ustxtxb_obs_1961_09_15_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

much of the older document’s language. But there were significant differences. Among these differences: invocation of the “favor and guidance of Almighty God”; ordination of the new Constitution not by a united people bent on federal Union, but by “the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character,” omission of the intent, twice expressed in the U.S. Constitution, to “promote the general welfare,” Confederate Congressional powers “delegated” not “granted.” There were many other major departures. But perhaps the principal difference between the old and new Constitutions was in those provisions regulating the peculiar institution. The intent of the framers of the Confederate Constitution in this regard was stated clearly, by Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, in a speech at Savannah, March 21, 1861. Stephens said, in part: tion has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions = African slavery a$ it exists among us the proper status of the Negro in our form of civilization . . . “Our new Government, is founded . . . its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth . . . “. . It is the first Government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of providence . . . “The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be ‘so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the’ Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of his ordinances or to question them.” How was the “cornerstone” laid? Here, except for the section outlawing the importing of slaves from overseas, are the slavery provisions: “No . .. law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.” “The citizens of each State . . . shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.” “No slave or other persons held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs, or to whom such service may be due.” AFTER what the South still calls “The War” there arose schol ars and writers who “proved” that the relations of the races in the South was not a prime mover to the armed conflict. Alexander Stephens was among these; he wrote a book”A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States”damning as “superficial observers” those who held that the War was “the result of two opposing ideas, or principles, upon the subject of African Slavery.” Stephens’ squaring of his post-war views with his Savannah speech, the Confederate Constitution, the Calhoun-Fitzhugh position that slavery was “a positive good,” is difficult to followunless one recalls he was not exactly a detached observer. The late Maury Maverick Sr., a careful student of the Confederate Constitution, once said of its framers, “they were writing with a dead hand, trying to perpetuate a system itself long dead.” Maverick also said, of the Southern ‘Constitution, of the Dred Scott decision and other events leading to the Montgomery Convention, “when old men write in ink, young men write in blood.” THE SOUTH this Centennial Year, this Year of the Freedom Riders, has many more Stephenses and not all the Stephenses are red-necked mobbers of schools than Mavericks. I think of the Confederate monument in the Texas Capitol grounds. It is the biggest monument there: On its base is carved: “DIED FOR STATES AIGHTS GUARANTEED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.” There follows the sad arithmetic of the casualty lists. LYMAN JONES Richardson Foundation Sirs: I. urge you to read the leading news article in each of two recent numbers of Science, starting on page 543 and page 602, respectively, of the August 25 and September 1 issues. Their reporter, Howard Margolis, has uncovered something of the greatest importance. The Richardson Foundation, assuming “that the general public does not care deeply about strategy, and hence has little opinion about it,” has coopted our national military establishment to distribute its right-wing propaganda where it would be most effective, yet least apparent to the public. The substance of their proposition is that the AmericanRussian conflict is a fight to the death, that we must build up our armaments to attack the Russians while we have superior military power, that the lower echelons first must be , indoctrinated to this idea, and that then, either through this administration, or through a new administration elected for the purpose, the United States must take the offensive. Margolis states that this strategy receives strong support “among the better-informed admirers of Senator Goldwater, who is the only leading American political figure who is bluntly for total victory and against dis -armament.” I should think that the betterinformed admirers of President Kennedy might be , forewarned. Then they would do well to read Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. We all fight better with a little adrenalin in our system. K. E. Womack, Cotton Exchange Bldg., -Houston. AUSTIN It is the second half of the Civil War Centennial Year ; it is the Year of the Freedom Riders. Southern newspapers this year have printed, sometime in adjoining columns, “dispatches from the States War fighting fronts” and on ‘other pages the latest from Birmingham and Jackson. That these thingsthe century-old fratricide, the current civil rights struggle are linked, despite passage of a century, receives little notice, almost no comment. But link there is, and it can be stated simply: it isnever mind the event at McLean’s farm or Brown vs. Topeka Board of Educationas essential to the maintenance of the Southern social structure now, as before 1861, to that the Negro is inferior, that he neither deserves nor may he ever earn full citizenship. He is, he must be perpetually, of the “lesser breeds without the law.” What principally led the South to Sumter? Not States Rights alone. Calhoun was a nationalist for many of his public years, Dred Scott lost, the Missouri Compromise was struck down. Not solid anti-protectionism; sugar and hemp planters sought the tariff tent. Egalitarian Democracy? The South had been hospitable to both Federalist and Whig. Regional unity? The South had divided on many issues: annexation of Texas; war with Mexico, the Wilmot Proviso, the 1850 Compromise, and others. Certainly not slavery as economic necessity alone; many a Southerner publicly doubted the institution’s legality, many another admitted it was costlier and less efficient than hired labor \(and, moreover, as a contemporary diarist wrote, there was on the Southern conscience, “the THE MOST PROMINENT sign’ board on the last mile of the road to the War Between the States, as Southerners in increasing numbers fell in behind the Rhetts and