Protest for Mayor and Council Election

From "Selma; Her Institutions, and Her Men" by John Hardy, pub. 1879:
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At a meeting of the Council held January 2nd, 1873, the following communications were read:

     "The undersigned believing the action of this Council and the publication of a proclamation by the Mayor, in accordance with a resolution adapted by a vote of a majority of this Council, on the evening of the 16th of December 1872, the day just before the city election for a Mayor an Councilmen for the next two years, as the charter provides, should have been held, destroyed the legal right of the Mayor and Council to longer discharge the duties of a Mayor and Council, as authorized by the Charter. This Mayor and Council were elected for two years, or until their successors were elected and qualified.
     This Mayor and Council did not only fail to provide for the 'election and qualification of their successors.' but intervened by resolution of the Council and proclamation by the Mayor prohibited the 'election and qualification of their successors,' and as the two years for which the present Mayor and Council were elected have expired their legal authority to further enforce the provisions of the city charter expired with this meeting, as we believe, and have so been advised.
     An election for Mayor and Councilmen, by the citizens of the incorporation, at the time, and as provided by the act of the Legislature, was a vital requirement, as we believe, to perpetuate authority and any person or persons to enforce the provisions granted in the act of incorporation; and a continuance to act as a councilman would be aiding indirectly, if not directly in the enforcement upon the people, penalties not warranted by law, and consequent liabilities pecuniarly in the State courts, and especially criminally liable in the Federal courts under the Federal statutes, for the protection of the personal liberties of the citizen. Entertaining these views, and as we are advised this is the last meeting this Mayor and Council can hold without incurring serious liabilities, we decline further to act as members of the present Council for the city of Selma; and we ask so as to exempt us form all such liabilities, that these, our reasons for declining further to act as Councilmen, may be, by the Clerk, spread upon the minutes of this meeting."

"John Hardy,
Edward Northup,
Alfred Wilson,
Alex. Goldsby."

A Meeting was held on the evening of the 9th of January 1873, by the six remaining Councilmen, when a communication form Messrs. Johnson & Nelson, City Attorneys, was read. A resolution was adopted, that thereafter five members should be a quorum for business, and proceeded to elect Charles Collier, James J. Bryan, W. H. Welch and E. N Medley to act in the place of the four who had refused longer to act with the Council. This created quite an interest in the condition of affairs in the city. Both parties appealed to the Legislature, then in session, and as the House was of one party and the Senate of another, a compromise was finally effected between J. M. Dedman and John Hardy, the two candidates for Mayor, which was the passage of an act by the legislature, providing that W. H. Fellows, John White, W. R. Bill and A. S. Toler should hold an election for Mayor and Councilmen on the first Tuesday in April 1873, whose term of office should be two years.

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