The foregoing account of the situation in Arkansas is confirmed by the testimony of General Reynolds, military commander of the department, who had sent officers into all the counties. These reported civil government as everywhere reëstablished. The State, they asserted, had never enjoyed greater tranquillity. There was not a shadow of conflict between the civil and the military authority, for the latter in sustaining the former was careful not to encroach on any of its functions. In short, the restoration of civil law in that State was universally admitted.
In two thirds of the counties, however, great destitution prevailed. Early in the summer the General Government felt compelled to distribute among indigent freedmen and refugees vast quantities of food, and Northern generosity alone, the Governor declared, could prevent great distress during the ensuing winter. Nor was his expectation disappointed. It is a splendid tribute to the character of Americans that one of the most destructive conflicts in history, with all the animosities which protracted civil wars engender, did not perceptibly impair in them the feelings of humanity.
The organization of a Union government in Tennessee has elsewhere been described. The Assembly chosen under its authority met at Nashville on the 2d of April, 1865, and three days later ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. On the 21st the President was requested to proclaim the insurrection at an end in that commonwealth, though a few weeks later he was called upon for troops to guarantee a republican form of government and to protect the State against invasion and domestic violence. Besides appointing executive officers the Legislature elected to the United States Senate David T. Patterson and Joseph S. Fowler.
The most important measure of the session, however, was the enactment on June 5 of a severe law affecting the elective franchise. By it the right to vote was restricted, as formerly, to white males who had attained their twenty-first year. To the classes excepted by the Proclamation of December 8, 1863, were added all those who had left seats in the General Assembly, all who were absentees from the United States for the purpose of aiding the rebellion and all who had fled within the Confederate lines with the same intention. These were disfranchised for the period of fifteen years from the passage of the act.[[440]]
During this session there was presented by the freedmen of the State a petition for the elective franchise. The “colored citizens of Tennessee,” as they styled themselves, received no response to their prayer beyond the approval of an order for printing 500 copies of their memorial. The motion for this trifling concession was carried by a vote of 41 to 10.
On June 12 the Legislature adjourned until the first Monday in October. On the same day Governor Brownlow ordered an election to be held on August 2 for Representatives to Congress in each of the eight districts into which the State had just been divided. Vacancies in the General Assembly were directed to be filled at the same time.
The disfranchising act, with the oath required thereunder, had the effect of excluding a large number, probably three fourths, of the citizens from voting. Its adversaries declared the law unconstitutional, and it encountered much opposition, especially in Middle and West Tennessee. Its constitutionality, however, was sustained by one of the State courts in a decision rendered June 29, and the Governor, in a proclamation of July 10 succeeding, argued in favor of the statute. Those who should unite to defeat its execution would be “declared in rebellion against the State of Tennessee, and dealt with as rebels.” It was further signified that votes cast in violation of the law would not be taken into account by the Secretary of State.
Nor were these idle threats, for the civil officers were instructed “to arrest and bring to justice all persons who, under pretence of being candidates for Congress or other office, are traveling over the State denouncing and nullifying the Constitution and laws of the land, and spreading sedition and a spirit of rebellion.”[[441]]
It was relative to these measures that President Johnson on July 20, 1865, sent the following despatch to Governor Brownlow:
I hope and have no doubt you will see that the recent amendments to the constitution of the State as adopted by the people, and all the laws passed by the last Legislature in pursuance thereof, are fairly executed, and that all illegal votes in the approaching election be excluded from the polls, and the election for members of Congress be legally and fairly conducted. When and wherever it becomes necessary to employ force for the execution of the laws and the protection of the ballot-box from violence and fraud, you are authorized to call upon Maj.-Gen. Thomas for sufficient military force to sustain the civil authorities of the State. I have received your recent address to the people, and think it well timed, and hope it will do much good in reconciling the opposition to the amendment to the constitution and the laws passed by the last Legislature. The law must be executed and the civil authority sustained. In your efforts to do this, if necessary, Gen. Thomas will afford a sufficient military force. You are at liberty to make what use you think proper of this despatch.[[442]]