CHAPTER XI
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1870
While the Radical leaders were engaged in their futile
efforts at Washington to obtain Federal intervention, the
Legislature convened at Nashville, and Governor Senter was
inaugurated with the usual ceremony. Both the Governor
and the Legislature manifested a desire to fulfill their election
pledges, by restoring the franchise to the ex-Confederates,
but the manner in which this should be accomplished
was not at first very apparent.
In the Constitution, as it was prior to the war, the suffrage qualifications had been clearly stated and no power had been vested in the Legislature to alter them. It was in virtue of the amendments adopted by the Radical Convention of 1865, that the Legislature had passed the disfranchising acts of 1866 and 1867.
The simple repeal of these acts would have re-enfranchised the ex-Confederates, but it would have left unsettled a number of perplexing problems resulting from the war. It was felt that the solution of these questions should not be left to the Legislature, as its members were all Union men, and therefore did not represent the whole political body. It was also recognized that the questions to be settled were of a constitutional character, and could be properly dealt with only by a constitutional Convention.
These considerations led to the passage of an act which authorized the Governor to put to a vote of the people the question of holding a constitutional Convention. At the same election delegates were to be chosen. Every male person not convicted of infamous crime, of the age of
