The Reputation of Presidents Takes a Hit in Their Second Term

[David Lockmiller]

(08-25-2022 10:07 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  It was the first state charter to incorporate Lincoln's conciliatory approach and was the leading test case for postwar policy.

The [Louisiana state] constitution also enabled the legislature to establish a free public school system for all children aged six to eighteen, with no mention of race. Legislators elected under the Constitution of 1864 established schools for whites but not for blacks.

The persistent efforts of African Americans and their white allies in Louisiana forced the issue of voting rights for blacks into the national arena. In 1864 they sent a delegation to Washington to petition for enfranchisement. Louisiana blacks valued the right to vote above all other rights because they could not hope to protect their property or their lives without political power.

When a petition taken to President Lincoln resulted in no change in the situation, freeborn and newly freed blacks came together at the Convention of Colored Men in January 1865, calling for the organization and unity of all persons of African descent. The convention's 107 delegates voted to petition commanding military authorities to integrate streetcars and rejected the idea of extending voting rights to only a small group of black men.

The Louisiana Black Code did grant certain rights to freedpersons--to acquire and own property, marry, make contracts, and testify in court--but its primary purpose was to restore the plantation economy by using blacks as poorly paid laborers instead of outright slaves.

The severity of Louisiana's and other states' Black Codes convinced many northerners that only with more radical forms of Reconstruction would southern society change to accommodate ex-slaves as citizens and free workers. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which defined the rights that all citizens were to enjoy equally without regard to race: to protect person and property, make contracts, and bring lawsuits. This federal legislation prevailed over all state laws and revealed the Republican Party's acceptance of what it had once considered Radical policy.

There are three branches of government in our democracy - executive, legislative, and judicial.

Chief Justice John Marshall of the United States Supreme Court wrote in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 176-177:

That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent.

This original and supreme will organizes the government, and assigns, to different departments, their respective powers. It may either stop here; or establish certain limits not to be transcended by those departments.

The government of the United States is of the latter description. The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction, between a government with limited and unlimited powers, is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act.

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.

If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power, in its own nature illimitable.

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.

This theory is essentially attached to a written constitution, and is consequently to be considered, by this court, as one of the fundamental principles of our society.