Franklin Repository

The following bill has been passed by both houses of the Pennsylvania legislature:

A further supplement to the Election laws of this Commonwealth.

WHEREAS, By the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled "An act to amend the several acts heretofore passed to provide for the enrolling and calling out the national forces, and for other purposes," and approved March 3d, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, all persons who have deserted the military or naval service of the United States, and who have not been discharged or relieved from the penalty or disability therein provided, are deemed and taken to have voluntarily relinquished and forfeited their rights of citizenship and their rights to become citizens, and are deprived of exercising any rights of citizens thereof:

And whereas, Persons not citizens of the United States are not, under the constitution and laws of Pennsylvania, qualified electors of this Commonwealth:

SECTION 1. Be it enacted, &c., That in all elections hereafter to be held in this Commonwealth, it shall be unlawful for the judge or inspectors of any such election to receive any ballot or ballots from any person or persons embraced in the provisions and subject to the disability imposed by said act of Congress, approved March 3d, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and it shall be unlawful for any such person to offer to vote any ballot or ballots.

SECTION 2. That if any such judge and inspectors of election, or any one of them shall receive or consent to receive any such unlawful ballot or ballots from any such disqualified person, he or they so offending shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof in any court of quarter sessions of this commonwealth, he shall, for each offence, be sentenced to pay a fine of not less than one hundred dollars, and to undergo an imprisonment in the jail of the proper county for not less than sixty days.

SECTION 3. That if any person deprived of citizenship, and disqualified as aforesaid, shall at any election hereafter to be held in this commonwealth, vote, or tender to the officers thereof, and offer to vote, a ballot or ballots, any person so offending shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof in any court of quarter sessions of this commonwealth, shall for each offence be punished in like manner as provided in the preceding section of this act in the case of officers of election receiving such unlawful ballot or ballots.

SECTION 4. That if any person shall hereafter persuade or advise any person or persons, deprived of citizenship and disqualified as aforesaid, to offer any ballot or ballots to the officers of any election hereafter to be held in this commonwealth, such person so offending shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof in any court of quarter sessions of this commonwealth, shall be punished in like manner as is provided in the second section of this act in the case of officers of such election receiving such unlawful ballot or ballots.

SECTION 5. That it shall be the duty of the Adjutant General of this commonwealth to procure, from the proper officers of the United States, certified copies of all rolls and records containing official evidence of the fact of the desertion of all persons who were citizens of this commonwealth, and who were deprived of citizenship and disqualified by the said act of Congress of March 3d, 1865, and cause to be recorded and preserved, in books to be provided and kept for that purpose, in his office, full and complete exemplifications of such rolls and records, embracing the names of all such disqualified persons as had their residence within the limits of said counties respectively at the time of their being marked or designated as deserters; and it shall be the duty of the clerks of the several courts of quarter sessions of this commonwealth to preserve in books to be kept for the purpose all such copies and exemplifications of such rolls and records so furnished, and to allow access thereto, and furnish certified copies therefrom, on request, in like manner as in the case of other records of such courts.

SECTION 6. That a certified copy or extract of any such record from the clerk of a court of quarter sessions of this commonwealth shall be prima facia evidence before any election board of the fact of desertion and consequent disability and disqualification as an elector: Provided, that if any person shall willfully use or present any false, fraudulent or forged paper purporting to be a certified copy or extract as aforesaid, he shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished as misdemeanors are now by law punishable; And provided, however, that if by the production of a certificate of his honorable discharge it shall appear that such person so offering to vote was in the military service of the United States before and at the term of his being drafted into such service, and thereupon failing to report, or in case of the fact of desertion appearing by certified copy of his company roll, if it shall appear that he was afterwards acquitted thereof, and honorably discharged, such proof shall be received as evidence to disprove his said disqualification. And provided, further, That if any person liable to be objected to as disqualified, as aforesaid, shall produce before any board of election officers any false or fraudulent paper, purporting, or pretended to be his honorable discharge from the United States service, he shall be deemed guilty of forgery, and on conviction thereof shall be punished as persons are now by law punishable for forgery.

SECTION 7. That it shall be the duty of the judges and inspectors of elections hereafter to be held in this commonwealth whenever the name of any person offering to them a ballot or ballots shall be found upon a certified copy or extract furnished from said rolls or records by a clerk of a court of quarter sessions, marked as a deserter or whenever any person shall be objected to as disqualified as aforesaid at any election by any qualified voter, at the request or suggestion of such person, so offering a ballot, to examine such person on oath or affirmation as to the fact appearing from such certificate or alleged against him by the elector so objecting, and if he deny it, as to his reasons therefor; provided however, that if any of his answers under such examination are false, such persons shall be deemed guilty of the crime of perjury, and upon conviction thereof he shall be punished as persons are now punishable by law for perjury.

SECTION 8. That it shall be the duty of the sheriffs in the several counties of this commonwealth to insert, in their proclamations of elections hereafter to be held, the first four sections of this act, with the preamble thereof.

