XIV. THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION--IN THE HOUSE…

XIV. THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION--IN THE HOUSE

First work of the Joint Committee -- The joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment -- Mr. Stevens' reasons for speedy action -- Protracted discussion commenced -- Objections to the bill by Mr. Rogers -- Defense by Mr. Conkling -- Two other modes -- How States might evade the Law -- Not a finality -- Wisconsin and South Carolina -- Amendment for Female Suffrage proposed -- Orth on Indiana and Massachusetts -- Obscuration of the sun -- More Radical remedy desired -- A Kentuckian gratified -- Citations from the Census -- Premium for Treason -- White Slaves -- Power to amend well-nigh exhausted -- Objections to the Suffrage Basis -- "Race" and "Color" ambiguous -- Condition of the Question -- Recommitted -- Final passage.

Although the Joint Committee of Fifteen were assiduous in their attention to the work assigned them, it was not until the 22d of January, 1866, that they were ready to make a partial report and recommend a practical measure for the consideration of Congress.

On that day Mr. Fessenden, of the Senate, and Mr. Stevens, of the House of Representatives, brought before those bodies respectively a partial report from the committee, recommending the passage of the following joint resolution:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both houses concurring,) That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of said Constitution, namely:

ARTICLE--. Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed: Provided, That whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation.

In the Senate this subject was laid over, and was not reached for several days, as the Freedmen's Bureau Bill was then under discussion.

The subject was pressed upon the attention of the House for immediate action. Mr. Stevens had no intention to make a speech, since the question had been under consideration by every member for the last six weeks. He remarked, however: "There are twenty-two States whose Legislatures are now in session, some of which will adjourn within two or three weeks. It is very desirable, if this amendment is to be adopted, that it should go forth to be acted upon by the Legislatures now in session. It proposes to change the present basis of representation to a representation upon all persons, with the proviso that wherever any State excludes a particular class of persons from the elective franchise, that State to that extent shall not be entitled to be represented in Congress. It does not deny to the States the right to regulate the elective franchise as they please; but it does say to a State, 'If you exclude from the right of suffrage Frenchmen, Irishmen, or any particular class of people, none of that class of persons shall be counted in fixing your representation in this House. You may allow them to vote or not, as you please; but if you do allow them to vote, they will be counted and represented here; while if you do not allow them to vote, no one shall be authorized to represent them here; they shall be excluded from the basis of representation.'"

As indicative of the apparent harmony of sentiments prevailing on the question, Mr. Wilson said that the Committee on the Judiciary had determined to report a proposition substantially identical with that offered by Mr. Stevens.

It was deemed important to have the joint resolution passed as soon as possible, that it might go before the State Legislatures then in session for their ratification before their adjournment. The member who had the measure in charge desired, after one or two speeches on either side, to have the question put to vote, and have the resolution passed before the sun went down. Such action, however, seemed to the House too hasty, and a discussion of the measure was entered upon, which ran through many days.

Mr. Rogers, a member of the committee, offered a minority report, and addressed the House in opposition to the proposed amendment of the Constitution. He thus presented his view of the object of the measure proposed: "It appears to have in its body, in its soul, and in its life only one great object and aim; that is, to debase and degrade the white race, and to place upon a higher footing than the white men are placed, under the Constitution, this African race. It is a proposition to change the organic law of the land with regard to one of the fundamental principles which was laid down by our fathers at the formation of the Constitution as an axiom of civil and political liberty, that taxation and representation should always go together. If gentlemen will examine this proposed amendment of the Constitution, they will see that it is in violation of that great doctrine which was proclaimed by the fathers of the republic when they enunciated the Declaration of Independence, and protested against the tyranny and despotism of England, because she attempted to tax the people of the colonies without allowing them representation in the councils of the kingdom. The amendment now under consideration proposes the very same identical thing that the Parliament of England proposed when it attempted to inflict upon the American colonies taxation without allowing the people of the colonies to have representatives in the Parliament of England to represent them upon the question whether they should be taxed by the mother country or not.

"The first objection I have to the passage of this joint resolution is, that it is violative of the main principle upon which the Revolutionary War was conducted, and which induced our fathers to enter the harbors of Boston and New York and throw the tea into the water. Because the British people attempted to inflict taxation upon them with regard to that tea, and refused to allow them representation in the Parliament of England, our fathers rebelled against their mother country. What has come over the fortunes and happiness of the people of this country that the great principle of the Constitution should now be violated, that principle for which our fathers spilt their blood to sustain, the great axiom of American liberty, that taxation never should be imposed upon a people unless that people have a corresponding representation? If this amendment to the Constitution should be carried into effect, it will prevent any State, North or South, from allowing qualified suffrage to its colored population, except upon forfeiture of representation; and if qualified suffrage should be allowed to the colored population of any State in this Union, on account of race of color, and but one single negro should be deprived of his vote by failure to meet the requirements of the qualification imposed, that State would be denied representation for the whole of that colored population--men, women, and children.

"More than that: this bill attempts, in an indirect manner, to have passed upon, by the Legislatures of the different States, a question which the party in power dare not boldly and openly meet before the people of this country, because there can be but one object lying at the foundation of this bill--an object which has been explained and expatiated upon in this House--and that object, as I have said, is, through the Federal power, to force the States to adopt unqualified negro suffrage, by holding over them the penalty of being deprived of representation according to population.

"But I object to this joint resolution upon another ground--upon the same ground that I objected to the passage of the Negro Suffrage Bill for the District of Columbia--without consulting the people. It has been said in this country that all power emanates from the people. And I say that to submit this grave question to the consideration and decision of partisan Legislatures in the different States--Legislatures which were elected without any regard to this question--is violative of the great principles which lie at the foundations of the liberties of this country; that no organic law, affecting the whole people, should be passed before submitting it to the people for their ratification or rejection. Now this joint resolution proposes simply to submit this amendment for ratification to the Legislatures of the different States. The Legislatures are not the States; the Legislatures are not the people in their sovereign capacity; Legislatures are not the source from which all power emanates. But the people, the sacred people, in the exercise of their sovereign power, either at the ballot-box or in conventions, are the only true and proper forum to which such grave and serious questions should be submitted.

"I maintain that the Constitution of the United States, as it now exists, is not as liberal toward the Southern States, now that slavery has been abolished, as it was before the abolition of slavery. Why, sir, in the days of the past, under our Constitution, the Southern States have been allowed a representation for a population that was not classed as citizens or people; they were allowed a representation for people who had no political status in the State; persons who were not entitled even to exercise the right of coming into a court of civil justice as a plaintiff or defendant in the prosecution or defense of a suit.

"Now, after the raging fires of war have swept from the domain of every State in the South the pernicious institution of slavery; after the result has been that every slave has received his freedom; after the slaves have gained more by the success of this war than any other class of people in the United States, white men, men who are the representatives of the white race, come here proposing to compel the States, on pain of being deprived of a portion of their representation, to allow all the negroes within their limits to vote, without regard to qualification or any thing else, while under the same provision the State may, by its organic law, impose qualifications and conditions upon the exercise of the right of suffrage by the white population. The proposed amendment to the Constitution undertakes to consolidate the power in the Federal Government. It throws out a menace to the States, and the inevitable result of the passage would be to induce every State in the Union to adopt unqualified negro suffrage, so as not to deprive them of the great and inestimable right of representation for that class of population in the halls of the legislation of the United States."

Mr. Conkling, also a member of the Reconstruction Committee, made an argument in favor, of the proposed amendment: "Emancipation vitalizes only natural rights, not political rights. Enfranchisement alone carries with it political rights, and these emancipated millions are no more enfranchised now than when they were slaves. They never had political power. Their masters had a fraction of power as masters. But there are no masters now. There are no slaves now. The whole relationship in which the power originated and existed is gone. Does this fraction of power still survive? If it does, what shall become of it? Where is it to go?

"We are told the blacks are unfit to wield even a fraction of power, and must not have it. That answers the whole question. If the answer be true, it is the end of controversy. There is no place, logically, for this power to go, save to the blacks; if they are unfit to have it, the power would not exist. It is a power astray, without a rightful owner. It should be resumed by the whole nation at once. It should not exist; it does not exist. This fractional power is extinct.

"A moral earthquake has turned fractions into units, and units into ciphers. If a black man counts at all now, he counts five-fifths of a man, not three-fifths. Revolutions have no such fractions in their arithmetic; war and humanity join hands to blot them out. Four millions, therefore, and not three-fifths of four millions, are to be reckoned in here now, and all these four millions are, and are to be, we are told, unfit for political existence.

"Did the framers of the Constitution ever dream of this? Never, very clearly. Our fathers trusted to gradual and voluntary emancipation, which would go hand in hand with education and enfranchisement. They never peered into the bloody epoch when four million fetters would be at once melted off in the fires of war. They never saw such a vision as we see. Four millions, each a Caspar Hauser, long shut up in darkness, and suddenly led out into the full flash of noon, and each, we are told, too blind to walk, politically. No one foresaw such an event, and so no provision was made for it. The three-fifths rule gave the slaveholding States, over and above all their just representation, eighteen Representatives beside, by the enumeration of 1860.

"The new situation will enable those States, when relationships are resumed, to claim twenty-eight Representatives beside their just proportion. Twenty-eight votes to be cast here and in the Electoral College for those held not fit to sit as jurors, not fit to testify in court, not fit to be plaintiff in a suit, not fit to approach the ballot-box! Twenty-eight votes to be more or less controlled by those who once betrayed the Government, and for those so destitute, we are assured, of intelligent instinct as not to be fit for free agency!

"Shall all this be? Shall four million beings count four millions, in managing the affairs of the nation, who are pronounced by their fellow-beings unfit to participate in administering government in the States where they live, or in their counties, towns, or precincts; who are pronounced unworthy of the least and most paltry part in local political affairs? Shall one hundred and twenty-seven thousand white people in New York cast but one vote in this House, and have none but one voice here, while the same number of white people in Mississippi have three votes and three voices? Shall the death of slavery add two-fifths to the entire power which slavery had when slavery was living? Shall one white man have as much share in the Government as three other white men merely because he lives where blacks outnumber whites two to one? Shall this inequality exist, and exist only in favor of those who without cause drenched the land with blood and covered it with mourning? Shall such be the reward of those who did the foulest and guiltiest act which crimsons the annals of recorded time? No, sir; not if I can help it."

Two other modes of meeting the case had been considered by the committee, namely: First, To make the basis of representation in Congress and the Electoral College consist of sufficiently qualified voters alone; Second, To deprive the States of the power to disqualify or discriminate politically on account of race or color.

After presenting some reasons why the committee saw proper to recommend neither of these plans, Mr. Conkling further argued in favor of the proposed amendment: "It contains but one condition, and that rests upon a principle already imbedded in the Constitution, and as old as free government itself. That principle I affirmed in the beginning; namely, that representation does not belong to those who have not political existence, but to those who have. The object of the amendment is to enforce this truth. It therefore provides that whenever any State finds within its borders a race of beings unfit for political existence, that race shall not be represented in the Federal Government. Every State will be left free to extend or withhold the elective franchise on such terms as it pleases, and this without losing any thing in representation if the terms are impartial as to all. Qualifications of voters may be required of any kind--qualifications of intelligence, of property, or of any sort whatever, and yet no loss of representation shall thereby be suffered. But whenever in any State, and so long as a race can be found which is so low, so bad, so ignorant, so stupid, that it is deemed necessary to exclude men from the right to vote merely because they belong to that race, in that case the race shall likewise be excluded from the sum of Federal power to which the State is entitled. If a race is so vile or worthless that to belong to it is alone cause of exclusion from political action, the race is not to be counted here in Congress."

Mr. Conkling maintained that the pending proposition commended itself for many reasons. "First. It provides for representation coëxtensive with taxation. I say it provides for this; it does not certainly secure it, but it enables every State to secure it. It does not, therefore, as the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Rogers] insists, violate the rule that representation should go with taxation. If a race in any State is kept unfit to vote, and fit only to drudge, the wealth created by its work ought to be taxed. Those who profit by such a system, or such a condition of things, ought to be taxed for it. Let them build churches and school-houses, and found newspapers, as New York and other States have done, and educate their people till they are fit to vote. 'Fair play,' 'A fair day's wages for a fair day's work,' 'Live and let live'--these mottoes, if blazoned over the institutions of a State, will insure it against being cursed for any length of time with inhabitants so worthless that they are fit only for beasts of burden. I have said that the amendment provides for representation going hand in hand with taxation. That is its first feature.

"Second. It brings into the basis both sexes and all ages, and so it counteracts and avoids, as far as possible, the casual and geographical inequalities of population.

"Third. It puts every State on an equal footing in the requirement prescribed.

"Fourth. It leaves every State unfettered to enumerate all its people for representation or not, just as it pleases.

"Thus every State has the sole control, free from all interference, of its own interests and concerns. No other State, nor the General Government, can molest the people of any State on the subject, or even inquire into their acts or their reasons, but all the States have equal rights. If New York chooses to count her black population as political persons, she can do so. If she does not choose to do so, the matter is her own, and her rights can not be challenged. So of South Carolina. But South Carolina shall not say, 'True, we have less than three hundred thousand "persons" in this State, politically speaking, yet we will have, in governing the country, the power of seven hundred thousand persons.'

