corruptly and repeatedly 

 violated the Federal Constitution ; that they hold ten 

 sovereign States of the Union under an actual military 

 despotism, taxing the people thereof enormously, and 

 refusing them the right of representation in the 

 councils of the nation ; that they are, even now, en- 

 gaged in the work of Africanizing the Southern 

 States, establishing negro rule and negro supremacy, 

 and elevating the black race, politically, pver_ the 

 free-born white citizens of the South, and, in viola- 

 tion of the Constitution, giving to negroes the elective 

 franchise ; that they are about usurping all the powers 

 of government, and grasping, through the legislative 

 department, supreme executive and judicial power, 

 thus making themselves daring innovators and re- 

 morseless tyrants, and destroying the last remnant of 

 that liberty once enjoyed by the nation ; that their 

 corrupt and despotic principles, if successful, will 

 inevitably ruin and degrade the Republic ; that, al- 

 though the Radical party consists of a mere minority 

 of the people, as clearly shown by the recent elections, 

 they nevertheless continue to defy the voice of the 

 nation, and arrogantly assume to wield the legislative 

 power which they hold under the mere forms of the 

 Constitution, for the consummation of their wicked 

 party schemes, the oppression of the masses, and the 

 establishment of a huge military despotism in the land, 

 under which constitutional liberty will be utterly 

 annihilated; that they have already destroyed the 

 prosperity of the nation by paralyzing commerce and 

 crippling industrial pursuits, whereby multiplied 

 thousands of white men, women, and children, not 

 only in the South, but also in the North and West, 

 have been thrown out of employment and reduced to 

 actual want and suffering ; that they are expending in 

 the South millions upon millions of dollars in pam- 

 pering and feeding idle and degraded negroes, as 

 instruments for securing political power, while the 

 white sufferers of the North and West, and the down- 

 trodden masses of the South, remain without con- 

 sideration, sympathy, or aid ; that they are every day 

 increasing our enormous national debt, by extrava- 

 gance and corruption, thus involving the national 

 finances in irretrievable ruin ; that their whole recent 

 party career is marked by injustice and usurpation, 

 and tends toward the permanent destruction of free 

 government on this continent, and to render fruitless 

 the toils and sacrifices of those pure men of the olden 

 time who founded for us a government well designed, 

 when properly administered, to secure to us forever 

 the blessings of liberty, prosperity, and national 

 glory. Such being some of the ruinous practices of 

 the Radical party, we hold them before the august 



under the withering 

 raged nation of freemen. 



The convention disclaimed all intention or 

 desire to take any steps for the restoration of 

 slavery. "We recognize," they said, "the 

 fact that African slavery is forever destroyed 

 in the Southern States, and are resolved that 

 we will, in good faith and willingly, aid in 

 securing to the colored race safety of person 

 and property, and full guarantees against op- 

 pression or injustice as freedmen; cherishing 



against them no feeling of hostility, and desir- 

 ing that they may elevate themselves in the 

 scale of humanity by mental culture to any 

 extent of which they are capable ; but their 

 ignorance and incapacity to exercise the privi- 

 lege of suffrage, and to discharge the responsi- 

 bilities of making laws and holding office, forbid 

 that we consent to invest them with these privi- 

 leges, or to consent to any legislation designed 

 to establish the political or social equality of 

 the white and black races much less the sub- 

 ordination of the former to the latter, as advo- 

 cated by the Kadical party." 



The supremacy of the Constitution of the 

 United States and the laws made in pursuance 

 thereof was admitted, and it was declared that 

 " whatever may be the opinion of any member 

 of this convention as to the abstract right of 

 secession, no one has the purpose or desire in 

 the future to resort to any measures calculated 

 to weaken the authority or destroy the unity 

 of the Government ; but, on the contrary, we 

 avow ourselves friends of a constitutional 

 Union of the States, and will, in good faith, 

 aid in securing the future glory and prosperity 

 of our common country, and cultivating a spirit 

 of fraternity and peace amongst the people of 

 all sections." 



It was further laid down as apart of the polit- 

 ical creed of the party that the State had never 

 been out of the Union, and, therefore, as Con- 

 gress had no power over the right of suffrage, 

 the provisions of the State constitution had the 

 only binding authority on that subject; and 

 " white males of the age of twenty-one and 

 upward and citizens of the United States were 

 alone qualified electors and office-holders " in 

 the State. With regard to the Constitutional 

 Convention, it was 



Besolved, That the pretended Constitutional Con- 

 vention, now in session at the capital of Mississippi, 

 and which assumes to frame a constitution and form 

 of civil government for the people of said State, is 

 assembled without constitutional authority, not 

 elected by the qualified electors of the State, nor by 

 virtue of the laws of the land ; that the acts of Con- 

 gress, under which military elections were held, for 

 the purpose of polling negro votes, to elect the mem- 

 bers of said convention, were not within the delegated 

 powers of Congress, and confer no authority on said 

 convention ; that the constituents of said convention 

 are chiefly negroes, destitute alike of the moral and 

 intellectual qualifications required of electors in all 

 civilized communities, combined with a small minor- 

 ity of white adventurers from other States ; that the 

 majority of said convention faithfully reflect the 

 peculiarities of their constituents ; that their projected 

 acts demonstrate them to be the enemies of the peo- 

 ple of Mississippi, who have constituted the State 

 from its territorial infancy to the present time ; that, 

 under the fraudulent pretence of framing a constitu- 

 tion and civil government for the State, they are 

 wickedly conspiring to disfranchise and degrade the 

 people, to rob them, alike, of their liberty and their 

 property, to destroy their social and political status, 

 and finally place them under the yoke of a negro 

 government. 



After having expressed its bitter hostility to 

 the reconstruction measures, and its determi- 

 nation to defeat the ratification of the new con- 



