The same old tune is yet sung – no registration in Hardeman. The Rev. N. A. D. BRYANT, we are led to believe, will be here on next Monday, for the purpose of recording the names of voters, though we have had no official hint of the kind. The excuse is that books and blanks are needed. We are informed that the much-needed papers were sent to a certain person who is not a citizen of this county two or three weeks ago. What right, we ask, has he to pocket the public documents that belong to Hardeman?
Mr. BRYANT has the commission and has accepted the office of register. No one is permitted by the law to do as one certain man, or thing, is doing. It is a down right shame that a whole county should, without the shadow of a cause, be thus misused and outraged. What have we done? Have we, as a people, defied any law? Have we, as a people, ever failed to acquiesce in the laws of the Legislature? WIll some of the radical party please answer these questions.
We want to know of what we are guilty. Surely, if we have done wrong, some one can point out the act. Will they do it? There are here today, old, time-honored Union men, who have two certificates of registration in their pockets, and yet they are not allowed to vote, and are now even denied the right to procure the third one. Never on earth has a people been so subject to the caprices of unstable minds as we are today.
Today you are made a voter – tomorrow denied the right to vote. How long are such things to last? Can no measures be adopted that will at least fix a permanent law for the governing of the franchise? If not, there is but little use of attempting to procure certificates, even should the register be good enough to commence his duties on Monday. Truly, we are kicked about like the veriest football that ever rolled through dust or mud. Whose fault is it? It is not our own. We are guilty of no crime; no charges even are preferred against us, yet we are made to suffer innumerable wrongs. This cannot last. A change must come.
The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.), 15 June 1867, Page 2. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