"The amendment is common to all States and equal for all; its operation will, of course, be practically only in the South. No Northern State will lose by it, whether the Southern States extend suffrage to blacks or not. Even New York, in her great population, has so few blacks that she could exclude them all from enumeration and it would make no difference in her representation. If the amendment is adopted, and suffrage remains confined as it is now, taking the census of 1860 as the foundation of the calculation, and the number of Representatives as it then stood, the gains and losses would be these: Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maine would gain one Representative each, and New York would gain three; Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee would each lose one; Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia would each lose two, and Mississippi would lose three."

On the following day, January 23d, the proposed joint resolution came up in the regular order of business.

Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, feared that a construction might be put upon the bill which would be fatal to its efficiency for the purposes had in view by its friends. He said: "It says nothing about the qualification of property. Suppose this amendment is adopted by three-fourths of the States, and becomes a part of the fundamental law of the land, and after its adoption the State of South Carolina should reinstate the constitution of 1790, striking out the word 'white' and reëstablishing the property qualification of fifty acres of land, or town lots, or the payment of a tax, there would then be no discrimination of color in the State of South Carolina, yet the number of electors would not be enlarged five hundred, and the basis of representation would be exactly as it is, with the addition of two-fifths of the enfranchised freedmen. A Representative to this House would be reëlected by the same voting constituency as now, perhaps with the addition of five hundred black men in the State. If it bears this construction, and I believe it does, I shall vote against it.

"If any of the States should establish property qualification based upon lands, then the same oligarchy would be enthroned on the whole basis of representation, entitled to a larger number of Representatives than now in this House, and elected by a slightly enlarged number of qualified electors, giving power more firmly to that very aristocracy we have sought to overthrow."

A number of queries were propounded, several amendments proposed, and a considerable desire for discussion expressed, until Mr. Stevens, much disappointed at the reception the measure met in the House, withdrew the demand for the previous question, and left the subject open for unlimited debate.

Mr. Blaine, of Maine, addressed the House, detailing some objections to the measure. He said: "While I shall vote for the proposition, I shall do so with some reluctance unless it is amended, and I do not regret, therefore, that the previous question was not sustained. I am egotistic enough to believe that the phraseology of the original resolution, as introduced by me, was better than that employed in the pending amendment. The phrase 'civil or political rights or privileges,' which I employed, is broader and more comprehensive than the term 'elective franchise,' for I fear, with the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. Farnsworth,] that under the latter phrase the most vicious evasions might be practiced. As that gentleman has well said, they might make suffrage depend on ownership of fifty acres of land, and then prohibit any negro holding real estate; but no such mockery as this could be perpetrated under the provisions of the amendment as I originally submitted it."

In relation to taxation, Mr. Blaine remarked: "Now, I contend that ordinary fair play--and certainly we can afford fair play where it does not cost any thing--calls for this, namely, that if we exclude them from the basis of representation they should be excluded from the basis of taxation. Ever since this Government was founded, taxation and representation have always gone hand in hand. If we shall exclude the principle in this amendment, we will be accused of a narrow, illiberal, mean-spirited, and money-grasping policy. More than that, we do not gain any thing by it. What kind of taxation, is distributed according to representation? Direct taxation. Now, we do not have any direct taxation. There has been but twenty millions of direct taxation levied for the last fifty years. That tax was levied in 1861, and was not collected, but distributed among the States and held in the Treasury Department as an offset to the war claims of the States; so that, as a matter of fact, we are putting an offensive discrimination in this proposition and gaining nothing by it except obloquy."

Mr. Donnelly, of Minnesota, said: "It follows, as a logical conclusion, that if men have no voice in the National Government, other men should not sit in this hall pretending to represent them. And it is equally clear that an oppressed race should not lend power to their oppressors, to be used in their name and for their destruction. It is a mockery to say that a man's agent shall be his enemy, and shall be appointed without his consent and against his desire, and by other enemies.

"In fact, I can not see how any Northern man can vote against this measure, unless he wishes to perpetuate an injustice to his section, because the effect of it will clearly be to increase the representation of the North and decrease that of the South; and this, too, upon a basis of undoubted justice. It means simply that those who do not take part in the Government shall not be represented in the Government."

Mr. Donnelly did not, however, regard the proposed amendment as "a grand panacea for all the ills that affect the nation." He would vote for the law, "not as a finality, but as a partial step as one of a series of necessary laws." Said he, "When we vote for this measure, it must be because we think it right and necessary, not that it may furnish us with an excuse for failing to do all other right and necessary things expected of us by the people. We must take direct, not sidelong measures. We must make laws, not arguments. We must enforce, not induce.

"To pass this law and then hope that South Carolina, moved by the hope of future power, would do justice to the negro, is absurd. She has 291,300 whites and 412,406 negroes. To pass such a law would be for the governing power to divest itself of the government and hand it over to a subject and despised caste, and that, too, for a faint hope of some future advantage that might never be realized under the most favorable circumstances, and certainly could never be realized by the aspiring class abdicating and relinquishing power. The same is true, more or less, of all the South. In Mississippi there are 353,901 whites, and 436,631 negroes; and in all the States the negro vote would be large enough to turn the scale against the disloyal party."

Mr. Sloan, of Wisconsin, thus presented the practical workings of the "Constitution as it is:" "Look at the practical operation of the question we are discussing to-day. In the State I represent there are eight hundred thousand free white people loyal to the Constitution, who have done their whole duty in sustaining their Government during this terrible war. The bones of our soldiers are moldering in the soil of every rebel State. They have stood around our flag in the deadly hail of every battle of the war. The State of Wisconsin has six Representatives on this floor. South Carolina has three hundred thousand white inhabitants, disloyal, who have done all in their power to overthrow and destroy the Government, and yet, sir, under the Constitution as it now stands, the three hundred thousand disloyal white inhabitants of South Carolina will exercise as much political power in the Government as the eight hundred thousand loyal people of the State of Wisconsin."

Mr. Sloan called attention to a proposition which he had submitted to the preceding Congress, providing that the right of representation should be based upon the right of suffrage--upon the numbers allowed the right to vote in the respective States.

In answer to a supposed objection to this plan, that "there might be some inequality in the representation of the respective States," he said: "We all know that the young men of the old States go out in large numbers to settle in the new States and Territories, while the women and children do not emigrate to so great an extent, and hence there would be a larger number of voters in the new States in proportion to population than in the old. And yet this is a consideration which, in my judgment, ought not to weigh a hair with any member on this floor. It would be only a temporary inequality. In the rapidly increasing settlement and in the natural increase of population of our new States, that inequality would very soon be entirely swept away. I believe the difference to-day between Massachusetts and Wisconsin would be very slight, if any, so rapid has been the increase of our population and the settlement of our State. We are now proposing to adopt an amendment to the Constitution which we expect to stand for all time, and any temporary inequality which could continue but for a few years ought not to have any weight."

Mr. Brooks, of New York, thought that Mr. Stevens would better "at the start have named what are States of this Union. The opinion of the honorable gentleman himself, that there are no States in this Union but those that are now represented upon this floor, I know full well; but he knows as well that the President of the United States recognizes thirty-six States of this Union, and that it is necessary to obtain the consent of three-fourths of those thirty-six States, which number it is not possible to obtain. He knows very well that if his amendment should be adopted by the Legislatures of States enough, in his judgment, to carry it, before it could pass the tribunal of the Executive chamber it would be obliged to receive the assent of twenty-seven States in order to become an amendment to the Constitution."

Mr. Brooks, in the course of his speech, presented a petition from certain ladies of New York, asking an amendment of the Constitution, prohibiting the several States from disfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of sex. He then proposed to amend the joint resolution by inserting the words "or sex" after the word "color," so that it would read, "Provided, That whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color or sex, all persons of such race or color or sex shall be excluded from the basis of representation."

"Is the gentleman in favor of that amendment?" asked Mr. Stevens.

"I am," replied Mr. Brooks, "if negroes are allowed to vote."

"That does not answer my question," said Mr. Stevens.

"I suggested that I would move it at a convenient time," said Mr. Brooks.

"Is the gentleman in favor of his own amendment?" Mr. Stevens again asked.

"I am in favor of my own color in preference to any other color, and I prefer the white women of my country to the negro," was the response of Mr. Brooks, which was followed by applause in the galleries.

Mr. Orth, of Indiana, obtained the floor for the purpose of offering an amendment, which he prefaced with the following remarks: "My position is that the true principle of representation in Congress is that voters alone should form the basis, and that each voter should have equal political weight in our Government; that the voter in Massachusetts should have the same but no greater power than the voter in Indiana; and that the voter in Indiana should have the same power, but no greater, than the voter in the State of South Carolina. The gentleman from Maine, however, states that the census tables will show that by the amendment which I desire to offer at this time you will curtail the representative power of the State of Massachusetts. And why? Because he has shown by his figures that although Massachusetts has a male population of 529,244, her voting population is only 175,487, being a percentage of twenty-nine, while Indiana, with a white male population of 693,469, has a voting population of 280,655, being about forty per cent. Why is this difference? Is it because our voting population is so much greater in proportion than the voting population of Massachusetts? Not at all. The difference arises from the fact that the State of Massachusetts has seen fit to exclude a portion of her citizens from the ballot-box. Indiana has done the same thing. Indiana has excluded one class of citizens; Massachusetts has excluded another class. Indiana has seen fit, for reasons best known to herself, to exclude the colored population from the right of suffrage; Massachusetts, on the contrary, has seen fit to exclude from the ballot-box those of her citizens who can not read or write. While we in Indiana are governed by a prejudice of color, the people of Massachusetts, I might say, are governed by a prejudice as regards ignorance. But here is the difference: under the amendment that I propose, while Indiana excludes the black man from the right to participate in the decisions of the ballot-box, she does not ask that the black man shall be represented on this floor. On the contrary, while Massachusetts excludes black and white persons who can not read and write, she yet asks that that population excluded from the ballot shall have representation on this floor. I regard this as wrong in theory, wrong in principle, and injurious to the State which I have the honor to represent, giving to Massachusetts a power upon this floor of which my State is deprived. Why? Because the exclusion which drives from the ballot-box in Massachusetts a large portion of her citizens, yet admits them to representative power on this floor."

Mr. Orth's amendment proposed that Representatives should "be apportioned among the several States according to the number of male citizens over twenty-one years of age, having the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature." There being objection to the reception of this amendment under the rules of the House, it could not be considered.

Mr. Chanler, of New York, alluding to Mr. Stevens' desire to have the joint resolution passed on the day of its introduction, before the sun went down, said: "Sir, this measure, if passed, will tend to obscure the sun from which the liberties of this country derive their nourishment and life, the brilliant orb, the Constitution, whose light has spread itself to the farthest ends of the earth. The vital principle of that Constitution, the soul of its being, is that balance of power between the States which insures individual liberty to every citizen of each State, and harmony among all the States of the Union.

"I affirm, sir, that the discussion of this subject in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was conducted in a spirit worthy of a great people, and resulted in the noble instrument under whose authority we now live. That era furnishes us a sad comparison with the present epoch, when it may well be said that our Rome has 'lost the breed of noble bloods,' and when, so far as the agitation of these fanatical and partisan questions is concerned, reason seems to have 'fled to brutish beasts.' How differently and with what wise moderation did the framers of the Constitution act! No narrow and fanatical partisanship marks their opinions or their acts."

After reading an extract from Curtis' History of the Constitution, Mr. Chanler, contrasting former legislation with the present on the subject of suffrage, said: "From the above historical statement, it will be found that the framers of the Constitution considered the question of suffrage of so vital importance in fixing the balance of power between the States, that it was, after full discussion in Congress by the whole body, referred to a select committee of one from each State, again reported and fully discussed, and then referred to a committee of five, whose thorough examination of the subject gave rise to new difficulties, and caused the matter to be referred to another committee of one member from each State. All differences were compromised in a spirit of patriotism and justice. How different is all this from the hasty partisan legislation on this very suffrage question by the present Congress!

"A caucus met before Congress organized, and chalked out a line of policy and action for the Republican party on the floor of Congress. The whole matter of reconstruction was referred to a grinding committee, whose dictation should govern Congress in every measure brought before it for consideration. Is this wise, just, or reasonable? I hold that this resolution is too narrow to be of use and too weak to last. It will totter to an untimely grave, and hobble, a feeble and contemptible instrument, from this Congress to every State Legislature to which it may be submitted, to be rejected for its feebleness in a time like this, amid the overwhelming issues which agitate this country."

Mr. Farnsworth, of Illinois, remarked: "It is necessary, it seems to me, that whatever constitutional provision we may make should be made clear, manifest, certain. If possible, we should make it enforce itself, so that by no cunningly-devised scheme or shift can they nullify it. It seems to me that the resolution reported by the joint Committee on Reconstruction is not so clear as it ought to be; I am afraid that it will be worthless. A State may enact that a man shall not exercise the elective franchise except he can read and write, making that law apply equally to the whites and blacks, and then may also enact that a black man shall not learn to read and write, exclude him from their schools, and make it a penal offense to instruct or to teach him, and thus prevent his qualifying to exercise the elective franchise according to the State law. And they may do in regard to the elective franchise just what they are doing now in regard to slavery. They may provide that no man shall exercise the elective franchise who has been guilty of a crime, and then they may denounce these men as guilty of a crime for every little, imaginary, petty offense. They may declare that no man shall exercise the right of voting who has not a regular business or occupation by which he may obtain a livelihood, and then they may declare that the black man has no settled occupation and no business. It seems to me, therefore, necessary that we should, by some provision in this amendment, settle this beyond a peradventure, so that none of these shifts or devices may defeat the purpose of the enactment."