SECTION 9. That in the trial of all cases arising under this act, it shall be the duty of the Courts trying the same to inquire into and determine any question of fact as to alleged desertion involved therein, upon proofs furnished by exemplications, or extracts from such rolls and records, duly certified by the proper clerk of a court of quarter sessions, which are hereby made evidence thereof, and also from such proofs by parole as may be given in evidence by either party.

No intelligent voter can mistake the issues to be determined by the next election in Pennsylvania and other Northern States. Ingeniously as our opponents may seek to disguise them, they are nevertheless palpable and defy concealment. The persistent allegations that the Union majority in Congress and the Union party seek to prevent the restoration of the rebel States is not uttered by any intelligent man without a consciousness of falsehood. The weak and ignorant may be made thus to believe; but none of fair comprehension can so grievously err, and the leaders who start out with such a charge against the Union party, do so with a deliberate determination to deceive as to the position of both parties. They know that such is not the purpose or desire of the Union party, and they do not want the people to know what their real purpose is, and hence they seek to accomplish by fraud what they feel assured they cannot accomplish by fairly submitting the real issues to the people.

The Union majority of Congress and the Union party of Pennsylvania do not seek to prevent the restoration of the rebel States. On the contrary they desire their admission into full fellowship as soon as is possible to effect it with safety to the Nation just rescued from the deadly assaults of treason. They do insist, however, that the men who plotted treason in Congress, and with perjury upon their souls used their positions under the government to effect its overthrow, shall not be allowed to resume their positions and power in the Republic, to effect by diplomacy and statesmanship what they failed to effect by wanton war.

Treason was for many years before the war defiant in Congress, and filled the high places of power in many of the rebel States. They were encouraged in their perfidious work by Democratic Presidents and the Democratic party generally, and at last the Nation reaped the logical fruits of their work. A war, the most stupendous of history, sacrificing a million lives, and untold millions of treasure, was the retribution the people suffered by reason of their tolerance of treason in authority.

The Union party mean that henceforth treason shall be powerless to repeat its bloody record. They mean that traitors shall not be admitted into Congress; that States which rebelled against the sovereign power of the general government, maintaining treasonable governments for four years, and exhausting their energies and resources in the work of dismemberment and desolation, shall be restored to their rights only when they shall come with evidence of honest submission to the decision of the sword, their own chosen arbiter.

The war has its lessons for the present and for history. It has legitimate, logical, inexorable results. The Union party mean to accept them and to make discomfited treason do likewise. It has wiped out the blistering stain of human bondage. It must be done in fact as well as in letter of the law. Equality of all people, of all conditions and colors, before the law is one of the inevitable teachings, one of the imperious necessities of the new order of things in the South. Conventional equalities, such as the right of suffrage and eligibility to places of official trust, are questions for the States to determine in their own way; but the power of humble and opulent, the white and black, to maintain the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, is a duty that the victor loyalist must teach the vanquished traitor, because the traitor was against it.

Had the rebellious States accepted the issues of the war in good faith, as they doubtless would have done but for the treachery of President Johnson, they might have been represented in Congress long since. Had they promptly provided for the equal natural rights of the emancipated slaves in their respective States--empowered them to contract for their own labor, to enforce their contracts in the courts, to be parties to suits and witnesses in the same, to hold and enjoy their property gathered by the fruits of their own labor, accepted amendments to the constitution repudiating all debts incurred in past or future rebellions, and chosen men of even a shade of loyalty to Congress, they would not now be seeking in vain for admissions to representation.

It is a fact which all the sophistry and political ingenuity of our opponents cannot deny, that the insurgent States have adhered to their treasonable convictions, and to this day their allegiance to the government as a sovereignty. They as earnestly teach the right of secession now as before the war, and prove their faith in their principles by electing Governors, Senators and Congressmen who are the representatives of treason now as they were before the rebellion. There has not been a single loyal legislature chosen in the rebel States--not one that has not by every act, resisted the logical, palpable results of the war. They have in nearly every State refused the freedmen even the right to contract for labor; a few have under the pressure from Washington, reluctantly agreed to repudiate their debt; but all, like North Carolina, take the earliest opportunity to elect men to office who mean to pay their debt. They have not in a single instance, elected a Governor who was not so chosen because he was a traitor, and had no apology to offer for his treason, and nine tenths of the men chosen to Congress from those States, were open, earnest, unflinching traitors until treason was utterly overwhelmed. Do such men now seek to rule our country because they love it or because they hate it?

Upon the head of Andrew Johnson rests the fearful responsibility for this condition of our distracted country. There is not a traitor in the South who is not re-inspired in his hatred for free institutions by the shameless perfidy of the President, and his unspeakable recreancy is to-day the fountain that gives life, energy and hope to every impulse of treason throughout the land. He, in an evil hour, listened to the whispers of ambition and the seductive flattery of crime, and the treason he would once have made infamous, he would now clothe with honor and power; and relying upon his support, there is not a traitor who does not hope to defy the loyal sentiment of the nation, cloud its sacrifices with dishonor, and have the favor and patronage of an apostate ruler as his reward. In this work of shame and death the Democracy gladly join, willing to sacrifice the Republic to regain power by the restoration of blood-stained and defiant traitors.

