Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/209

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184
The Green Bag.

plaisant Legislature, and enforced them with great harshness and much bloodshed. The Supreme Court, when these matters came before them, invariably rendered a strictly partisan decision. Its opinions were uniformly acceptable to the executive branch of the government. It should be added, however, that the court was kind and courteous in its treat ment of all lawyers appearing at its bar, whether Confederate sympathizers or not. It is not in the province of this article to detail the methods by which the horrors of

"reconstruction " were ended, and the body of intelligent people put in control of the State; but on Jan. 10, 1870, there assembled at Nashville the third Constitutional Conven tion of the State, a majority of the members of which disapproved of the course of Gov ernor Brownlow and were desirous of seeing power lodged once more in the hands of the whole people of the State. The Constitution they adopted removed the judges then in office, and provided for a reorganization of the court.