Mr. Farnsworth was in favor of more radical remedies: "I protest here that I will not accept any such constitutional amendment as this as a substitute for that full measure of justice which it is our duty to mete out. I will not promise that hereafter I will not propose, and vote for, and advocate with whatever power I possess, a measure which will give to all the people of the States that which is their due. By no vote of mine shall there be incorporated in the Constitution a provision which shall, even by implication, declare that a State may disfranchise any portion of its citizens on account of race or color. We have no right to give our countenance to any such injustice. All provisions in reference to representation which are based upon any other principle than that of the people of this country, who are the subjects of government, have the right to vote and to be represented, are false in principle. Such a measure may, perhaps, answer for a temporary expedient, but it will not do as a fundamental rule to be embodied in the Constitution for the people of this country to live by. I deny that a State has the right to disfranchise a majority or even a minority of its citizens because of class or race. And I say that that provision of the Constitution which makes it the duty of the General Government to 'guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government' ought to be taken into consideration by this Congress and enforced. Does a State that denies the elective franchise to one-half of its citizens possess a republican form of government? Where a large portion of the citizens of a State--the men who are required to pay taxes and perform military duty, to contribute their money and their strength in support of the Government--are denied the elective franchise, is that a republican form of government? I say that it is a libel upon republicanism; it is not a republican form of government; it is neither republican in form nor in substance."

Mr. Baker, of Illinois, although anxious to have an amendment of the Constitution "achieving the general purpose of supplying a more just basis of representation," saw points of objection to the proposition before the House, some of which had been raised by previous speakers. He said: "I am reluctant to indorse an amendment to the Constitution framed in this day of growing liberty, framed by the party of progress, intended to make representative power in this Government correspond with the quantum of political justice on which it is based, and yet which leaves any State in the Union perfectly free to narrow her suffrage to any extent she pleases, imposing proprietary and other disqualifying tests, and still strengthening her aristocratic power in the Government by the full count of her disfranchised people, provided only she steers clear of a test based on race or color."

Mr. Jenckes was desirous of having a more just and comprehensive enactment than the one proposed: "In my judgment," said he, "justice requires that the qualification of electors for members of this House and for electors of President and Vice-President of the United States--in other words, for the two popular branches of this great Government--should be defined in the fundamental law. Upon this point let me quote the words of Madison, written in his mature years to a distinguished son of the republic seeking advice from him. He says: 'The right of suffrage, the rule of apportioning representation, and the mode of appointing to and removing from office, are fundamentals in a free government, and ought to be fixed by the Constitution.'

"Certainly, sir, it is less difficult, in a Congress composed of less than three hundred men, to agree to a proposition which will meet the views of the whole country on this question of suffrage than to adopt a proposition which, when submitted to and adopted by the requisite number of States, must be carried into effect by as many Legislatures as there are States, and in a different manner by each, and which, in being carried into effect, must be acted upon by as many thousands of men in State conventions and Legislatures as there are hundreds in this Congress.

"There is no equality, and there can be no equality, in the proposed amendment. It seems to me, therefore, if we undertake to amend the fundamental law at all in this respect, we ought to agree upon what should be the qualification of voters for members of this House, embodying them in the proposed amendments to submit to the Legislatures of the States. Then there would be a definite proposition; and that, I believe, if it emanated from this House, would have substantial equality and justice--would have the elements of equality and uniformity, and be enforced without difficulty in every State of the Union."

Referring to a mode which might be adopted for evading the legitimate results of the proposed amendment, Mr. Jenckes remarked: "I was alluding to another one. Some of the Southern States, up to the breaking out of the war, had constitutions which prescribed a property qualification. Suppose this amendment were adopted, and the State of South Carolina chose to annul the Constitution recently proclaimed and to go back to that of 1790, and that the word 'white' should be stricken out of it, I desire to ask how many freedmen, how many persons of African descent, can be found who own in fee fifty acres of land or a town lot, or who have paid a tax of three shillings sterling. As far as I can ascertain from the statistics, there would not be, if that constitution were restored and the word 'white' omitted, over five hundred additional qualified voters in that State.

"Ever since the adoption of the Constitution of 1790 down to the time of firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina was in practical relation to this Government as a State of this Union. She had been considered as having a republican form of government, and that which we had guaranteed as such for many years we would be bound to guarantee to her hereafter. Stronger than ever this oligarchy would be enthroned upon their old seat of power, not upheld merely by slaves beneath it, but by the power of the General Government above and around it. She might make any of the discriminations which I have suggested, of age, of residence, of previous servitude, and of ignorance or poverty."

Mr. Trimble, of Kentucky, was "exceedingly gratified at the disposition manifested among the party in opposition here, by reason of their own differences of opinion, to allow an opportunity to us to present our objections to the measure now under consideration. This subject of amending the Constitution under which we have lived so long, so happily, and so prosperously, is one of great moment; and while I have some confidence in the ability and capacity of some of the friends on the opposite side to make a constitution, yet I prefer the Constitution as made by our fathers eighty years ago.

"In my opinion, the amendment proposed is in violation of the reserved rights of the people of the States under that instrument. The object and purpose of this resolution is to enfranchise a million men in this country whom no political party in this country ever had the boldness to propose the enfranchisement of prior to the present session of Congress. I remember that, in 1860 and 1861, the party known in this country as the Union party took the ground, from one end of the country to the other, that neither Congress nor the people of the States had the power, under the Constitution of the United States, to interfere with slavery in the States where it existed; much less, sir, did they claim the power not only to destroy it, but to strike down the provisions of the Constitution that protected me and my constituents in our right to our property. Sir, there was an amendment submitted then for the purpose of peace, for the purpose of restoring peace and quiet throughout the country. It met, at the time, my hearty support, and I regret, from the bottom of my heart, that the people, North, South, East, and West, did not agree to that proposition, and make it part and parcel of the Constitution. I refer to the amendment proposed in 1861, declaring that Congress should never thereafter interfere with the question of slavery in the States.

"Sir, it is a well-established principle that no one should be permitted to take advantage of his own wrong. If the party in power have succeeded in freeing the slaves of the South, ought they not, at least, to allow the Southern States to enjoy the increased representation to which, according to the rule established by the Constitution, they are now entitled? Or, if the Northern States sincerely desire that the negroes of the South shall vote and shall be represented in Congress, let them transport those negroes to the North and take them under their guardianship; they are welcome to them.

"I believe that the people of Kentucky, whom I in part represent, and I have no doubt the people of the whole South, will submit in good faith to the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. While they may believe that the amendment is revolutionary and unjust, in violation of the rights of Kentucky and the South, still the Southern States, having in a way yielded up this question, for representation and peace, they will stand by the Constitution as amended."

Finally, Mr. Trimble presented the following argument against the measure: "This proposition is a direct attack upon the President of the United States; it is a direct attack upon the doctrines and principles taught by that distinguished man now holding the presidential chair. This amendment is in violation, in my judgment, of every principle that that man has held from his boyhood up to the present hour. Sir, the President of the United States does not believe that the Congress of the United States has the right, or that the people have the right, to strike down the inalienable right of the States to settle for themselves who shall be clothed with that high privilege--suffrage."

The subject being resumed on the following day, January 24th, Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio, addressed the House, premising his remarks by a motion that the resolution and amendments be recommitted to the Committee on Reconstruction, "with instructions to report an amendment to the Constitution which shall, first, apportion direct taxes among the States according to property in each; and which shall, second, apportion Representatives among the States on the basis of adult male voters who may be citizens of the United States."

He argued that "the rule which gave representation to three-fifths of the slave population was wrong in principle, and unjust in practical results. It was purely arbitrary, the result of compromise, and not of fixed political principles, or of any standard of abstract justice. If slavery was a just element of political strength, I know of no rule which could properly divide it into 'fractional quantities;' if it was not a just element of political strength, I know of no rule which could properly give it 'fractional power.'

"The basis of representation was unjust in practical results, because it gave to chattel slavery political power--a power accorded to no other species of property--thus making what the slave States regarded as wealth an element of political strength."

After having given a statistical table showing how representation was apportioned among the several States having free and slave population, Mr. Lawrence deduced the following facts: "New Hampshire, with a white population of 325,579, has but three Representatives, while Louisiana, with a white population of 357,629, had five. California, with a white population of 323,177, has but three Representatives, while Mississippi, with a similar population of 353,901, had five. In South Carolina 72,847 white persons had one Representative, while the ratio of representation is one for 127,000 persons.

"Under this mode of apportionment, the late slave States had eighteen Representatives, by the census of 1860, more than their just share, if based on free population. The whole political power of Ohio was counterbalanced by slave representation. It was equal to two-thirds of all the representation from New England. In South Carolina 14,569 votes carried as much political power as 25,400 in the free States."

Freedom having been given to the slaves, "the effect will be, so soon as lawful State Governments are created in the rebel States, to largely increase their representation in Congress and the Electoral College. The slave population, by the census of 1860, was 3,950,531. Three-fifths of this, or 2,370,318, has heretofore entered into the basis of representation. Now, the additional 1,580,213 is to be added to that basis. This will give ten additional Representatives to the late slave States--in all twenty-eight more than their just proportion upon a basis excluding the late slaves. If this injustice can be tolerated and perpetuated, and the late rebel States shall soon be admitted to representation, they will enjoy as the reward of their perfidy and treason an increased political power. This will reward traitors with a liberal premium for treason."

As to the proper time for amending the Constitution, Mr. Lawrence said: "But if ever there could be a time for making fundamental changes in our organic law, and ingrafting on it irreversible guarantees, that time is now. The events of the past four years demonstrate their necessity, and our security for the future imperatively demands them at our hands. The great events which have transpired, and the altered circumstances that surround us, admonish us that we will be recreant to our trusts if we fail to inscribe justice on the Constitution, and fortify it against the encroachments of treason, so that it shall be eternal. One of the elements of our past misfortunes, and which gave power for evil to the enemies who assailed us in this temple, was unequal and unjust representation--political power wielded by a dominant class, augmented by concessions on behalf of a disfranchised and servile race, insultingly declared almost in the very citadel of national justice as having no rights which a white man was bound to respect. By this amendment we strike down the iniquity of one class wielding political power for another, and arrogant because in the exercise of unjust power."

Maintaining that representation should be based upon suffrage, Mr. Lawrence said: "The reason which conclusively justifies it is, that a people declared by law, if in fact unprepared for suffrage, should not be represented as an element of power by those interested in forever keeping them unprepared. But children never can be qualified and competent depositaries of political power, and, therefore, should not enter into the basis of representation. It never has been deemed necessary for the protection of females that they should be regarded as an element of political power, and hence they should not be an element of representation. If the necessity shall come, or if our sense of justice should so change as to enfranchise adult females, it will be time enough then to make them a basis of representation."

Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, though having "fifteen times as much respect for the opinions of the Committee on Reconstruction" as for his own, yet suggested the following as objections to their report:

"1. It contemplates and provides for, and in that way, taken by itself, authorizes the States to wholly disfranchise entire races of its people, and that, too, whether that race be white or black, Saxon, Celtic, or Caucasian, and without regard to their numbers or proportion to the entire population of the State.

"2. It is a declaration made in the Constitution of the only great and free republic in the world, that it is permissible and right to deny to the races of men all their political rights, and that it is permissible to make them the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the mud-sills of society, provided only you do not ask to have these disfranchised races represented in that Government, provided you wholly ignore them in the State. The moral teaching of the clause offends the free and just spirit of the age, violates the foundation principles of our own Government, and is intrinsically wrong.

"3. The clause, by being inserted into the Constitution, and being made the companion of its other clauses, thereby construes and gives new meanings to those other clauses; and it thus lets down and spoils the free spirit and sense of the Constitution. Associated with that clause relating to the States being 'republican,' it makes it read thus: 'The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government;' provided, however, that a government shall be deemed to be republican when whole races of its people are wholly disfranchised, unrepresented, and ignored.

"4. The report of the committee imposes no adequate restraint upon this disfranchisement of races and creation of oligarchies in the States, because after a race is disfranchised in a State it gives to one vote cast in such State by the ruling race just the same power as a vote has in a State where no one is disfranchised.

"5. These words of the amendment, to-wit, 'denied or abridged on account of color,' admit of dangerous construction, and also of an evasion of the avowed intent of the committee. Thus, for example, the African race may, in fact, be disfranchised in the States, and yet enumerated as part of the basis of representation, by means of a provision disfranchising all who were slaves, or all whose ancestors were slaves.

"6. The pending proposition of the committee is a radical departure from the principles of representative republican government, in this, that it does not provide for nor secure the absolute political equality of the people, or, relatively, of the States. It does not secure to each vote throughout the Government absolute equality in its governing force. It, for example, permits twenty-five thousand votes in New York city to elect two members of Congress, provided one-half of its population should happen to be foreigners unnaturalized, and not electors of the State, whom the law deems unfit to vote; whereas, twenty-five thousand votes in Ohio would elect but one member of Congress, provided her citizens were all Americans instead of foreigners."

