nt and patriotic people.

Our own history, although embracing a period less than a century,
affords abundant proof that most, if not all, of our domestic troubles
are directly traceable to violations of the organic law and excessive
legislation. The most striking illustrations of this fact are furnished
by the enactments of the past three years upon the question of
reconstruction. After a fair trial they have substantially failed and
proved pernicious in their results, and there seems to be no good reason
why they should longer remain upon the statute book. States to which the
Constitution guarantees a republican form of government have been
reduced to military dependencies, in each of which the people have been
made subject to the arbitrary will of the commanding general. Although
the Constitution requires that each State shall be represented in
Congress, Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas are yet excluded from the
two Houses, and, contrary to the express provisions of that instrument,
were denied participation in the recent election for a President and
Vice-President of the United States. The attempt to place the white
population under the domination of persons of color in the South has
impaired, if not destroyed, the kindly relations that had previously
existed between them; and mutual distrust has engendered a feeling of
animosity which, leading in some instances to collision and bloodshed,
has prevented that cooperation between the two races so essential to the
success of industrial enterprise in the Southern States. Nor have the
inhabitants of those States alone suffered from the disturbed condition
of affairs growing out of these Congressional enactments. The entire
Union has been agitated by grave apprehensions of troubles which might
again involve the peace of the nation; its interests have been
injuriously affected by the derangement of business and labor, and the
consequent want of prosperity throughout that portion of the country.

The Federal Constitution--the _magna charta_ of American rights, under
whose wise and salutary provisions we have successfully conducted all
our domestic and foreign affairs, sustained ourselves in peace and in
war, and become a great nation among the powers of the earth--must
assuredly be now adequate to the settlement of questions growing out of
the civil war, waged alone for its vindication. This great fact is made
most manifest by the condition of the country when Congress assem