OHIO. 



603 



That all ballots voted at any election held in pur- 

 suance of law shall be written on plain white paper, 

 or printed with black ink on plain white news print- 

 ing paper, without any device or mark of any de- 

 scription to distinguish one ticket from another, or 

 by which one ticket may be known from another by 

 its appearance, except the words at thft head of the 

 ticket ; and that it shall be unlawful for any person 

 to print for distribution at the pollSj or distribute to 

 any elector, or vote, any ballot printed or written 

 contrary to the provisions of this act ; provided, that 

 nothing herein contained shall be construed to pro- 

 hibit the erasure, correction, or insertion, of anjr 

 name by pencil mark or otherwise upon the face of 

 the printed ballot. 



Among the other acts of this Legislature is 

 one making it an offence, punishable by im- 

 prisonment in the penitentiary for not less 

 than one nor more than ten years, to be en- 

 gaged as principal in any prize-fight. A bill to 

 remove from office persons guilty of habitual 

 intoxication failed of passage for want of a 

 constitutional majority in the House. 



The political conventions were held in the 

 early part of the year. No governor was to 

 be nominated, but several other State officers, 

 together with delegates to the national Con- 

 ventions and presidential electors, were to be 

 named. The Democratic Convention assembled 

 on the 8th of January, and nominated Thomas 

 Hubbard for Secretary of State, and William 

 E. Finck for Judge of the Supreme Court. 

 The position of the party on the various po- 

 litical questions of the day was defined in a 

 long series of resolutions. The general tenets 

 of the party were set forth in the following : 



Resolved, That, unalterably opposed to the doc- 

 trines which lead to consolidation, we renew, with un- 

 flagging zeal and increased energy, our attachment to 

 that political creed which has ever been so stanchly 

 adhered to by our organization through days of 

 trouble and disaster, as well as good fortune and pros- 

 perity : which was thus expressed by Thomas Jeffer- 

 Bon : "Equal and exact justice to all men, of what- 

 ever state or persuasion religious or political 

 p^eace, commerce, and honest friendship with all na- 

 tions, entangling alliances with none; _the support 

 of the State Governments in all their rights, as the 

 most competent administration of our domestic 

 concerns and the surest bulwark against anti repub- 

 lican tendencies; the preservation of the General 

 Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the 

 sheet-anchor of peace at home and safety abroad a 

 jealous care of the rights of elections by the people, 

 and the supremacy of the civil over the military 

 authority." 



With regard to the reconstruction acts of 

 Congress and the position of the negro, they 

 said : 



Resolved, That we condemn the legislative usurpa- 

 tions of Congress, and particularly the several acts of 

 reconstruction, so called, as violative of the consti- 

 tutional compact between the States, and as utterly 

 subversive of every principle of self-government that 

 distinguishes a free people. 



Resolved, That we are opposed to any measures 

 which recognize that the integrity of the* Union was 

 ever broken that any of its members were ever out 

 and that we determinedly insist that the Southern 

 States, no longer being in insurrection, or at war 

 with the Federal Government, are entitled to the full 

 representation in Congress, and the electoral college 

 given to all the States, and that denial of either to 

 them by Congress and its efforts to dictate by military 



force a Government for them are unconstitutional, 

 revolutionary, and despotic. 



Resolved, That we are opposed, both in principle 

 and policy, to negro suffrage ; that the State of Ohio 

 having by the emphatic majority of 50.000 rejected 

 it for herself is sternly opposed to its forced impo- 

 sition upon other States, and that we stigmatize such 

 an imposition by the Federal Government as a most 

 base usurpation. 



Resolved, That the practical effect of the so-called 

 reconstruction acts of Congress is, to deliver over ten 

 States to the political and social control of negroes, 

 and to place the lives, liberties, and fortunes of the 

 whites residing therein in the hands of a barbarous 

 people ; and it would inevitably lead either to a war of 

 races, or to the Africanization of the South. 



On the subject of national finances, they ex- 

 pressed themselves as follows : 



-)lved. That, notwithstanding the enormous and 

 conceded frauds in the creation of the public debt, 

 the faith of the country is pledged to its payment, 

 principal and interest, according to the terms of the 

 several acts of Congress, under which the bonds rep- 

 resenting the debt were issued, but not otherwise, 

 and we are opposed to any plan for extending the 

 times of payment, thus increasing the amount of gold 

 interest to more than the principal, or to any declara- 

 tion by Congress that the principal is payable in gold, 

 which would virtually add more than a thousand 

 njillions to the burden of the debt, and to the whole 

 insane financial policy of which these measures are a 

 part. 



Resolved, That, neither forgetting nor denying our 

 ancient faith that gold and silver coin form the cur- 

 rency of the Constitution, we declare that the five- 

 twenty bonds should be paid in the same currency re- 

 ceived by the Government for their issue, and that, by 

 the withdrawal of the monopoly granted to the Na- 

 tional Banks, this result can be accomplished without 

 an undue or dangerous increase of paper money, now 

 the only circulating medium, thus relieving our peo- 

 ple from the burden of a debt, the tendency of which 

 is always to corrupt and enslave, and our Govern- 

 ment from the reproach of paying a favored class in 

 gold ? while discharging its debts to all pthers : in- 

 cluding pensions to widows and soldiers, in an infe- 

 rior currency. 



Resolved, That this plan violates no law, impairs 

 no contracts, breaks no faith, and, instead of retarding 

 a return to specie payment, is the shortest because 

 the only safe way of reaching that end. 



Resolved, That all the property of the country, in- 

 cluding the Government bonds, which receives the 

 equal protection of the Government, should bear an 

 equal share in its burdens. 



They then condemn the doctrine of perpet- 

 ual allegiance, speak a word of encouragement 

 for Andrew Johnson "in his struggle with 

 Congressional usurpation," thank the soldiers 

 of the late war for their " fortitude and gal- 

 lantry," and close with the following: 



That the Democracy of the country have 

 neither the purpose nor desire to reestablish slavery, 

 nor to assume any portion of the debt of the States 

 lately in rebellion. 



The Bepublican State Convention met at 

 Columbus, on the 4th of March, and organized 

 by electing Lieutenant-Go vernor Jno. 0. Lee 

 for President, with a Vice-President from each 

 Congressional District. Isaac K. Sherwood 

 was nominated for Secretary of State; and 

 William White for Judge of the Supreme 

 Court. The platform of the party in Ohio 

 was set forth in the following resolutions : 



