"All men, without distinction of color, have the right to keep arms to defend their homes, families or themselves...."

Mobs In Indiana.

   General Tilson, Acting Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, lately issued a circular from his headquarters at Augusta, Georgia, in which occurs the following passage:

   "4. Article 2, of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States, gives the people the right to bear arms, and states that this right 'shall not be infringed.'--Any person, white or black, may be disarmed if convicted of making an improper and dangerous use of weapons*; but no military or civil officer has the right or authority to disarm any class of people, thereby placing them at the mercy of others. All men, without distinction of color, have the right to keep arms to defend their homes, families or themselves."

   Nine out of every ten of the mobs in Indiana, during the past four years, were provoked by Morton, Carrington & Co., in lawlessly invading, without process of law or legal warrant, the houses, families, and the members thereof, of innocent citizens of this State, and arresting and imprisoning them; by which innocent citizens, those thus arresting them, according to the above declaration, ought to have been shot down. A mob in resistance to lawless official force is a constitutional right, or a Russian despotism is already established. The Constitution gives the right of arms to defend ourselves with.

[The Plymouth Weekly Democrat, Plymouth, Indiana, Thursday, January 18, 1866. Volume 11. Number 20. Pg. 2]

* - According to the Laws of War. However, once the threat has ceased, and the lawful sentence of punishment imposed has been served. Then the offender is entitled to full restoration of their right to have arms for their defense. For that is the exact intention of the 2nd Amendment.