Full Text of Article:
The decision of the Supreme Court affirming jurisdiction in the Yerger case,
says the Lynchburg Virginian, has fallen like a
wet blanket on the Radical party, and, to a certain extent, invalidates the
laws of Congress erecting military governments in the Southern States. There
never was any reason to doubt the unconstitutionality of the Reconstruction
acts; and the subsequent act of Congress which prohibited decisions of the
high court -- which is really a co-ordinate branch of the Government -- on
all questions involving the merits of Reconstruction, was a confession of
their want of confidence in the constitutionality of these measures, and
their total incongruity with the letter and spirit of that instrument.--
They never could have stood the test of judicial investigation. But, it is
not our purpose now to enter into any labored argument on this subject, or
to encourage further resistance to a power that has shown itself as able as
it is willing to set aside the Constitution, as Thad. Stevens, one of the
Radical leaders, acknowledged they were doing when the laws were passed.
Virginia is too nearly "out of the woods," as we trust, to engage, at this
late day, in any hostility to measures that have served their purpose, in
this State at least. The time may come, however, when we shall be able to
look back upon the long dark night through which we have passed, with
feelings less chastened than those that now dwell in our bosoms; when we
shall wonder, even more than we now do, that this country ever tolerated the
usurpations of the Radical party during nearly five years of profound peace.
And our Northern fellow-citizens, too -- unless the love of liberty and law,
under a wise and beneficent Constitution, shall die out in their hearts --
will regard that interregnum wherein the Constitution was virtually
suspended in certain States of the Union, and one of them the oldest of the
Confederation, with feelings akin to those with which all lovers of
Constitutional liberty regard the dismal reign of Jacobinism in France. If
these bitter recollections shall serve to quicken our love of true liberty,
and to stimulate our hatred of "every form of tyranny over the mind of man;"
then, indeed, the history of the Radical party in the United States may
serve a useful purpose in teaching those who shall come after us to look
with suspicion upon, and to repress the very first efforts of men who may
rise hereafter to emulate the bad example of those whom impartial history
will hold responsible for all the crimes, beginning with a fearful civil
war, that have been committed against Liberty, and the record of which will
darken our annals throughout all future time.
