Alabama Claims

“ In addition to any court costs or fees now or hereafter authorized, and notwithstanding any other provisions of the Constitution, including without limitation Sections 96, 104, and 105, there shall be an additional twenty-five dollars ($25) fee assessed and taxed as costs on each civil and criminal case, excluding small claims, filed in circuit court, district court, or any municipal court in Pickens County, as well as a fee not to exceed five dollars ($5) for the service of all pleadings and other documents in connection with any such action or case. ”

“ It is important to the State that you of the majority should be right, and that I should be wrong. However much personal gratification I might feel hereafter in finding that I was right on this great question and that you were wrong, that gratification would, indeed, be to me a poor consolation in the midst of a ruined and desolated country. Therefore, as the passage of the ordinance of secession is the act by which the destiny of Alabama is to be controlled, I trust that you are right and that I am wrong. ”

“ Neither public document nor evidence discloses a law which, by its administration, is made something different from what it appears on its face, and therefore the fact that in Alabama it mainly concerns the blacks does not matter. ”

“ Under the Court's holding, she could choose from as many varieties of law as of forums. Under our theory, wherever she elected to sue (if she had a choice) , she would take Alabama law with her. Suppose even now she can get service in a state with no statute of limitations or a long one; can she thereby revive a cause of action that has expired under Alabama law? ”

“ Many similar cases were found later in other southern states, but those in Alabama being the first discovered attracted the most attention. The system came into existence in isolated communities through the connivance of justices of the peace with white farmers. The justices have jurisdiction over petty offences, of which negroes are usually the guilty parties, and the fines imposed would sometimes be paid by a white farmer, who would thus save the accused from imprisonment, but at the same time would require him to sign a contract to repay by his labour the sum advanced. ”

“ The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves, without the consent of their owners, or without paying their owners, previous to such emancipation, a full equivalent in money for the slaves so emancipated. They shall have no power to prevent emigrants to this State from bringing with them such persons as are deemed slaves by the laws of any one of the United States, so long as any person of the same age or description shall be continued in slavery by the laws of this State: Provided, that such person or slave be the bona fide property of such emigrants ”

“ No State or county official shall, at any time during his term of office, accept, either directly or indirectly, any fee, money, office, appointment, employment, reward, or thing of value, or of personal advantage, or the promise thereof, to lobby for or against any measure pending before the Legislature, or to give or withhold his influence to secure the passage or defeat of any such measure.
102. The Legislature shall never pass any law to authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a negro, or descendant of a negro. ”

“ But even if my analysis of the decisions below is erroneous and the Alabama law is not as clear as I conceive it to be, I would still not agree that it is appropriate to determine the ultimate constitutional issue. There is no doubt, as even the Court recognizes, that there exists here at least a lurking question of independent state law. Under such circumstances, the least that should be done is to vacate the judgment below and remand the case to the District Court for clarification of its opinion as to the status of Alabama law. ”

“ The law of Alabama does no more than authorize that to be done at once, which by a long course of proceedings in the courts should have been effected. It is impossible to lay down the limits between legislative and judicial powers. It is not in the power of the courts to interfere, and say this was not legislative power; and thus to assume a control over the legislature which will destroy it. ”

“ The defendant, being a corporation of the state of Alabama, has no existence in this state as a legal entity or person, except under and by force of its incorporation by this state; and, although also incorporated in the state of Tennessee, must, as to all its doings within the state of Alabama, be considered a citizen of Alabama, which cannot sue or be sued by another citizen of Alabama in the courts of the United States. ”

“ None of the respectable people of Alabama were opposed to allowing the negro to testify. They were not afraid of such testimony, for no jury would ever convict a reputable man on negro testimony alone. ”

“ The banks of Europe and Asia, the laws of Mexico and Texas, the abolition acts of Pennsylvania, the English common law, which in Massachusetts, ipso facto emancipates a slave, the church laws, laws of royal prerogative and of noblemen's privileges, might all be enforced in Alabama. There must be some stop to such endless and insufferable confusion-such chaos of government. ”

“ In other words, will Governor Jones ‘dare to do right,’ in this grave matter, affecting, as it does, the rights of the majority of the sovereign people of this commonwealth and the perpetuity of a republican form of government in Alabama. Will the Legislature, now assembled on Capitol Hill, knowing as they do, that all honest and fair-minded men among their constituents demand an investigation, ‘dare to do right,’ and enact a law which will insure that justice shall be done and a stigma removed, which will otherwise be a stain upon Alabama’s fair escutcheon forever? ”

“ On the contrary, the fact is that the suffrage provisions of the new Constitution of Alabama are an open disavowal and nullification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, and an exclusion of the Negro from the electorate on account of his race and previous condition; also the law providing for an appeal to the courts of the State of Alabama, where a Negro is refused registration, is only a snare, and affords him no relief whatever. ”

“ Outside of the few genuine Union men of North Alabama, there were not half a dozen respectable white men in the state who could take [Pg 370] such an oath. Those who had been opposed to secession had nearly all aided in the prosecution of the war or had held office under the Confederate government. The thousands who had fallen away from the Confederates in the last year of the war could not take the oath. The women could not take it, and few even of the negroes could. ”

