[Download] "State of Georgia v. Stanton" by United States Supreme Court # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: State of Georgia v. Stanton
- Author : United States Supreme Court
- Release Date : January 01, 1867
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 74 KB
Description
THIS was a bill filed April 15, 1867, in this court, invoking the exercise of its original jurisdiction, against Stanton, Secretary of War; Grant, General of the Army, and Pope, Major-General, assigned to the command of the Third Military District, consisting of the States of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama (a district organized under the Acts of Congress of the 2d March, 1867, entitled 'An act to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States,' and an act of the 23d of the same month supplementary thereto), for the purpose of restraining the defendants from carrying into execution the several provisions of these acts; acts known in common parlance as the 'Reconstruction Acts.' Both these acts had been passed over the President's veto. The former of the acts, reciting that no legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now existed in the rebel States of Virginia and North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas, and that it was necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in them until loyal and republican State governments could be legally established, divided the States named into five military districts, and made it the duty of the President to assign to each one an officer of the army, and to detail a sufficient military force to enable him to perform his duties and enforce his authority within his district. It made it the duty of this officer to protect all persons in their rights, to suppress insurrection, disorder, violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals, either through the local civil tribunals or through military commissions, which the act authorized. It provided, further, that when the people of any one of these States had formed a constitution in conformity with that of the United States, framed by a convention of delegates elected by male citizens, &c., of twenty-one years old and upwards, 'of whatever race, color, or previous condition,' who had been residents in it for one year, 'except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion,' &c., and when such constitution should provide, &c., and should be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the question of ratification, who were qualified for electors as delegates, and when such constitution should have been submitted to Congress for examination and approval, and Congress should have approved the same, and when the State by a vote of its legislature elected under such constitution should have adopted a certain article of amendment named, to the Constitution of the United States, and ordaining among other things that '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 where they reside,' and when such article should have become a part of the Constitution of the United States, then that the States respectively should be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and the preceding part of the act become inoperative; and that until they were so admitted any civil governments which might exist in them should be deemed provisional only, and subject to the paramount authority of the United States, at any time to abolish, modify, control, or supersede them.