In the original requirement that the vote to be effective must exceed half of the registration, Congress was still upon the ground of correct principle. When it left this ground it virtually accepted the principle that republican "State" governments may be {154} legitimately created by a minority of the lawful voters against the will of a majority of the lawful voters, and that, too, not by allowing that minority to demonstrate its political superiority to the majority by greater intelligence, or shrewder management, or even by brute force, _but by the aid of power coming from without_. Now this is not, in correct political science, "State" government in a federal system, autonomous local government, at all. It is provincial government in local affairs, more or less complete as the necessity for the outside aid is more or less continuous. The Republicans had denounced the Johnson "State" governments upon the ground, among other grounds, that they were minority governments, minority governments in the vague and uncertain sense that not a majority of the adult males had been enfranchised, and not in the clear and distinct and unmistakable sense that a minority of the enfranchised, supported by the military power of the United States, might impose its will upon a majority of the enfranchised. There was nothing disloyal in the registered voters of Alabama giving Congress to understand that a majority of them preferred the continuance of the military régime, or the creation of a Territorial government for them by Congress, to the "State" constitution offered them. But it was utter self-stultification for Congress to take the ground that the Johnson "State" governments were unrepublican because they did not enfranchise all adult males of whatever race, color, or condition of mind or estate and overthrow them on that ground, and then proceed to create new "State" governments in their places upon the basis of a minority of the already duly qualified and registered voters. No impartial student, at this day, can view this terrible inconsistency in any other light than that of a high political crime. {155} [Sidenote: Ratification in Arkansas.] While the Senate was proceeding with the bill, another of the Southern communities was rapidly approaching the date fixed for voting upon the proposed "State" constitution, viz., Arkansas. The bill was passed by Congress the day before the voting began in Arkansas, but it was not known in Arkansas that it had been passed until near the close of the second day of the election. It could, however, be claimed that it was applicable to the case, and it certainly made all figures unnecessary except in regard to the actual voting. The "State" officers and legislators under the constitution to be adopted were chosen at the same time, by the Congressional electorate in Arkansas, and not by the "State" electorate, created by the new constitution.