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July 4th, 1868. The Legislature of South Carolina rejected it December 20, 1866, and ratified it July 9, 1868.

If New Jersey and Ohio should not be counted, then as the case stood when Congress passed its joint resolution of July 21, 1868, the Amendment was lost, and if they were to be held to their first action, then for the same reason, North and South Carolina should not be counted, for it is shown on the face of the official proceedings that they first rejected it.

The writer recalls a celebrated trial in Georgia, the history of which was published at the time in a book entitled "Radical Rule or Military Outrage in Georgia." This trial convened before a military commission on June 29, 1868, and continued until the 21st day of July, 1868, the day on which Georgia passed the resolution ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment. On that day, an order was issued by R. C. Drum, Assistant Adjutant General, dated Atlanta, Ga., July 21, 1868, and directed to Brigadier General C. C. Sibley, U. S. A., President Military Commission, in which the following language is used:

"General: In view of the action of the legislature to-day and the probable immediate admission of the State of Georgia and consequent cessation of military authority, the commanding general directs that the commission of which you are president will suspend further proceedings in the trial of the prisoners charged with the murder of Ashburn.

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It is a striking coincidence that the Ashburn trial was suspended on the same day that the State of Georgia furnished the much desired vote for the adoption and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It was the general impression in the city of Atlanta at that time that the Military Commission would unquestionably find the prisoners guilty. The trial was going on at Fort McPherson at the same time that the Georgia legislature was in session. Prominent citizens of the State were subjected to torture and humiliation unknown and unheard of before in the annals of the history of Georgia.

Ashburn was killed in a negro brothel in Columbus, Ga.

A large number of young men were arrested on testimony of the flimsiest character and several negroes were also arrested.

Some of these prisoners were taken to Fort Pulaski and subjected to torture from fright, sweat boxes and other means in order to obtain testimony, and a large reward was offered for the conviction of these prisoners. At the same time, the hope of changing this condition of affairs was held out to the people of Georgia, weary with the long continuance of an unequal struggle and the desire to stop this trial, and the belief that radicalism would finally succeed, induced to a large extent, the legislature of Georgia, to accept the Fourteenth Amendment which they had formerly rejected; and thus we see that the torture of the prisoners had done its work and the proud spirit of a sovereign State was crushed.

Although the people of Georgia were led to believe that it would be immediately admitted to the Union, as is stated in the communication of R. C. Drum, Assistant Adjutant General hereinbefore cited, and although we find no resolution, adopting said Amendment, published in the Georgia Laws for 1868, yet we find a resolution naming a day for the election of United States Senators passed on July 28, 1868, and it is a fact that the State of Georgia was still further humiliated and again required to adopt the Fourteenth Amendment on the 2nd day of February, 1870. See Georgia Laws 1870, page 491.

It is very questionable to the writer's mind whether this Amendment was ever legally adopted; whether it was ever intended that a State should officially act and change its mind, taking official action some of them as many as three times, as was the case with the State of Georgia. It is also very plain to the writer's mind that this Amendment was never intended to have any other effect than to change the status of the negro.

In the History of the Last Quarter Century of the United States by Mr. Andrews, President of Brown University, in referring to the coercive measures of Congress, he says:

"As Georgia was suspected of evading some of the requirements, the Senators from the State were refused seats at Washington and did not obtain them until the last of January, 1871.

Georgia's representatives were given seats, but subsequently in 1869, these were vacated and remained empty until 1871. To regain representation in Congress, this State too was obliged to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment."

Says President Andrews in this history: "On March 2, 1866, it was enacted that neither House should admit a member from any seceder State until a congressional vote had entitled the Stateto congressional representation. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment making the negroes citizens of the United States and forbidding the legislatures to abridge their privileges was made pre-requisite to such a vote. Tennessee accepted the terms in July; all of the other States declined, thus defeating for the time this Amendment.

"Congress now determined not to wait for lacking States, but to force their reconsideration. The iron law of March 2nd, 1867, replaced 'secessia' under military rule, permitted the loyal citizens of any State, blacks included, to raise a convention and frame a constitution, enfranchising negroes, and decreed that when such constitution had been ratified by the electors of the convention and approved by the Congress, and when the legislatures under it had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and this had become a part of the Constitution, then the State might be represented in Congress. The supplemental law of March 19 hastened the process by giving District Commanders the oversight of regis tration and the initiative in calling conventions."

A great many interesting facts might be recounted relative to the history and the surrounding circumstances which induced the passage of the resolution submitting the Fourteenth Amendment to the legislatures of the various States of the Union; that any good was expected to come out of the Fourteenth Amendment other than to protect the negro, I don't believe entered the minds of any of the gentlemen of Congress who participated in its passage. It had its origin in the cauldron of political hate generate l by the result of the war. A triumphant political party flushed with victory and with the entire territory of the Southern States prostrate and in their power, were bent on reversing the decision

of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case, 19 Howard, 393, which had been decided only a few years before the outbreak of the Civil War, in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a man of African descent, whether a slave or not, was not and could not be a citizen of a State or of the United States. "This decision," says the Supreme Court of the United States, "while it met the condemnation of some of the ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers of the country, had never been overruled and if it was to be accepted as a constitutional limitation of the right of citizenship, then all the negro race who had recently been made freemen were still not only not citizens, but were incapable of becoming so, by anything short of an amendment to the constitution.

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To remove this difficulty primarily and to establish a clear and comprehensive definition of citizenship, which should declare what should constitute citizenship of the United States and also citizenship of a State, the first clause of the first section was framed: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Says the Supreme Court on page 73 of the 16th Wallace: "The first observation we have to make on this clause is, that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt.'

The Supreme Court of the United States was called upon, says that Court, for the first time, to give construction to these articles in December, 1872, when the trial of the celebrated "Slaughter House Cases" from the State of Louisiana came before that court for adjudication, and the Court says on page 67 of the 16th Wallace:

"We do not conceal from ourselves the great responsibility which this duty devolves upon us. No question so far-reaching and pervading in their consequences, so profoundly interesting to the people of this country, and so important in their bearing upon the relations of the United States, and of the several States to each other and to the citizens of the States and of the United States, have been before this court during the official life of any of its present members."

The court goes into a discussion of African slavery, and at the bottom of page 68, it says:

"But the war being over, those who had succeeded in re-establishing the authority of the Federal Government were not content to permit this great act of emancipation to rest on the actual results of the contest or the proclamation of the Executive, both of which might have been questioned in after times, and they determined to place this main and most valuable result in the Constitution of the restored Union as one of its fundamental articles. Hence the thirteenth article of amendment of that instrument. Its two short sections seem hardly to admit of construction, so vigorous is their expression and so appropriate to the purpose we have indicated."

After commenting on the condition of affairs and stating that burdens had been placed upon the colored race by their owners, and which curtailed their rights in the pursuit of life, liberty and property to such an extent that their freedom was of little value, while they had lost the protection they had received from their former owners both of interest and humanity; the court further says, at the bottom of page 70:

"These circumstances, whatever of falsehood or misconception may have been mingled with their presentation, forced upon the statesmen who had conducted the Federal Government in safety through the crisis of the rebellion, and who supposed that by the thirteenth article of amendment they had secured the result of their labors, the conviction that something more was necessary in the way of constitutional protection to the unfortunate race who had suffered so much. They accordingly passed through Congress the proposition for the Fourteenth Amendment, and they de

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