]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _March 29, 1870_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
In reply to your resolution of December 20, 1869, asking "whether any
citizens of the United States are imprisoned or detained in military
custody by officers of the Army of the United States, and, if any, to
furnish their names, date of arrest, the offenses charged, together
with a statement of what measures have been taken for the trial and
punishment of the offenders," I transmit herewith the report of the
Secretary of War, to whom the resolution was referred.
U.S. GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _March 30, 1870_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
It is unusual to notify the two Houses of Congress by message of
the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the
ratification of a constitutional amendment. In view, however, of the
vast importance of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, this day
declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the
usual custom justifiable. A measure which makes at once 4,000,000 people
voters who were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land
not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so (with the
assertion that "at the time of the Declaration of Independence the
opinion was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white
race, regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, that black
men had no rights which the white man was bound to respect"), is indeed
a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from
the foundation of our free Government to the present day.
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