Mr. Eliot submitted an amendment to the effect that population should be the basis of representation, and that "the elective franchise shall not be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color." He stated the following grounds of objection to the resolution offered by the committee: "First, the amendment as it is now reported from the committee is objectionable, to my mind, because it admits by implication that a State has the right to disfranchise large masses of its citizens. No man can show that in that Constitution which the fathers made, and under which we have lived, the right is recognized in any State to disfranchise large masses of its citizens because of race. And I do not want now, at this day, that the Congress of the United States, for the purpose of effecting a practical good, shall put into the Constitution of the land any language which would seem to recognize that right.

"The next objection I have to the amendment is this: that it enables a State, consistently with its provisions, by making the right to vote depend upon a property qualification, to exclude large classes of men of both races. A State may legislate in such a way as to be, in fact, an oligarchy, and not a republican State. South Carolina may legislate so as to provide that no man shall have the right to vote unless he possesses an annual income of $1,000, and holds real estate to the amount of five hundred acres. Every one sees that that would exclude multitudes of all classes of citizens, making the State no longer republican, but oligarchical. Yet gentlemen say that under the Constitution Congress is bound to see to it that each State shall have a republican form of government.

"The third objection I have to this amendment is, that it controls by implication that power; because, while the Constitution now says that Congress shall guarantee to every State a republican form of government, this amendment, as reported by the committee, admits by implication that, although a State may so legislate as to exclude these multitudes of men, not on account of race or color, but on account of property, yet, nevertheless, she would have a republican form of government, and that Congress will not and ought not to interfere."

Mr. Pike, of Maine, had, on the assembling of Congress after the holidays, offered a resolution, expressing the idea contained in the report of the committee, but on reflection had come to the conclusion that the resolution would not accomplish the purpose desired. He stated his reasons for changing his opinion. He thought that the provisions of the proposed amendment might be evaded. "Suppose," said he, "this constitutional amendment in full force, and a State should provide that the right of suffrage should not be exercised by any person who had been a slave, or who was the descendant of a slave, whatever his race or color. I submit that it is a serious matter of doubt whether or not that simple provision would not be sufficient to defeat this constitutional amendment which we here so laboriously enact and submit to the States."

Mr. Conkling thought that this criticism could have no practical importance, from the fact that the proposed amendment was to operate in this country, where one race, and only one, has been held in servitude.

Mr. Pike replied: "In no State in the South has slavery been confined to any one race. So far as I am acquainted with their statutes, in no State has slavery been confined to the African race. I know of no slave statute, and I have examined the matter with some care, which says that Africans alone shall be slaves. So much for race. As to color, it was a common thing throughout the whole South to advertise runaway slaves as having light hair and blue eyes, and all the indications of the Caucasian race, and 'passing themselves off for white men.' I say further to the honorable gentleman from New York, that well-authenticated instances exist in every slave State where men of Caucasian descent, of Anglo-Saxon blood, have been confined in slavery, and they and their posterity held as slaves; so that not only free blacks were found every-where, but white slaves also abounded."

Mr. Kelley, who next addressed the House, also brought proof to controvert the "hasty assertion" that but one race had been enslaved: "The assertion that white persons have been sold into slavery does not depend on common report, but is proven by the reports of the superior courts of almost every Southern State. One poor German woman, who had arrived in our country at thirteen years of age, was released from slavery by the Supreme Court of Louisiana, but not until she had become the mother of three mulatto children, her owner having mated her with one of his darker slaves. Toward the close of the last century, the Supreme Court of New Jersey decided that American Indians could be reduced to and legally held in slavery. And so long ago as 1741 white slave women were so common in North Carolina, that the Legislature passed a law dooming to slavery the child of every 'white servant woman' born of an Indian father."

Mr. Kelley thought that the enforcement of this long-dormant power of the Constitution would be for the benefit not merely of the poor, the ignorant, and the weak, but also of the wise, "the strong, and the wealthy of our country." "There is now pending," said he, "before the Legislature of regenerated and, as gentlemen would have us believe, reconstructed Virginia, a bill to require five years' residence on the part of citizens of other States who may invest their capital and settle within the sacred limits of the Old Dominion before they can acquire citizenship. If they may pass a limitation of five years, why may they not pass a limitation of fifty? Why will not any limitation that comes within the ordinary duration of human life be admissible?"

Mr. Bromwell, obtaining the floor, inquired whether the question was in such condition that any amendment or substitute could be offered. The Speaker replied: "Six amendments are pending now. The only one that could be offered would be to amend the amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Stevens,] which was, to add the word 'therein' in the fifteenth line. No other amendment would be in order now, the whole legislative power to amend being exhausted."

Mr. Bromwell had desired to offer an amendment which, in his opinion, would obviate many of the objections to pending joint resolution, and the amendments thereto; but the way not being open for this, he addressed the House in a brief speech. He said: "When this amendment was introduced, on last Monday morning, the differences of opinion which have been developed in reference to the principles of the amendment were not anticipated. But to-day we see that it has, so far, not an advocate upon this floor. Such may be the result with every amendment which may be presented. It is difficult to see, among all the amendments which are now pending, any one of them, or any combination of them, that will meet the desire of the majority, not to say two-thirds of this House. I apprehend that the members of this House desire to act so as to secure the support of a proper majority here. I apprehend, also, that they desire to make this amendment such that it will meet with the sanction of a sufficient number of the States of the Union to make it effectual. Now, sir, it is in vain for this Congress to launch an amendment which shall die on the road through the Legislatures."

Notwithstanding the difficulties in the way of all the plans proposed, Mr. Bromwell was heartily in favor of modifying the basis of representation. "I think," said he, "seventy years is long enough for fifteen, twenty, or thirty Representatives to sit here and make laws to apply to Northern people, with no constituencies behind them. I think it has been seen long enough that a large number of persons called property, made property by the laws of the States, shall give to the oligarchs of those particular districts of country the right to outvote the independent men of the North, of the free States, where some approximation has been made to securing God-given rights to all inhabitants. I think that it is wrong that the further a State recedes from common right and common justice the more power the oligarchy which controls it shall grasp in their hands; and I desire that this amendment shall be made so that it shall bear down upon that abuse with the crushing power of three-fourths of the legislatures of the Union."

After the House had heard so many objectors to the basis of representation, as proposed by the committee, Mr. Cook, of Illinois, took the floor in favor of the measure. He said: "We have now, as I believe, the golden opportunity to remedy this evil which will never come again to the men of this generation. The system of slavery has fallen. The States whose representation was increased by it have, with two or three exceptions, destroyed their loyal and legal State governments, and now seek reconstruction. The adoption of this amendment by the States lately in rebellion should be one of the guarantees to be insisted upon as a condition precedent to their taking equal authority and rank in the Union with the loyal States."

To the proposition that the basis of representation should be voters only, Mr. Cook presented the following objections:

"1. It is difficult to enumerate voters accurately; their qualifications are fixed by State laws. We can not send Federal officers into every State to adjudicate, in disputed cases, the rights of those claiming to be voters under the State laws, as we should have to do.

"2. It would not be just; the voters of the country are unequally distributed. The old States have fewer, the new States more, voters according to the white population. In other words, there is a greater proportion of women and children in the old States. These should be and are represented. They are represented, in the true sense of that word, by their fathers and brothers. The man who represents them does so really and practically, and not by legal fiction, like the man who represents 'three-fifths of all other persons.'

"3. It takes from the basis of representation all unnaturalized foreigners. I do not wish to discuss the question whether this would be judicious or not, but I do not want a measure of this almost supreme importance loaded down with these questions, and its passage jeopardized by the incorporation of provisions which, would render it so liable to attack and misrepresentation."

Mr. Cook referred as follows to some objections urged against the basis of representation proposed by the Reconstruction Committee: "It is said that the Southern States may impose a property qualification, and so exclude the negroes, not on account of race or color, but for want of a property qualification, or that they might provide for a qualification of intelligence, and so disfranchise the negroes because they could not read or write, and still enumerate them. To do this they must first repeal all the laws now denying suffrage to negroes; and, second, provide qualifications which will disfranchise half their white voters; two things neither of which will, in any human probability, occur. And in the event that it was possible that both these measures should be adopted, and all the blacks and half the whites disqualified, it would become a grave question whether the provision of the Constitution which requires the United States to guarantee to each State a republican form of government would not authorize the Government to rectify so gross a wrong. There is no measure to which fanciful objections may not be urged; but I believe this to be the least objectionable of any measure which has been suggested to meet this evil. But above all, I am well persuaded that it is the only measure that can meet the approval of three-fourths of the States; consequently, that this is the only practical measure before the House."

Mr. Marshall, of Illinois, declared the proposition, as reported by the committee, to be "wholly untenable, is monstrous, absurd, damnable in its provisions, a greater wrong and outrage on the black race than any thing that has ever been advocated by others."

He thus set forth the measure in the light of injustice to the negro: "The gentlemen who report it profess to be, and doubtless are, the peculiar advocates of the African race. I wish to ask them upon what principle of justice, upon what principle of free government, they have provided that if, after this amendment is adopted, South Carolina, Mississippi, or any other State shall adopt a provision that all white men over twenty-one years of age shall be voters, and all black men who have two hundred dollars' worth of property, and if there shall be ten thousand legal black voters in such State, upon what principle will you place in the Constitution of the United States a provision which would deprive these ten thousand legal black voters of any representation upon the floor of Congress, or of being considered in the basis of representation? And I wish to ask the honorable gentleman who reported this amendment if that is not the effect and result of the amendment reported from the committee."

In reference to the time and place of inaugurating constitutional amendments, Mr. Marshall used the following language: "If any amendments are necessary to the Constitution of our country, this is not the time, and more especially is this not the place, to inaugurate such amendments. I believe, notwithstanding the conceded wisdom, ability, and virtue of this House, that the fathers who framed our glorious Constitution were wiser, better, and nobler than we are; yet every day we have offered here some dozen or twenty proposed amendments to the Constitution, offered as if we were discussing resolutions in a town meeting."

Among the propositions before the House relating to this subject, was an amendment proposed by Mr. Schenck, of Ohio, providing that representation should be based upon "the number of male citizens of the United States over twenty-one years of age, having the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature."

Mr. Schenck addressed the House, and thus gave a history of his own connection with the measure: "At a very early day in this session, I was one of those disposed to ask the attention of Congress to the subject, to propose in proper form the submission of the question to the Legislatures of the several States. On the first day of the session, on the 4th of December last, as soon as the House was organized, I gave notice that I would on the next, or some succeeding day, introduce a proposition to amend the Constitution. On the ensuing day I did accordingly present a joint resolution. It stands as House Resolution No. 1 of the session.

"In that I propose representation hereafter shall be based upon suffrage. I propose that representation shall be apportioned among the several States of the Union according to the number of voters having qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the Legislature of the State where they reside, following in this the language of the Constitution; these voters, however, to be further limited in their descriptions and definitions as being male citizens of the United States over twenty-one years of age. Now, whether the proposition be a good one or not; whether the limitation be such as should commend itself to the masses of our people, I will not for the present inquire. I will only remark they have seemed to me to embrace as many qualifications as we ought to include when we are going to lay down a new organic law on this subject."

An objection urged by Mr. Schenck against the plan proposed by the committee was, that it failed to offer inducements for a gradual enfranchisement of the negro. He said: "Now, sir, I am not one of those who entertain Utopian ideas in relation, not merely to the progress, but to the immediate change of sentiment, opinions, and practice among the people of those States that have so lately been slave States, and so recently in rebellion. I believe that, like all other people, their growth toward good and right and free institutions must necessarily be gradual; and if we pass the amendment which I have proposed, or any thing similar to it, and say to them, 'You shall have representation proportioned to the portion of your population to which you extend this inestimable franchise,' my belief is that they will not, on the next day after it becomes a part of the organic law of the United States, at once enfranchise all the negroes in their midst. I am not sure that they ought to do it; but we are dealing with the matter now as it presents itself as a practical question. What will they probably do? My belief is, that if you persuade them to do right, if you hold out to them an inducement for letting their negroes vote, and striking out these disqualifications and putting all upon the basis of manhood, they will probably begin, after the amendment becomes part of the organic law, by extending this right to those who have acquired certain property; perhaps they will also extend it, after awhile, to those who have certain qualifications of education. However they may proceed, whether rapidly or slowly, it will be a work of progress and a work of time. But by this amendment you would say to them, 'We do not want you to enter upon any such gradual bringing up of these people to the level plain of right to be enjoyed by them equally with others of other races in your midst.' We say to them, 'You may enfranchise one-third or one-fourth of your people who are black and deprived of the privilege of voting by introducing the qualification of property, up to which one-third or one-fourth may come; you may introduce a qualification of education, up to which a number of them may come; but that will all be of no value; so long as there is any denial or any abridgement of the right to vote of a single man on account of his race or color, you shall have no part of the population of that race or color counted to measure to you your share of representation.'

"Now, I will not go into the abstract question whether they ought to enfranchise the negroes at once or not; I will not go into the question of how soon they ought to do it as a matter of expediency; I say that, in all human probability, when they come to enfranchise, if they do it at all, this portion of their population, they will do it gradually; yet, by this amendment, as it comes from the committee, you say that they shall not be represented for any part of it at all till they completely enfranchise them and put them on the same footing with the white population."

