How is it possible, for instance, that "the Blessings of Liberty" are to be secured to "ourselves and our Posterity," if citizens of the United States, despite the XVth Amendment of that Constitution, find-through the machinations of political organizations --their right to vote, both abridged and denied, in many of the States, "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude?" How, if, in such States, "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," is habitually violated, despite the IVth Amendment of that 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."]