Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/42

22 armed hostility to the United States or the government of the State, but all those who had ever by act or word shown sympathy with the rebellion, or with any one engaged in exciting it or carrying it on, or had in other terms indicated their disaffection to the Government of the United States in its contest with rebellion, or had ever, except under overpowering compulsion, submitted to the authority of the Confederate States, etc.

This, it will be admitted, was rather sweeping. Sympathy with persons engaged in “exciting or carrying on rebellion” was somewhat calculated to cover a multitude of sins not visible to the unpracticed eye. No citizen could be registered as a voter unless he took a solemn oath that he had carefully abstained from all those things. But such oath was, according to section five, article two, of the constitution, not to be deemed conclusive evidence of the right of a person to vote or to be registered. Such right might be disproved, and all evidence for and against such right was to be “heard and passed upon by the registering officers, and not by the judges of election.”

These registering officers, exercising a judicial power over the right of citizens to vote, thus became persons of extraordinary importance. A word about the machinery of which they formed part. Under the law, the governor appointed one supervisor of registration in each senatorial district, thirty-four in all. These supervisors of registration had the exclusive power to appoint and to remove at pleasure three registrars in each county, whose duty it was to make a list of the qualified voters. These registrars had power to examine under oath any person applying for registration as to his qualifications, and also to “ascertain and diligently to inquire that such person had not done any of the acts specified in the constitution as causes for disqualification,” and if those registrars “were satisfied in their own minds” that such person was disqualified,