In conclusion, Mr. Schenck remarked: "New England, if she should even lose a vote, or two votes, or a fraction of a vote, can not afford, any more than Ohio or Indiana, or any other of those States can, having these particular objections to the scheme, to let the opportunity go by now and not introduce a general amendment which will remedy the one great evil under which we are all laboring together. I hold that Ohio must give up her objections on account of her negro population; that the North-western States must give up their objections on account of the fact that they are permitting persons to vote who are not yet citizens of the United States. Those persons would have to wait, 'to tarry at Jericho until their beards are grown,' I hold that New England must give up her objections; and, if we are to amend the organic law at all, we must do it by uniting upon a common principle, a common sympathy, a common feeling, at least on this side of the House, upon which the entire responsibility is thrown, acting harmoniously, and adopting such an amendment to the organic law as shall be entirely democratic and fair in all its scope and action upon all the people of the States of this Union."

The discussion was continued on the day following, Mr. Eldridge, of Wisconsin, having the floor for the first speech. After having expressed his satisfaction that the sun was allowed to go down on the deliberations upon this resolution, he confessed himself opposed to the amendment of the Constitution. He said: "I believe that this is not the time for its amendment, and I believe, further, that there are other States than those represented upon this floor which are entitled to deliberate with us on that question, and to that point I shall mainly address the remarks which I have to make at this time."

He made a protracted speech on the general subject of reconstruction. At the close of his remarks, he said: "It would much more comport with the dignity and sense of justice of the American Congress to let the legally elected members from the Southern States be admitted, and participate in the proceedings and debates, especially in matters of so great importance as a change in our organic law. Let us have a representation for our whole country. Wherever the American flag floats, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico--wherever the Star-spangled Banner waves--that is our country. And let us legislate as Americans, as Representatives of our whole country, in a spirit of justice, liberality, and patriotism, and we will again have one country."

Mr. Higby, of California, was opposed to the joint resolution from the fact that the proviso in the proposed amendment is in conflict with that portion of the Constitution which requires that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government." "I say it," said he, "without fear or favor, that that amendment will allow any State government in its organization to exclude one-half of its population from the right of suffrage; and I say such State governments will not be republican in form."

In a conversation which ensued with some members, Mr. Higby maintained that no State excluding any class of citizens on account of race or color was republican in form. "I do not believe," said he, "there is a single State in the Union, except it may be one of the New England States, which is an exception to that general rule."

Mr. Hill, of Indiana, asked whether the gentleman would favor the House with his opinion as to what would be a republican form of government.

Mr. Higby was sorry that the gentleman had lived to his time of life, and obtained a position as the Representative of a large constituency, without finding out what a republican form of government is. "I will ask the gentleman," said he, "if he thinks that those States that have excluded and disfranchised more than half of their native population have a republican form of government?"

"In my opinion," said Mr. Hill, "when the framers of the Constitution placed in that instrument the declaration or the provision that the Government of the United States would guarantee to each State a republican form of government, they spoke with reference to such governments as then existed, and such as those same framers recognized for a long time afterward as republican governments."

"Well, that is a very good answer," said Mr. Higby. "It is an answer from a stand-point seventy-five years ago. I speak from the stand-point of the present time."

Mr. Higby desired that the joint resolution should go back to the committee. He said: "I do not wish it disposed of here, to be voted down. I want, if it is possible, that it shall be so framed that it shall receive the full constitutional majority required, and be a proposition that shall operate with full force in all those States that now have a great population excluded from the rights of citizenship."

"If the gentleman proposes," said Mr. Stevens, "to send it back to the committee without instructions, I would ask him what we are to do. There are not quite as many views upon this floor as there are members; but the number lacks very little of it. And how are we to gather up all those views spread through all this discussion, and accommodate all, when each view would now probably receive from one to three votes in its favor?"

"I have only this to say," replied Mr. Higby: "with my views of the Constitution, I never can vote for this proposition with this proviso in its present language. I say that it gives a power to the States to make governments that are not republican in form."

"I say to my friend," said Mr. Stevens, "that if I thought, that by any fair construction of language, such an interpretation could be given as he gives, I would vote against it myself; but I do not believe there is any thing in that objection."

Mr. Bingham took the floor in favor of the proposed joint resolution. In "giving this and other amendments to the Constitution my support," said he, "I do not subject myself to the gratuitous imputation of a want of reverence either for the Constitution or its illustrious founders. I beg leave, at all events, to say, with all possible respect for that gentleman, that I do not recognize the right of any man upon this floor, who was a representative of that party which denied the right to defend the Constitution of his country by arms against armed rebellion, to become my accuser.

"In seeking to amend, not to mar, the Constitution of the United States, we ought to have regard to every express or implied limitation upon our power imposed by that great instrument. When gentlemen object to amending the Constitution, when they talk sneeringly about tinkering with the Constitution, they do not remember that it is one of the express provisions of that instrument that Congress shall have power to propose amendments to the Legislatures of the several States. Do gentlemen mean, by the logic to which we have listened for the past five days on this subject of our right to amend, that we are not to add any thing to the Constitution, and that we are to take nothing from it? I prefer to follow, in this supreme hour of the nation's trial, the lead of a wiser and nobler spirit, who, by common consent, was called, while he lived, 'the Father of his Country,' and, now that he is dead, is still reverenced as 'the Father of his Country,' and to be hailed, I trust, by the millions of the future who are to people this land of ours as 'the Father of his Country.' In his Farewell Address, his last official utterance, Washington used these significant words, which I repeat to-day for the consideration of gentlemen: "The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.' We propose, sir, simply to act in accordance with this suggestion of Washington. We propose, in presenting these amendments, to alter, in so far as the changed condition of the country requires, the fundamental law, in order to secure the safety of the republic and furnish better guarantees in the future for the rights of each and all.

"The question that underlies this controversy is this: whether we will stand by the Constitution in its original intent and spirit, or, like cravens, abandon it. I assert it here to-day, without fear of contradiction, that the amendment pending before this House is an amendment conforming exactly to the spirit of the Constitution, and according to the declared intent of its framers.

"My friend from California [Mr. Higby] has informed us that there are one hundred thousand more free colored citizens of the United States in the State of Mississippi to-day than there are of white citizens; that there are one hundred thousand more free colored citizens of the United States in South Carolina than there are of white citizens; and then we are gravely told that we must not press this amendment, because we are abandoning the Constitution and the intent of our fathers. That is a new discovery, one for which the Democracy ought to take out letters patent, that it was ever intended that a minority of free citizens should disfranchise the majority of free male citizens, of full age, in any State of the Union! For myself, I will never consent to it."

In answer to the objection that the proviso in the proposed amendment seemed to acknowledge the right to deny or abridge the elective franchise on account of race or color, Mr. Bingham said: "I beg the gentleman to consider that a grant of power by implication can not be raised by a law which only imposes a penalty, and nothing but a penalty, for a non-performance of a duty or the violation of a right. Within the last hundred years, in no country where the common law obtains, I venture to say, has any implication of a grant of power ever been held to be raised by such a law, and especially an implied power, to do an act expressly prohibited by the same law. The guarantee of your Constitution, that the people shall elect their Representatives in the several States, can not be set aside or impaired by inserting in your Constitution, as a penalty for disregarding it, the provision that the majority of a State that denies the equal rights of the minority shall suffer a loss of political power.

"I have endeavored to show that the words of the Constitution, the people of 'the States shall choose their Representatives,' is an express guarantee that a majority of the free male citizens of the United States in every State of this Union, being of full age, shall have the political power subject to the equal right of suffrage in the minority of free male citizens of full age. There is a further guarantee in the Constitution of a republican form of government to every State, which I take to mean that the majority of the free male citizens in every State shall have the political power. I submit to my friend that this proviso is nothing but a penalty for a violation on the part of the people of any State of the political right or franchise guaranteed by the Constitution to their free male fellow-citizens of full age.

"The guarantee in the first article of the second section of the Constitution, rightly interpreted, is, as I claim, this: that the majority of the male citizens of the United States, of full age, in each State, shall forever exercise the political power of the State with this limitation: that they shall never by caste legislation impose disabilities upon one class of free male citizens to the denial or abridgement of equal rights. The further provision is, that the United States shall guarantee to each State a republican form of government, which means that the majority of male citizens, of full age, in each State, shall govern, not, however, in violation of the Constitution of the United States or of the rights of the minority."

In closing his address, Mr. Bingham said: "I pray gentlemen to consider long before they reject this proviso. It may not be the best that the wisest head in this House can conceive of, but I ask gentlemen to consider that the rule of statesmanship is to take the best attainable essential good which is at our command. The reason why I support the proposed amendment is, that I believe it essential and attainable. I do not dare to say that it could not be improved. I do dare to say that it is in aid of the existing grants and guarantees of the Constitution of my country, that it is simply a penalty to be inflicted upon the States for a specific disregard in the future of those wise and just and humane grants 'to the people' to elect their Representatives and maintain a republican government in each State.

"Mr. Speaker, the republic is great; it is great in its domain, equal in extent to continental Europe, abounding in productions of every zone, broad enough and fertile enough to furnish bread and homes to three hundred million freemen. The republic is great in the intelligence, thrift, industry, energy, virtue, and valor of its unconquered and unconquerable children, and great in its matchless, wise, and beneficent Constitution. I pray the Congress of the United States to propose to the people all needful amendments to the Constitution, that by their sovereign act they may crown the republic for all time with the greatness of justice."

Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, presented an objection to the resolution which had not been alluded to by any gentleman on the floor. He said: "The resolution provides that whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State, on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation. Now, there is a great deal of indefiniteness in both those terms, 'race' and 'color.'

"What is a race of men? Writers upon the subject of races differ very materially on this point. Some of them would make four or five races; others fifteen; and one, whom I might name, seems inclined not to limit the number short of a thousand. I myself am inclined to think that the Celtic race is a distinct one from ours. I think that any gentleman who has studied this subject attentively will at least have doubts whether or not the race that appears to have inhabited Europe in the early historic period, and has been partly dispossessed there by ours, is not a distinct race from ours.

"Again: the word 'color' is exceedingly indefinite. If we had a constitutional standard of color, that of sole-leather, for example, by which to test the State laws upon this subject, there might be less danger in incorporating this provision in the Constitution. But the term 'color' is nowhere defined in the Constitution or the law. We apply the term to persons who are of African descent, whether their color is whiter or darker than ours. Every one who is familiar with the ethnological condition of things here in the United States, and who sees the general mixing up of colors, particularly in the Democratic portion of the country--I allude to that portion south of Mason and Dixon's line--must say with me that the word 'color' has no very distinct meaning when applied to the different peoples of the United States of America."

Two Representatives from New York--Mr. Davis and Mr. Ward--expressed opinions favorable to a modification of the basis of representation, and yet were opposed to the details of the proposition before the House.

Mr. Nicholson, of Delaware, in emphatic terms, denounced the acts of a majority of the House in attempting to amend the Constitution. "If they shall finally triumph," said he, "in the mad schemes in which they are engaged, they will succeed in converting that heretofore sacred instrument, reverenced and obeyed till the present dominant party came into power, from a bond of union to a galling yoke of oppression--a thing to be loathed and despised."

The discussion was still much protracted. Many members had an opportunity of presenting their views and opinions without adding much to the arguments for or against the measure. The power of debate, as well as "the power of amendment," seemed to have exhausted itself, and yet gentlemen, continued to swell the volume of both through several days.

On Friday, January 26th, Mr. Harding, of Kentucky, made a violent political speech, ostensibly in opposition to the measure before the House. The following is an extract from his remarks:

"The Republican party have manufactured a large amount of capital out of the negro question. First they began with caution, now they draw on it as if they thought it as inexhaustible as were the widow's barrel of meal and cruse of oil. The fact that the negro question has continued so long has been owing to the great care with which the Republican party has managed it."

Mr. McKee, of Kentucky, followed. Referring to his colleague who had preceded him, he said: "I regret extremely that he has pursued the same line of policy that gentlemen belonging to the same political party have pursued ever since the idea took possession of the Government that the negro was to be a freeman. His whole speech has been made up of the negro and nothing else.

"I would like it if the amendment could go a little beyond what it does. I would like so to amend the Constitution that no man who had raised his hand against the flag should ever be allowed to participate in any of the affairs of this Government. But it is not probable that we can go that far. Let us go just as far as we can.

"Gentlemen say that they are not willing to vote for an amendment that strikes off a part of the representation of the States; they are not willing to vote for an amendment that lessens Kentucky's representation upon this floor. The whole course of my colleague's remarks on this point is as the course of his party--and I may say of the loyal party in Kentucky--has been through a great part of the war, that Kentucky is the nation, and the United States a secondary appendage to her."

Mr. Kerr, of Indiana, did not desire to be heard at length upon the main question before the House, but upon some questions incidentally connected with it. He then proceeded to discuss the question whether Congress has "the power so to regulate the suffrage as to give the right of suffrage to every male citizen of the country of twenty-one years of age." "I propose now," said he, "for a few moments, to examine this question with a somewhat extensive reference to the history of the Constitution in this connection, and if possible to arrive at a conclusion whether the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania has given greater attention to the history of this question than the President, and whether the conclusion which he has reached is a safer one for the country, or more in harmony with the history and true intent of the Constitution, than that of the President."

