proclamation. He issued a final proclamation in which he attempted to set the stamp of legality upon the newly elected Governor and Legislature.
The energies of the new State government were immediately directed toward securing the continued ascendancy of the Union party. This was at first an easy matter, as one of the new amendments to the Constitution had given the Legislature the power of determining the suffrage qualifications.
The Legislature convened on the 2d of April. On the 7th Brownlow was inaugurated. His message contained the following brief reference to the all-important question of the franchise: "While I would not recommend you to give way to the impulse of vengeance any more than to the appeals of sympathy and pity, I would urge you to guard the ballot-box faithfully and effectually against the approach of treason, no matter in what character it may come."[1]
Most of the Union leaders in the Legislature desired the absolute disfranchisement of the "rebels," but it was feared so extreme a measure would arouse hostility in Congress to seating the Representatives from Tennessee. A compromise bill, known as the Arnell Bill,[2] was finally passed. By its provisions the right to vote was restricted to the following persons: "White men over twenty-one years old, who were publicly known to have entertained unconditional Union sentiment from the outbreak of the Rebellion, or who arrived at age since March 4, 1866, and who had not been engaged in armed rebellion against the United States Government, also those who had served in the Federal army, and been honorably discharged, those who had been conscripted by force in the Confederate army, and were known to be Union men, and all those who had voted at the election in March and February, 1865." All other persons were disfranchised. For all persons who had held civil or diplo-*