“ At the same time it must be understood that politically and socially ours is a white man’s government. In the future, as has been the case in the past, the state affairs of Alabama must be guided and controlled by the superior intelligence of the white man. The negro must be made to realize that freedom does not mean idleness and vagrancy. ”

“ Of course, it is immaterial whether the beliefs sought to be advanced by association pertain to political, economic, religious or cultural matters, and state action which may have the [p461] effect of curtailing the freedom to associate is subject to the closest scrutiny.
The fact that Alabama, so far as is relevant to the validity of the contempt judgment presently under review, has taken no direct action, cf. ”

“ But the passage, by the legislature, of vagrancy and apprenticeship laws designed to control the negroes who were flocking from the plantations to the cities, and its rejection of the fourteenth amendment, so intensified the congressional hostility to the presidential plan that the Alabama senators and representatives were denied their seats in Congress. ”

“ This was a writ of error on a judgment rendered in the Supreme Court of Alabama.
Our jurisdiction to revise such a judgment is very strictly limited to cases where some right or title was set up by a party under the general government,-its constitution, treaties, or laws, and was overruled. It is this Federal character of the claim decided against which furnishes some justification for a revision of a State judgment in a Federal court; and unless it be clearly of that character, the foundation as well as the policy for our interference entirely fails. ”

“ Most States which overthrew negro suffrage seemed glad to think of the new regime as involving no perjury, fraud, violence, or lese-constitution. Some of Alabama’s spokesmen were of a different temper, paying scant heed to the federal questions involved. “The constitution of ’75,” they said, “recognized the Fifteenth Amendment, which Alabama never adopted, and guaranteed the negro all the rights of suffrage the white man enjoys. The new constitution omits that section. Under its suffrage provisions the white man will rule for all time in Alabama.” ”

“ The Negro and his friends will then have a clean-cut issue to take to the forum of public opinion, and a distinct ground upon which to demand legislation for the enforcement of the Federal Constitution. The case from Alabama was carried to the Supreme Court expressly to determine the constitutionality of the Alabama Constitution. ”

“ All officers reappointed were to take the amnesty oath and give new bond. The right was reserved to remove any officer for disloyalty or for misconduct in office. Thus there was a continuity between the Confederate administration and the “restoration” administration.
The civil and criminal laws of the state as they stood on January 11, 1861, except as to slavery, were declared in full force, and an election of delegates to a constitutional convention was ordered for August 31, and the convention was to meet on September 10. ”

“ Most criminals did not go to prison after conviction. The Radical legislature passed a law allowing the [Pg 763] sale of the convict’s labor to relatives. A good old negro could buy the time of a worthless son for ten cents a day and have him released.
The marriage relations of the negroes were hardly satisfactory, judged by white standards. The white legislatures in 1865-1866 had declared slave marriages binding. The reconstructionists denounced this as a great cruelty and repealed the law. Marriages were then made to date from the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. ”

“ Scales had no power to remove the trust or any of the trust property from Alabama. Exertion of any right or power reserved to her by the indenture was dependent on the laws of Alabama and not upon or subject to those of Tennessee, where she happened to have her domicil. ”

“ The black code of Alabama provides that if a negro who has contracted to labor fails to do so, he shall be punished with damages; and if he runs away he shall be punished as a vagrant, which probably means that he shall be sold to the highest bidder for a term of years; and that any person who entices him to leave his master, as by the offer of better wages, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and may be sent to jail for six months; and further, that these regulations include all persons of negro blood to the third generation, though one parent in each generation shall be pure white ”

“ Any claim that they were entrapped or misled is wholly unfounded, a conclusion confirmed by evidence in the record showing that when the petitioners deliberately violated the injunction they expected to go to jail.
The rule of law that Alabama followed in this case reflects a belief that in the fair administration of justice no man can be judge in his own case, however exalted his station, however righteous his motives, and irrespective of his race, color, politics, or religion. ”

“ As a native-born citizen of Alabama, and one who has always endeavored to serve my people and state to the best of my ability, both in time of war and in time of peace, I feel that I have a right to demand that justice be done. Thousands of true men all over this great commonwealth honored me with their support in the August election, and in their name I demand of the Legislature, a prompt and impartial investigation of this matter. ”

“ The judicial power of the state shall be vested in the senate sitting as a court of impeachment, a supreme court, circuit courts, chancery courts, courts of probate, such courts of law and equity inferior to the supreme court, and to consist of not more than five members, as the legislature from time to time may establish, and such persons as may be by law invested with powers of a judicial nature ”

“ From 1865 to 1868, and even later, there was, for all practical purposes, over the greater part of the people of Alabama, no government at all. There was little disorder; the people were busy with their own affairs. Public opinion ruled the respectable people. Until the close of Reconstruction, the military and civil government touched the people mainly to annoy. From 1865 to 1874 government and respect for government were weakened to a degree from which it has not yet recovered. The people governed themselves extra-legally and have not recovered from the practice. ”

“ Any person injured in person, property, or privilege had the right to sue the conspirators for damages under the Civil Rights Bill. In Federal courts the jurors had to take oath that they were not in any way connected with such conspiracies, and the judges were empowered to exclude suspected persons from the jury. Persons not connected with such conspiracies, yet having knowledge of such things, were liable to the injured party for all damages. ”