Near the close of his remarks, referring to the measure before the House, Mr. Kerr remarked: "I can see but one single clear result that will follow from this amendment if it is adopted by the people of this country, and that is an effect that will inure not to the advantage of the nation, nor of any State in the Union, nor of any class or race of men in any State; but it will inure solely to the benefit and advantage of the Republican party. In my judgment, the only persons who will gain by this provision will be the now dominant party in this country. They will thereby increase their power; they will thereby degrade the South; they will reduce her representation here, and relatively increase their own representation; they will confirm the sectional supremacy of the North in the legislation and administration of the Government. They may thus compel the South to become suppliants at their feet for justice, and it may be for mercy."

Mr. Kasson, of Iowa, and Mr. Wright, of New Jersey, made extended remarks, avowedly in opposition to the measure, but dwelling, for the greater portion of their time, upon subjects remotely connected with the resolution before the House.

Discussion was resumed in the House on Monday, January 29th. The question having become much complicated by the numerous propositions to amend, the Speaker, by request of Mr. Conkling, stated the exact position of the subject before the House, and the various questions pending. The Speaker said: "The committee having reported this joint resolution, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] moved to amend by inserting the word 'therein' after the words 'all persons,' in the last clause of the proposed amendment to the Constitution.

"Pending that motion, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] moved an entirely new proposition in the nature of a substitute for the joint resolution reported from the joint committee, proposing an amendment to the Constitution differing from the one reported from the committee. The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Baker] also submitted for his colleague [Mr. Ingersoll] a proposition in the nature of a substitute for the one reported from the committee, as an amendment to the amendment.

"Pending those two propositions, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Lawrence] moved to recommit the joint resolution to the joint committee with certain instructions. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Eliot] moved to amend the instructions, and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Schenck] moved to amend the amendment.

"The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Le Blond] also moved to commit the whole subject to the Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union. The first question will, therefore, be upon the motion to commit to the Committee of the Whole, as that committee is higher in rank than the joint Committee on Reconstruction.

"Next after that will be the various motions to recommit with instructions. If all those propositions should fail, then the motion of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Stevens,] being for the purpose of perfecting the original proposition, will come up for consideration. Then propositions in the nature of substitutes will come up for consideration; first the amendment to the amendment, proposed by the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. Baker,] and next the substitute amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley]."

Mr. Raymond, of New York, made a speech three hours in length, in opposition to the proposed amendment to the Constitution. He discussed the general questions of reconstruction, affirming that the Southern States had resumed their functions of self-government in the Union, that they did not change their constitutional relations by making war, and that Congress should admit their Representatives by districts, receiving only loyal men as members.

The closing words of Mr. Raymond's speech excited great sensation and surprise. They were as follows: "The gigantic contest is at an end. The courage and devotion on either side which made it so terrible and so long, no longer owe a divided duty, but have become the common property of the American name, the priceless possession of the American Republic through all time to come. The dead of the contending hosts sleep beneath the soil of a common country, and under one common flag. Their hostilities are hushed, and they are the dead of the nation forever more. The victor may well exult in the victory he has achieved. Let it be our task, as it will be our highest glory, to make the vanquished, and their posterity to the latest generation, rejoice in their defeat."

Mr. Julian could not accept heartily the proposition reported by the joint committee. He thus presented what he considered a preferable plan: "Under the constitutional injunction upon the United States to guarantee a republican form of government to every State, I believe the power already exists in the nation to regulate the right of suffrage. It can only exercise this power through Congress; and Congress, of course, must decide what is a republican form of government, and when the national authority shall interpose against State action for the purpose of executing the constitutional guarantee. No one will deny the authority of Congress to decide that if a State should disfranchise one-third, one-half, or two-thirds of her citizens, such State would cease to be republican, and might be required to accept a different rule of suffrage. If Congress could intervene in such a case, it could obviously intervene in any other case in which it might deem it necessary or proper. It certainly might decide that the disfranchisement by a State of a whole race of people within her borders is inconsistent with a republican form of government, and in their behalf, and in the execution of its own authority and duty, restore them to their equal right with others to the franchise. It might decide, for example, that in North Carolina, where 631,000 citizens disfranchise 331,000, the government is not republican, and should be made so by extending the franchise. It might do the same in Virginia, where 719,000 citizens disfranchise 533,000; in Alabama, where 596,000 citizens disfranchise 437,000; in Georgia, where 591,000 citizens disfranchise 465,000; in Louisiana, where 357,000 citizens disfranchise 350,000; in Mississippi, where 353,000 citizens disfranchise 436,000; and in South Carolina, where only 291,000 citizens disfranchise 411,000. Can any man who reverences the Constitution deny either the authority or the duty of Congress to do all this in the execution of the guarantee named? Or if the 411,000 negroes in South Carolina were to organize a government, and disfranchise her 291,000 white citizens, would any body doubt the authority of Congress to pronounce such government anti-republican, and secure the ballot equally to white and black citizens as the remedy? Or if a State should prescribe as a qualification for the ballot such an ownership of property, real or personal, as would disfranchise the great body of her people, could not Congress most undoubtedly interfere? So of an educational test, which might fix the standard of knowledge so high as to place the governing power in the hands of a select few. The power in all such cases is a reserved one in Congress, to be exercised according to its own judgment, with no accountability to any tribunal save the people; and without such power the nation would be at the mercy of as many oligarchies as there are States. It is true that the power of Congress to guarantee republican governments in the States through its intervention with the question of suffrage has not hitherto been exercised, but this certainly does not disprove the existence of such power, nor the expediency of its exercise now, under an additional and independent constitutional grant, and when a fit occasion for it has come through the madness of treason. Why temporize by adopting half-way measures and a policy of indirection? The shortest distance between two given points is a straight line. Let us follow it in so important a work as amending the Constitution.

"How do you know that the broad proposition I advocate will fail in Congress or before the people? These are revolutionary days. Whole generations of common time are now crowded into the span of a few years. Life was never before so grand and blessed an opportunity. The man mistakes his reckoning who judges either the present or the future by any political almanac of bygone years. Growth, development, progress are the expressive watchwords of the hour. Who can remember the marvelous events of the past four years, necessitated by the late war, and then predict the failure of further measures, woven into the same fabric, and born of the same inevitable logic?"

On Monday, January 30th, the proposed constitutional amendment was recommitted to the joint Committee on Reconstruction. On the following day Mr. Stevens reported back the joint resolution, with an amendment striking out the words "and direct taxes," so as to fix simply the basis of representation in Congress upon population, excluding those races or colors to which the franchise is denied or abridged.

Mr. Schenck offered a substitute making "male citizens of the United States over twenty-one years" the basis of representation. Mr. Schenck occupied a few minutes in advocating his proposition.

On the other hand, Mr. Benjamin, of Missouri, objected to the substitute as greatly to the detriment of Missouri, since it would reduce her representation in Congress from nine to four, because she has endeavored to place the Government in loyal hands by disfranchising the rebel element of that State. In doing this, she had disfranchised one-half her voters.

The previous question having been called, Mr. Stevens made the closing speech of the protracted discussion. In the opening of his speech, Mr. Stevens said: "It is true we have been informed by high authority, at the other end of the avenue, introduced through an unusual conduit, that no amendment is necessary to the Constitution as our fathers made it, and that it is better to let it stand as it is. Now, sir, I think very differently, myself, for one individual. I believe there is intrusted to this Congress a high duty, no less important and no less fraught with the weal or woe of future ages than was intrusted to the august body that made the Declaration of Independence. I believe now, if we omit to exercise that high duty, or abuse it, we shall be held to account by future generations of America, and by the whole civilized world that is in favor of freedom, and that our names will go down to posterity with some applause or with black condemnation if we do not treat the subject thoroughly, honestly, and justly in reference to every human being on this continent."

That the above paragraph may be understood, it will be necessary to state that the President of the United States himself had taken part in the discussion of the measure pending before Congress. The "unusual conduit" was the telegraph and the press--the means by which his opinions were given to Congress and the public. The President's opinions were expressed in the following paper, as read by the Clerk of the House, at the request of several members:

"The following is the substance of a conversation which took place yesterday between the President and a distinguished Senator, as telegraphed North by the agent of the Associated Press:

"The President said that he doubted the propriety at this time of making further amendments to the Constitution. One great amendment had already been made, by which slavery had forever been abolished within the limits of the United States, and a national guarantee thus given that the institution should never exist in the land. Propositions to amend the Constitution were becoming as numerous as preambles and resolutions at town meetings called to consider the most ordinary questions connected with the administration of local affairs. All this, in his opinion, had a tendency to diminish the dignity and prestige attached to the Constitution of the country, and to lessen the respect and confidence of the people in their great charter of freedom. If, however, amendments are to be made to the Constitution, changing the basis of representation and taxation, (and he did not deem them at all necessary at the present time,) he knew of none better than a simple proposition, embraced in a few lines, making in each State the number of qualified voters the basis of representation, and the value of property the basis of direct taxation. Such a proposition could be embraced in the following terms:

"'Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to the number of qualified voters in each State.

"'Direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to the value of all taxable property in each State.'

"An amendment of this kind would, in his opinion, place the basis of representation and direct taxation upon correct principles. The qualified voters were, for the most part, men who were subject to draft and enlistment when it was necessary to repel invasion, suppress rebellion, and quell domestic violence and insurrection. They risk their lives, shed their blood, and peril their all to uphold the Government, and give protection, security, and value to property. It seemed but just that property should compensate for the benefits thus conferred by defraying the expenses incident to its protection and enjoyment.

"Such an amendment, the President also suggested, would remove from Congress all issues in reference to the political equality of the races. It would leave the States to determine absolutely the qualifications of their own voters with regard to color; and thus the number of Representatives to which they would be entitled in Congress would depend upon the number upon whom they conferred the right of suffrage.

"The President, in this connection, expressed the opinion that the agitation of the negro-franchise question in the District of Columbia, at this time was the mere entering-wedge to the agitation of the question throughout the States, and was ill-timed, uncalled for, and calculated to do great harm. He believed that it would engender enmity, contention, and strife between the two races, and lead to a war between»them which would result in great injury to both, and the certain extermination of the negro population. Precedence, he thought, should be given to more important and urgent matters, legislation upon which was essential for the restoration of the Union, the peace of the country, and the prosperity of the people."

"This," said Mr. Stevens, "I take to be an authorized utterance of one at the other end of the avenue. I have no doubt that this is the proclamation, the command of the President of the United States, made and put forth by authority in advance, and at a time when this Congress was legislating on this very question; made, in my judgment, in violation of the privileges of this House; made in such a way that centuries ago, had it been made to Parliament by a British king, it would have cost him his head. But, sir, we pass that by; we are tolerant of usurpation in this tolerant Government of ours."

In answer to those who contended that Congress should regulate the right of suffrage in the States, Mr. Stevens said: "If you should take away the right which now is and always has been exercised by the States, by fixing the qualifications of their electors, instead of getting nineteen States, which is necessary to ratify this amendment, you might possibly get five. I venture to say you could not get five in this Union. And that is an answer, in the opinion of the committee, to all that has been said on this subject. But it grants no right. It says, however, to the State of South Carolina and other slave States, True, we leave where it has been left for eighty years the right to fix the elective franchise, but you must not abuse it; if you do, the Constitution will impose upon you a penalty, and will continue to inflict it until you shall have corrected your actions.

"Now, any man who knows any thing about the condition of aspiration and ambition for power which exists in the slave States, knows that one of their chief objects is to rule this country. It was to ruin it if they could not rule it. They have not been able to ruin it, and now their great ambition will be to rule it. If a State abuses the elective franchise, and takes it from those who are the only loyal people there, the Constitution says to such a State, You shall lose power in the halls of the nation, and you shall remain where you are, a shriveled and dried-up nonentity instead of being the lords of creation, as you have been, so far as America is concerned, for years past.

"Now, sir, I say no more strong inducement could ever beheld out to them; no more severe punishment could ever be inflicted upon them as States. If they exclude the colored population, they will lose at least thirty-five Representatives in this hall; if they adopt it, they will have eighty-three votes."

Mr. Stevens urged several objections to the proposition of Mr. Schenck. He said: "If I have been rightly informed as to the number, there are from fifteen to twenty Representatives in the Northern States founded upon those who are not citizens of the United States. In New York I think there are three or four Representatives founded upon the foreign population--three certainly. And so it is in Wisconsin, Iowa, and other Northern States. There are fifteen or twenty Northern Representatives that would be lost by that amendment and given to the South whenever they grant the elective franchise to the negro.

"Now, sir, while I have not any particular regard for any foreigner who goes against me, yet I do not think it would be wise to put into the Constitution or send to the people a proposition to amend the Constitution which would take such Representatives from those States, and which, therefore, they will never adopt.

"But I have another objection to the amendment of my friend from Ohio. His proposition is to apportion representation according to the male citizens of the States. Why has he put in the word 'male?' It was never in the Constitution of the United States before. Why make a crusade against women in the Constitution of the nation? [Laughter.] Is my friend as much afraid of their rivalry as the gentlemen on the other side of the House are afraid of the rivalry of the negro? [Laughter.] I do not think we ought to disfigure the Constitution with such a provision. I find that every unmarried man is opposed to the proposition. Whether married men have particular reason for dreading interference from that quarter I know not. [Laughter.] I certainly shall never vote to insert the word 'male' or the word 'white' in the national Constitution. Let these things be attended to by the States."

