Constitution? How, if, in such States, persons are notoriously and
frequently "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process
of law," in violation of the Vth Amendment of that Constitution? Yet
such is the state of affairs generally prevalent in many States of the
Solid South.

These provisions in the Constitution were, with others, placed there for
the very purpose of securing "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and
our Posterity," of promoting the "General Welfare," of establishing
"Justice," of insuring "domestic Tranquillity" and making "a more
perfect Union"--and the violation of those provisions, or any one of
them, in any part of our Land, by any part of our People, in any one of
the States, is not only subversive of the Constitution, and
revolutionary, but constitutes a demand, in itself, upon the National
Government, to obey that imperative mandate of the Constitution (Sec. 4,
article IV.) comprehended in the words: "The United States SHALL
guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."

[The meaning of these words is correctly given in an opinion of
Justice Bronson of New York (4 Hill's Reports, 146) in these words:

"The meaning of the section then seems to be, that no member of the
State shall be disfranchised or deprived of any of his rights or
privileges unless the matter shall be adjudged against him upon
trial had according to the course of common law. The words 'due
process of law' cannot mean less than a prosecution or suit
instituted and conducted according to the prescribed forms and
solemnities for ascertaining guilt or determining the title to
property."]