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It is therefore impossible for
any person in this country to be constitutionally convicted or punished
for any crime by a legislative proceeding of any sort. Nevertheless,
here is a bill of attainder against 9,000,000 people at once. It is
based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible and
found to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the 9,000,000 was
heard in his own defense. The representatives of the doomed parties were
excluded from all participation in the trial. The conviction is to be
followed by the most ignominious punishment ever inflicted on large
masses of men. It disfranchises them by hundreds of thousands and
degrades them all, even those who are admitted to be guiltless, from
the rank of freemen to the condition of slaves.
The purpose and object of the bill--the general intent which pervades it
from beginning to end--is to change the entire structure and character
of the State governments and to compel them by force to the adoption of
organic laws and regulations which they are unwilling to accept if left
to themselves.


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