In answer to the objection that the amendment proposed by the committee "might be evaded by saying that no man who had ever been a slave should vote, and that would not be disfranchisement on account of race or color," Mr. Stevens said: "Sir, no man in America ever was or ever could be a slave if he was a white man. I know white men have been held in bondage contrary to law. But there never was a court in the United States, in a slave State or a free State, that has not admitted that if one held as a slave could prove himself to be white, he was that instant free. And, therefore, such an exclusion, on account of previous condition of slavery, must be an exclusion on account of race or color. Therefore that objection falls to the ground."

In reply to the closing paragraph of Mr. Raymond's speech, Mr. Stevens said: "I could not but admire (an admiration mingled with wonder) the amiability of temper, the tenderness of heart, the generosity of feeling which must have prompted some of the closing sentences of the excellent and able speech delivered by the gentleman on last Monday. His words were these:

"'The gigantic contest is at an end. The courage and devotion on either side, which made it so terrible and so long, no longer owe a divided duty, but have become the common property of the American name, the priceless possession of the American Republic, through all time to come. The dead of the contending hosts sleep beneath the soil of a common country, under their common flag. Their hostilities are hushed, and they are the dead of the nation for evermore.'

"Sir, much more than amiable, much more than religious, must be the sentiment that would prompt any man to say that 'the courage and devotion' which so long withstood our arms, prolonging the terrible conflict of war, and sacrificing the lives of thousands of loyal men, are hereafter to be the common boast of the nation, 'the priceless possession of the American Republic through all time to come;' that it is the pride of our country so many infamous rebels were so ferocious in their murders.

"Sir, we are to consider these dead on both sides as the dead of the nation, the common dead! And so, I suppose, we are to raise monuments beside the monuments to Reynolds and others, to be erected in the cemetery on the battle-field of Gettysburg. We must there build high the monumental marble for men like Barksdale, whom I have seen in this hall draw their bowie-knives on the Representatives of the people; men who died upon the battle-field of Gettysburg in arms against the Government, and where they now lie buried in ditches, 'unwept, unhonored, and unsung!' They are, I suppose, to be raised and put into the fore-front ranks of the nation, and we are to call them through all time as the dead of the nation! Sir, was there ever blasphemy before like this? Who was it burnt the temple of Ephesus? Who was it imitated the thunder of Jove? All that was poor compared with this blasphemy. I say, if the loyal dead, who are thus associated with the traitors who murdered them, put by the gentleman on the same footing with them, are to be treated as the 'common dead of the nation'--I say, sir, if they could have heard the gentleman, they would have broken the cerements of the tomb, and stalked forth and haunted him until his eye-balls were seared."

The question was first taken on the substitute offered by Mr. Schenck, which was rejected by a vote of one hundred and thirty-one to twenty-nine.

The question was then taken on agreeing to the joint resolution as modified by the committee, and it was decided in the affirmative by the following vote:

YEAS--Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, James M. Ashley, Baker, Banks, Barker, Baxter, Beaman, Benjamin, Bidwell, Bingham, Blaine, Blow, Boutwell, Brandegee, Bromwell, Broomall, Buckland, Bundy, Reader W. Clarke, Sidney Clarke, Cobb, Conkling, Cook, Cullom, Darling, Davis, Dawes, Defrees, Delano, Deming, Dixon, Donnelly, Eckley, Eggleston, Farnsworth, Farquhar, Ferry, Garfield, Grinnell, Griswold, Abner C. Harding, Hart, Hayes, Hill, Holmes, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Asahel W. Hubbard, Chester D. Hubbard, Demas Hubbard, John H. Hubbard, James R. Hubbell, Hulburd, James Humphrey, Ingersoll, Julian, Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Ketcham, Kuykendall, Laflin, George V. Lawrence, William Lawrence, Longyear, Lynch, Marston, Marvin, McClurg, McIndoe, McKee, Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, Morrill, Morris, Moulton, Myers, O'Neill, Orth, Paine, Patterson, Perham, Pike, Plants, Pomeroy, Price, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Rollins, Sawyer, Schenck, Scofield, Shellabarger, Sloan, Spalding, Starr, Stevens, Stilwell, Thayer, Francis Thomas, John L. Thomas, Upson, Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, Robert T. Van Horn, Ward, Warner, Elihu B. Washburne, William B. Washburn, Welker, Wentworth, Williams, James F. Wilson, Stephen F. Wilson, Windom, and Woodbridge--120.

NAYS--Messrs. Baldwin, Bergen, Boyer, Brooks, Chanler, Dawson, Dennison, Eldridge, Eliot, Finck, Grider, Hale, Aaron Harding, Harris, Hogan, Edwin N. Hubbell, James M. Humphrey, Jenckes, Johnson, Kerr, Latham, Le Blond, Marshall, McCullough, Niblack, Nicholson, Noell, Phelps, Samuel J. Randall, William H. Randall, Raymond, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Rosseau, Shanklin, Sitgreaves, Smith, Strouse, Taber, Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, Voorhees, Whaley, and Wright--46.

NOT VOTING--Messrs. Ancona, Delos R. Ashley, Culver, Driggs, Dumont, Glossbrenner, Goodyear, Henderson, Higby, Jones, Loan, McRuer, Newell, Radford, Trowbridge, and Winfield--16.

Two-thirds having voted in the affirmative, the Speaker declared the joint resolution adopted.

The strong vote by which this measure was passed, after so general an expression of dissent from it, excited some surprise. Many gentlemen evidently surrendered their individual preferences for the sake of unanimity. They believed that this was the best measure calculated to secure just representation, which would pass the ordeal of Congress and three-fourths of the States. They accepted the "rule of statesmanship," to "take the best attainable, essential good which is at our command."

A disposition to rebuke supposed Executive dictation had some effect to produce an unexpected unanimity in favor of the measure. One Rhode Island and two Massachusetts members insisted on national negro suffrage, and voted against the amendments. Mr. Raymond and Mr. Hale, of New York, were the only Republicans who voted against the measure in accordance with the President's opinions. Of the border slave State members, ten voted for the amendment and sixteen against it.

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XV. THE BASIS OF-REPRESENTATION--IN THE SENATE

The Joint Resolution goes to the Senate -- Counter-proposition by Mr. Sumner -- He Speaks Five Hours -- Mr. Henderson's Amendment -- Mr. Fessenden -- Mr. Henry S. Lane -- Mr. Johnson -- Mr. Henderson -- Mr. Clark's Historical Statements -- Fred. Douglass' Memorial -- Mr. Williams -- Mr. Hendricks -- Mr. Chandler's "Blood-letting Letter" -- Proposition of Mr. Yates -- His Speech -- Mr. Buckalew against New England -- Mr. Pomeroy -- Mr. Sumner's Second Speech -- Mr. Doolittle -- Mr. Morrill -- Mr. Fessenden meets Objections -- Final Vote -- The Amendment Defeated.

The joint resolution, providing for amending the basis of representation, having passed the House of Representatives on the last day of January, 1866, the action of that body was communicated to the Senate. The Civil Rights Bill at that time occupying the attention of the Senate, Mr. Fessenden gave notice that unless something should occur to render that course unwise, he would ask that the consideration of the proposed constitutional amendment should be taken up on the following Monday, February 5th.

On the second of February, Mr. Sumner gave notice of his intention to move a joint resolution as a counter-proposition to the proposed constitutional amendment. Mr. Sumner's resolution was as follows:

Whereas, it is provided in the Constitution that the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government; and whereas, by reason of the failure of certain States to maintain Governments which Congress can recognize, it has become the duty of the United States, standing in the place of guarantor, where the principal has made a lapse, to secure to such States, according to the requirement of the guarantee, governments republican in form; and whereas, further, it is provided in a recent constitutional amendment, that Congress may 'enforce' the prohibition of slavery by 'appropriate legislation,' and it is important to this end that all relics of slavery should be removed, including all distinction of rights on account of color; now, therefore, to carry out the guarantee of a republican form of government, and to enforce the prohibition of slavery.

"Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all States lately declared to be in rebellion there shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, or monopoly invested with peculiar privileges or powers, and there shall be no denial of rights, civil or political, on account of color or race; but all persons shall be equal before the law, whether in the court-room or at the ballot-box; and this statute, made in pursuance of the Constitution, shall be the supreme law of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any such State to the contrary notwithstanding."

According to notice given by the Chairman of the joint Committee on Reconstruction on the part of the Senate, the proposed constitutional amendment came up for consideration on the fifth of February.

Mr. Sumner addressed the Senate in opposition to the measure. His speech was five hours in length, and occupied parts of the sessions of two days in its delivery. Mr. Sumner argued that the proposed amendment would introduce "discord and defilement into the Constitution," by admitting that rights could be "denied or abridged on account of race or color," and that by its adoption Congress would prove derelict to its constitutional duty to guarantee a republican form of government to each State, and that having already legislated to protect the colored race in civil rights, it is bound to secure to them political rights also.

Concerning the Committee on Reconstruction and their proposition, Mr. Sumner said: "Knowing, as I do, the eminent character of the committee, its intelligence, its patriotism, and the moral instincts by which it is moved, I am at a loss to understand the origin of a proposition which seems to me nothing else than another compromise of human rights, as if the country had not already paid enough in costly treasure and more costly blood for such compromises in the past. I had hoped that the day of compromise with wrong had passed forever. Ample experience shows that it is the least practical mode of settling questions involving moral principles. A moral principle can not be compromised."

He thought the proposed change in the Constitution could not properly be called an amendment. "For some time we have been carefully expunging from the statute-book the word 'white,' and now it is proposed to insert in the Constitution itself a distinction of color. An amendment, according to the dictionaries, is 'an improvement'--'a change for the better.' Surely the present proposition is an amendment which, like the crab, goes backward."

This measure would not accomplish the results desired by its authors. "If by this," said he, "you expect to induce the recent slave-master to confer the right of suffrage without distinction of color, you will find the proposition a delusion and a snare. He will do no such thing. Even the bribe you offer will not tempt him. If, on the other hand, you expect to accomplish a reduction of his political power, it is more than doubtful if you will succeed, while the means you employ are unworthy of our country. There are tricks and evasions possible, and the cunning slave-master will drive his coach and six through your amendment, stuffed with all his Representatives."

Drawing toward the close of his speech, Mr. Sumner gave the following review of his remarks that had preceded: "We have seen the origin of the controversy which led to the revolution, when Otis, with such wise hardihood, insisted upon equal rights, and then giving practical effect to the lofty demand, sounded the battle-cry that 'Taxation without Representation is Tyranny.' We have followed this controversy in its anxious stages, where these principles were constantly asserted and constantly denied, until it broke forth in battle; we have seen these principles adopted as the very frontlet of the republic, when it assumed its place in the family of nations, and then again when it ordained its Constitution; we have seen them avowed and illustrated in memorable words by the greatest authorities of the time; lastly, we have seen them embodied in public acts of the States collectively and individually; and now, out of this concurring, cumulative, and unimpeachable testimony, constituting a speaking aggregation absolutely without precedent, I offer you the American definition of a republican form of government. It is in vain that you cite philosophers or publicists, or the examples of former history. Against these I put the early and constant postulates of the fathers, the corporate declarations of the fathers, the avowed opinions of the fathers, and the public acts of the fathers, all with one voice proclaiming, first, that all men are equal in rights, and, secondly, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and here is the American idea of a republic, which must be adopted in the interpretation of the National Constitution. You can not reject it. As well reject the Decalogue in determining moral duties, or as well reject the multiplication table in determining a question of arithmetic."

Maintaining that "the rebel States are not republican governments," Mr. Sumner said: "Begin with Tennessee, which disfranchises 283,079 citizens, being more than a quarter of its whole 'people.' Thus violating a distinctive principle of republican government, how can this State be recognized as republican? This question is easier asked than answered. But Tennessee is the least offensive on the list. There is Virginia, which disfranchises 549,019 citizens, being more than a third of its whole 'people.' There is Alabama, which disfranchises 436,030 citizens, being nearly one half of its whole 'people.' There is Louisiana, which disfranchises 350,546 citizens, being one half of its whole 'people.' There is Mississippi, which disfranchises 437,404 citizens, being much more than one half of its whole 'people.' And there is South Carolina, which disfranchises 412,408 citizens, being nearly two-thirds of its whole 'people.' A republic is a pyramid standing on the broad mass of the people as a base; but here is a pyramid balanced on its point. To call such a government 'republican' is a mockery of sense and decency. A monarch, 'surrounded by republican institutions,' which at one time was the boast of France, would be less offensive to correct principles, and give more security to human rights."

Of the Southern system of government he said: "It is essentially a monopoly, in a country which sets its face against all monopolies as unequal and immoral. If any monopoly deserves unhesitating judgment, it must be that which absorbs the rights of others and engrosses political power. How vain it is to condemn the petty monopolies of commerce, and then allow this vast, all-embracing monopoly of human rights."

