22 FEBRUARY 1868, Page 2

The defeat of the Alabama Constitution was due to the

pro- vision that a majority of the registered electors must vote on the ratification. The whites sedulously kept themselves and their negro servants from the poll. 80,000 whites abstained from voting, and by sending patrols round the county boundaries, and resolutely forbidding the negroes to leave the plantations, they secured the absence of a majority from the poll. And in this way the Constitution was lost.