The Southern States to Vote in Presidential Election

Southerners are convinced that talk of their exclusion fromvoting in the next Presidential election is only a conspiracy, but if it is true, blood will be shed.

The following pointed remarks occur In an editorial in the President's organ of Wednesday: "It will be recollected by our readers who have kept the run of this paper that we Intimated a suspicion several months ago that the Radical members of Congress has entered into a conspiracy against the Constitution to shut out the electoral vote in 1868 of certain southern States, and that about a month ago we stated more clearly what it was. As no Senator, Representative, or Radical newspaper has presumed to deny the allegation, we take it to have been true. It is a plot that cannot be carried out with impunity. We do not believe it can be consummated without bloodshed. At all events, if the electoral votes of the States thus unlawfully excluded will elect a candidate for President who shall not be elected without them, the people will find a way to have them counted, by putting the proper President elect into the executive office and maintaining him there, by force if necessary. The exclusion often States from representation in Congress goes to the utmost verge of public forbearance. No further outrage can, in our opinion, be superadded to it without breaking the public peace and exposing the country to the horrors of another civil war, in which the people of the excluded States would have the sympathy of the civilized world.

“The Southern States to Vote in Presidential Election,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed June 1, 2023, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/276.