Yanceys, read “White Supremacy,” short title for the myth it became necessary to exalt once there was general realization that the sheer number of Negroes south of Mason-Dixon posed a continuing threat to social order. One way to nail the sign up permanently was to provide for the permanent existence of a.JOwest order of human beingsslaves. How except by “White Supremacy” explain the flocking to the Stars and Bars of non-slaveholders? Slaveholders in the ante-bellum South totaled a sixth of the whole population. \(And what but “White Supremacy,” post Reconstruction Jim Crow laws and customs having invented a permanent subhuman class all over again, raillies a mob to a Little Rock or New Orleans school, to a Birmingham or JackThe myth first became official policy of the South on February 4, 1861, at Montgomery, Alabama. On that date, delegates from the seceded states promulgated the Confederate ConStitution. The framers of the Confederate Constitution needed but four nights. They knew what they wanted: a central government about like that set up by the Articles of Confederation earlier, a loose, non-sovereign agent-government, and one forever agrarian and non-industrial, shoring up forever King Cotton’s throne, preserving slavery forever. The Montgomery Constitution tracked the U.S. Constitution exactly in the order and numbering of articles and sections, and adopted LEGALS CITATION BY PUBLICATION TO Earnest Myrow and wife. ‘Marie Myrow, Defendants, in the hereinafter styled and numbered cause: 123309 by commanded to appear before the 53rd District Court of Travis County, Texas, to be held at the courthouse of said county in the City of Austin, Travis County, Texas, at or before 10 ‘ A.M. of the first Monday after the expiration of 42 days from the date of issuance hereof; that is to say, at or before, 10 o’clock A. M. of Monday the 16th day of October, 1961, arid answer the ‘petition of plaintiff in Cause Number 123309, in which MARY BELL AGNOR is Plaintiff and EARNEST MYROW and wife, MARIE MYROW are Defendants, filed in said Court on the 18th day of August, 1961, and the nature of which said suit is as follows: Being an action and prayer for judgment in favor of Plaintiff and against Defendants, jointly and severally, for $2,572.55, with interest from the 15th day of August, 1961, and for foreclosure of a vendor’s lien on the hereinafter described property. ‘Plaintiff alleges that on July 27, 1953, defendants executed and delivered to palintiff one certain promissory note dated July 27, 1953, and on the same date plaintiff executed and delivered to defendants a deed of conveyance to the following described tract of land, to-wit: BEGINNING at a stake for corner in the East line of said 4.24 acre tract of land, which beginning corner is S 36 deg 40’E a distance of 1100 feet from the N.E. corner of said 4.24 acre tract of land; THENCE continuing S 36 deg 40’E along the East line of said 4.24 acre tract of land a distance of 250 feet to stake for corner; THENCE N 61 deg 40’W a distance of 120 feet to stake for corner in the East line of a public road known as Maxwell Lane; THENCE N 36 deg 40’W along the East line. of ‘Maxwell Lane 250 feet to stake for corner, beingthe N W corner of the tract of land herein sold and conveyed; and THENCE S 61 deg 40’E a distance of 120 feet to the place of beginning, together with all improvements thereon; and being the same property sold and conveyed to Earnest Myrow and wife, Marie Myrow, by Mary Bell Agnor by deed of date July 27, 1953, of record in the Deed Records of Travis County, Texas, to which reference is hereby made. for which a vendor’s lien was retained to secure payment of said note and debt. Plaintiff further alleges that defendants have defaulted in the payment of said note and that on August 15, 1961, there was a balance of principal and interest due in the sum of $2,338.69. Plaintiff further alleges that defendants are indebted to plaintiff in the additional sum of $233.86 attorneys fees as stipulated in said note. Plaintiff prays for relief general and special, legal and equitable and for costs of suit. All of which more fully appears from Plaintiff’s Original Petition on file in this office and to which reference is here made. If this citation is not served within 90 days after date of its issuance, it shall be returned unserved. WITNESS, 0. T. MARTIN, JR., Clerk of the District Courts of Travis County, Texas. Issued and given under my hand and the seal of said Court at office in the City of Austin, this ‘ the -1st day of September, 1961. 0. T. MARTIN, JR. Clerk of the District Courts, Travis County, Texas. BY: 0. T. MARTIN, JR. CITATION BY PUBLICATION THE STATE OF TEXAS TO Robert Edward Becker Defendant, in the hereinafter styled and numbered cause: You are hereby commanded to appear before the 126th District Court of Travis County, Texas, to be held at the courthouse of said county in the City of Austin, Travis County, Texas, at or before 10 o’clock A. M. of the first Monday after the expiration of 42 days from the date of issuance hereof; that is to say, at or before, 10 o’clock A. M. of Monday the 16th day of October, 1961, and answer the petition of plaintiff in Cause Number 123,492, in which Betty Becker is Plaintiff and Robert Edward Becker is defendant, filed in said Court on the 1st day of September, 1961, and the nature of which said suit is as follows: Being an action and prayer for judgment in favor of plaintiff and against defendant for decree of divorce dissolving the bonds of matrimony heretofore and now existing between said parties; Plaintiff alleges that she was forced to separate from defendant on April 13, 1955, on account of the acts of cruel treatment, un, kind, harsh and tyrannical conduct from defendant toward plaintiff; plaintiff alleges that defendant was guilty of excesses, cruel treatment and outrages toward plaintiff of such a nature as to render their living together insupportable; Plaintiff alleges that one child, Mary Helen, born March 20, 1955, was born of this marriage, and plaintiff asks the Court to award her custody and control of said minor child, and asks the Court to order the defendant to contribute a reasonable amount for suport and maintenance of said minor child; Plaintiff alleges that no community property was acquired during this marriage; Plaintiff prays for judgment of divorce from defendant, that defendant be ordered to pay a reasonable amount for child support and maintenance until said minor, Mary Helen, reaches the age of 18 years, that the Court award plaintiff custody of the aforesaid minor child, and further prays for relief, general and special; All of which more fully appears from Plaintiff’s Original Petition