Judge the parties now seeking the favor of the people by those who desire their success. Is there a traitor or a rebel murderer from the Potomac or the Ohio to the Gulf, who does not heartily, earnestly hope for the success of the Democracy in Pennsylvania? They have the same purposes in view, cherish the same hospitality to our free institutions and make common cause to give treason a decisive triumph by charging it with the destiny of the government it labored through four years of bloody war to overthrow. On the other hand, where we find a man who loves his nation because of its vindication of Freedom and Justice, and would make its appalling sacrifices lead it to higher and holier duties, we have one who would give success to the Union party as the only hope of the perpetuity of the honor and peace of the Republic.

The issues are distinctly made. Gen. Geary and Heister Clymer are the representative men who are to give success to treachery or to loyalty. Let the people choose between them!

In a portion of the election districts in this county--where the Union men had control of the election boards--deserters were disfranchised last fall, in obedience to the act of Congress, and in the Democratic districts they were invariably allowed to vote in defiance of the law. Three civil suits were brought after he election by deserters against election officers in Warren, Hamilton and Fannettsburg, for damages for rejecting such votes, and two of them will probably be for trial in August.

In view of the fact that the act of Congress disfranchising deserters is universally disregarded by Democratic election boards, and is universally enforced by Union boards, it is certainly of the first moment to the people to have the question judicially determined. In this county, for instance, deserters vote in Guilford at one window of the court house, and they do not vote at the next window where the votes of the North Ward are received, and like disregard of the law is manifested in nearly half the districts of the State. This fact, considered in connexion with the passage of a bill by the legislature providing more fully for the disfranchisement of deserters, which has not yet been acted on by the Governor, renders it vital that there should be a decision of the question by the court of last resort at an early day, which all parties would be bound to respect. Of course if the act of Congress cannot be sustained by the courts, no State legislation based on the act of Congress, could be sustained; so that if the confessedly just penalty for desertion imposed by Congress is to be enforced in all sections, the validity of the national act must be judicially ascertained. Other grave questions have arisen under the act of Congress which have been adjudged differently by different courts in the State. In strong Democratic districts Union judges have enforced the law at great peril to their person and property. In some of the courts of the State, where suits have been brought for damages, they have been blameless, but in others they have been made liable for costs and in some instances for damages. As no legislation can remedy these growing evils, which are steadily teaching disregard of law, we trust that the whole issue will soon be determined and the duties of courts and election officers under the law so clearly defined that none can err and be excused or justified.

A case from Hamilton township in this county is about to be carried to the Supreme Court this spring that will most likely determine all the disputed questions under the act of Congress disfranchising deserters. Mr. Huber was one of the election board of that township last fall, and decided to reject the vote of Mr. Riley because he was a deserter. The facts in the case are not disputed. It is admitted that Mr. Riley was a resident of the township, that he was over twenty and under forty-five, that he was able-bodied and fit for military service, that he was properly enrolled and drafted, and that he refused to report. Instead of entering the army, as all good citizens were bound to do when thus called upon, he fled from his home and remained away until he could return with safety. By consent of counsel a case-stated was submitted to the court of common pleas, admitting the facts as before recited, and asking judgement for defendant if Riley was legally disfranchised by the act of Congress, and judgement for one dollar and costs for plaintiff if he was legally entitled to vote. The court held that he was not legally disfranchised, and directed judgement for the plaintiff for one dollar and costs. The case will be carried to the Supreme Court this month, and will be argued in support of the act of Congress by J. McDowell Sharpe and McLellan & Kimmell. The question of the power of Congress to disfranchise citizens of the States as a penalty for desertion by the records of the Provost Marshal of the districts will be squarely before the court, and the law will, we trust, be so clearly defined that all men will be bound to respect it. We presume that the action of Gov. Curtin on the act of the legislature now in his hands, will be governed by the decision of the Supreme Court.

To the Editors of the Franklin Repository:

Will you allow me space in your columns to say a few words in regard to the organization of a Soldiers League in our county? In almost every county and city of our State, and not of our own State only, but of all the States whose citizens went out to crush the rebellion, they have such Leagues. They are not intended to be political organizations, but for the purpose of aiding and assisting each other. As we stood by each other at Fredericksburg and Shiloh, at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, with Grant in Virginia or with Sherman from the Mississippi to the sea, so we should stand by each other now. "Every soldier is a brother," was an oft repeated proverb--let us be as much of brothers at home as in the field.

It would be no hard matter to organize such a League in the county, if some of our most influential citizens, who were prominent soldiers, would take the matter in hand. A charter could easily be got from the parent League in Philadelphia. Hundreds of Franklin county soldiers would join a League, so as to keep up old associations and friendships whilst in the army. Will not Col. Stumbaugh, or Col. Elder, or Col. Dixon, or Col. Rowe, or Col. Ritchie, or some other of our soldiers take the matter in hand?

Let us by all means have a League. If none of those mentioned will take up the business, there are many others to work at it. Start the ball, and like an Alpine avalanche, it will then go of itself. Hoping to hear more of the matter from others, I am
A SOLDIER.