Mr. Sumner maintained that the ballot was the great guarantee--"the only sufficient guarantee--being in itself peacemaker, reconciler, schoolmaster, and protector." The result of conferring suffrage upon the negro will be, "The master will recognize the new citizen. The slave will stand with tranquil self-respect in the presence of the master. Brute force disappears. Distrust is at an end. The master is no longer a tyrant. The freedman is no longer a dependent. The ballot comes to him in his depression, and says, 'Use me and be elevated.' It comes to him in his passion, and says, 'Use me and do not fight.' It comes to him in his daily thoughts, filling him with the strength and glory of manhood."

Most beneficent results, it was thought, would flow from such legislation as that advocated by Mr. Sumner. "I see clearly," said he, "that there is nothing in the compass of mortal power so important to them in every respect, morally, politically, and economically--that there is nothing with such certain promise to them of beneficent results--that there is nothing so sure to make their land smile with industry and fertility as the decree of equal rights which I now invoke. Let the decree go forth to cover them with blessings, sure to descend upon their children in successive generations. They have given us war; we give them peace. They have raged against us in the name of slavery; we send them back the benediction of justice for all. They menace hate; we offer in return all the sacred charities of country together with oblivion of the past. This is our 'Measure for Measure.' This is our retaliation. This is our only revenge."

The following was the closing paragraph of Mr. Sumner's speech: "The Roman Cato, after declaring his belief in the immortality of the soul, added, that if this were an error, it was an error which he loved. And now, declaring my belief in liberty and equality as the God-given birthright of all men, let me say, in the same spirit, if this be an error, it is an error which I love; if this be a fault, it is a fault which I shall be slow to renounce; if this be an illusion, it is an illusion which I pray may wrap the world in its angelic arms."

On the seventh of February, the subject being again before the Senate, Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, moved to strike out the constitutional amendment proposed by the committee and insert the following:

"ARTICLE 14. No State, in prescribing the qualifications requisite for electors therein, shall discriminate against any person on account of color or race."

Mr. Fessenden made a speech in favor of the report of the committee, and in reply to Mr. Sumner. Referring to the subject of constitutional amendments, Mr. Fessenden said: "Something has been said, also, on different occasions, with reference to a disposition that is said to prevail now to amend the Constitution, and the forbearance of Congress has been invoked with regard to that venerable and great instrument. I believe that I have as much veneration for the Constitution as most men, and I believe that I have as high an opinion of its wisdom; but, sir, I probably have no better opinion of it than those who made it, and it did not seem to them, as we learn from its very provisions, that it was so perfect that no amendment whatever could be made that would be, in the language of the Senator from Massachusetts, an improvement. Why, sir, they provided themselves, as we all know, in the original instrument, for its amendment. They, in the very earliest days of our history, amended it themselves."

The result of retaining the "Constitution as it is" would be this: "The continuance of precisely the same rule, and the fostering of a feeling which the honorable Senator from Massachusetts has well proven to be contrary to the very foundation principles of a republican government. There can be no question that such would be the result; and we should have in a portion of the States all the people represented and all the people acting, and in another portion of the States all the people represented and but a portion of the people only exercising political rights and retaining them in their own hands. Such has been the case, and such, judging of human nature as it is, we have a right to suppose will continue to be the case."

The measure proposed by the committee was not entirely satisfactory to Mr. Fessenden. "I am free to confess," said he, "that could I legislate upon that subject, although I can see difficulties that would arise from it, yet trusting to time to soften them, and being desirous, if I can, to put into the Constitution a principle that commends itself to the consideration of every enlightened mind at once, I would prefer something of that sort, a distinct proposition that all provisions in the constitution or laws of any State making any distinction in civil or political rights, or privileges, or immunities whatever, should be held unconstitutional, inoperative, and void, or words to that effect. I would like that much better; and I take it there are not many Senators within the sound of my voice who would not very much prefer it; but, after all, the committee did not recommend a provision of that description, and I stand here as the organ of the committee, approving what they have done, and not disposed to urge my own peculiar views, if I have any, against theirs, or to rely exclusively on my own judgment so far as to denounce what honorable and true men, of better judgments than myself, have thought best to recommend, and in which I unite and agree with them."

After having given objections to limiting the basis of representation to voters, Mr. Fessenden remarked: "And if you extend it to citizens, or narrow it to citizens, you make it worse so far as many of the States are concerned; for my honorable friends from the Pacific coast, where there is a large number of foreigners, would hardly be willing to have them cut off; and they have no benefit of political power in the legislation of the country arising from the number of those foreigners who make a portion of their population. The difficulty is, that you meet with troubles of this kind every-where the moment you depart from the principle of basing representation upon population and population alone. You meet with inequalities, with difficulties, with troubles, either in one section of the country or the other, and you are inevitably thrown back upon the original principle of the Constitution.

"It will be noticed that the amendment which we have thus presented has one good quality: it preserves the original basis of representation; it leaves that matter precisely where the Constitution placed it in the first instance; it makes no changes in that respect; it violates no prejudice; it violates no feeling. Every State is represented according to its population with this distinction: that if a State says that it has a portion, a class, which is not fit to be represented--and it is for the State to decide--it shall not be represented; that is all. It has another good point: it is equal in its operation; all persons in every State are to be counted; nobody is to be rejected. With the very trifling exception fixed by the original Constitution, all races, colors, nations, languages, and denominations form the basis.

"But, sir, the great excellence of it--and I think it is an excellence--is, that it accomplishes indirectly what we may not have the power to accomplish directly. If we can not put into the Constitution, owing to existing prejudices and existing institutions, an entire exclusion of all class distinctions, the next question is, can we accomplish that work in any other way?"

Concerning the "counter-proposition" of Mr. Sumner, the speaker said: "It is, in one sense, like a very small dipper with a very long handle; for the preamble is very much more diffuse than the proposed enactment itself. I looked to see what came next. I supposed that after that preamble we should have some adequate machinery provided for the enforcement and security of these rights; that we should have the matter put to the courts, and if the courts could not accomplish it, that we should have the aid of the military power, thus shocking the sensibilities of my honorable friend from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks] again. I do not know what good it does to merely provide by law that the provisions of the Constitution shall be enforced, without saying how, in what manner, by what machinery, in what way, to what extent, or how it is to be accomplished. Why reënact the Constitution of the United States and put it in a bill? What do you accomplish by it? How is that a remedy? It is simply as if it read in this way: Whereas, it is provided in the Constitution that the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government, therefore we declare that there shall be a republican form of government and nothing else."

Mr. Sumner had said, in his speech in opposition to the proposed amendment, "Above all, do not copy the example of Pontius Pilate, who surrendered the Savior of the world, in whom he found no fault at all, to be scourged and crucified, while he set at large Barabbas, of whom the Gospel says, in simple words, 'Now, Barabbas was a robber.'"

To this Mr. Fessenden responded: "Is it a 'mean compromise'--for so it is denominated--that the Committee of Fifteen and the House of Representatives, when they passed it, placed themselves in the situation of Pontius Pilate, with the negro for the Savior of the world and the people of the United States for Barabbas, as designated by the honorable Senator. Why, sir, I expected to hear him in the next breath go further than that, and say that with the Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the States the negro had been crucified, and that now, by the amendment of the Constitution, the stone had been rolled away from the door of the sepulcher, and he had ascended to sit on the throne of the Almighty and judge the world! One would have been, permit me to say with all respect, in as good taste as the other."

In conclusion, Mr. Fessenden said: "I wish to say, in closing, that I commend this joint resolution to the careful consideration of the Senate. It is all that we could desire; it is all that our constituents could wish. It does not accomplish, as it stands now, all, perhaps, that it might accomplish; but it is an important step in the right direction. It gives the sanction of Congress, in so many words, to an important, leading, effective idea. It opens a way by which the Southern mind--to speak of it as the Southern mind--may be led to that which is right and just. I have hopes, great hopes, of those who were recently Confederates; and I believe that now that they have been taught that they can not do evil, to all the extent that they might desire, with impunity, and when their attention is turned of necessity in the right direction, the road will seem so pleasant to their feet, or, at any rate, will seem so agreeable to their love of power, that they will be willing to walk in the direction that we have pointed. If they do, what is accomplished? In process of time, under this constitutional amendment, if it should be adopted, they are led to enlarge their franchise. That necessarily will lead them to consider how much further they can go, what is necessary in order to fit their people for its exercise, thus leading to education, thus leading to a greater degree of civilization, thus bringing up an oppressed and downtrodden race to an equality, if capable of an equality--and I hope it may be--with their white brethren, children of the same Father.

"And, sir, if this is done, some of us may hope to live--I probably may not, but the honorable Senator from Massachusetts may--to see the time when, by their own act, and under the effect of an enlightened study of their own interests, all men may be placed upon the same broad constitutional level, enjoying the same rights, and seeking happiness in the same way and under the same advantages; and that is all that we could ask."

On the following day, the discussion was continued by Mr. Lane, of Indiana, who addressed the Senate in a speech of two hours' duration. Mr. Lane seldom occupied the time of the Senate by speech-making, but when he felt it his duty to speak, none upon the floor attracted more marked attention, both from the importance of his matter and the impressiveness of his manner.

Much of Mr. Lane's speech, on this occasion, was devoted to the general subject of reconstruction, since he regarded the pending measure as one of a series looking to the ultimate restoration of the late rebel States. He was opposed to undue haste in this important work. He said: "The danger is of precipitate action. Delay is now what we need. The infant in its tiny fingers plays to-day with a handful of acorns, but two hundred years hence, by the efflux of time, those acorns are the mighty material out of which navies are built, the monarch of the forest, defying the shock of the storm and the whirlwind. Time is a mighty agent in all these affairs, and we should appeal to time. We are not ready yet for a restoration upon rebel votes; we are not ready yet for a restoration upon colored votes; but, thank God! we are willing and able to wait. We have the Government, we have the Constitution of the United States, we have the army and the navy, the vast moral and material power of the republic. We can enforce the laws in all the rebel States, and we can keep the peace until such time as they may be restored with safety to them and safety to us."

Of the measure proposed by the committee, Mr. Lane remarked: "This amendment, as I have already endeavored to show, will do away with much of the irregularity now existing, and which would exist under a different state of things, the blacks being all free. So far as the amendment goes, I approve of it, and I think I shall vote for it, but with a distinct understanding that it is not all that we are required to do, that it is not the only amendment to the Constitution that Congress is required to make."

Mr. Lane expressed his opinion of Mr. Summer's "counter-proposition" in the following language: "It is a noble declaration, but a simple declaration, a paper bullet that kills no one, and fixes and maintains the rights of no one."

Of Mr. Henderson's proposition, he said: "It is a simple amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that no one shall be excluded from the exercise of the right of suffrage on account of race or color. That begins at the right point. The only objection to it is, that its operation can not be immediate, and in the mean time the rebels may be permitted to vote, and its adoption by the various State Legislatures is exceedingly doubtful. I should not doubt, however, that we might secure its adoption by three-fourths of the loyal States who have never seceded; and I believe that whenever that question is presented, the Supreme Court of the United States will determine that a ratification by that number of States is a constitutional approval of an amendment so as to make it the supreme law of the land. I have no doubt about it.

"If the rebel States are to be organized immediately, the only question is whether the right of suffrage shall be given to rebel white men or loyal black men. The amendment of the Senator from Missouri meets that issue squarely in the face. Whatsoever I desire to do I will not do by indirection. I trust I shall always be brave enough to do whatsoever I think my duty requires, directly and not by indirection."

Mr. Lane, with several other Western Senators, had been counted as opposed to negro suffrage, hence his advocacy of the principle gave much strength to those who desired to take a position in advance of the proposition of the committee.

In reply to an oft-reiterated argument that a war of races would result from allowing suffrage to the negro, Mr. Lane remarked: "If you wish to avoid a war of races, how can that be accomplished? By doing right; by fixing your plan of reconstruction upon the indestructible basis of truth and justice. What lesson is taught by history? The grand lesson is taught there that rebellions and insurrections have grown out of real or supposed wrong and oppression. A war of races! And you are told to look to the history of Ireland, and to the history of Hungary. Why is it that revolution and insurrection are always ready to break out in Hungary? Because, forsooth, the iron rule of Austria has stricken down the natural rights of the masses. It is a protest of humanity against tyranny, oppression, that produces rebellion and revolution. So in the bloody history of the Irish insurrections. Suppose the English Parliament had given equal rights to the Irish, had enfranchised the Catholics in Ireland in the reign of Henry VIII, long ere this peace and harmony would have prevailed between England and Ireland. But the very fact that a vast portion of a people are disfranchised sows the seeds of continual and ever-recurring revolution and insurrection. It can not be otherwise. These insurrections and revolutions, which are but the protest of our common humanity against wrong, are one of the scourges in the hands of Providence to compel men to do justice and to observe the right. It is the law of Providence, written upon every page of history, that God's vengeance follows man's wrong and oppression, and it will always be so. If you wish to avoid a war of races, if you wish to produce harmony and peace among these people, you must enfranchise them all."

On the following day, February 9th, Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, occupied the time devoted by the Senate to a consideration of this question with a speech against the proposed amendment of the Constitution. Mr. Johnson said that when the Constitution was framed there was no such objection to compromising as now existed in the minds of some Senators. "The framers of the Constitution came to the conclusion that the good of the country demanded that there should be a compromise, and they proposed, as a compromise, the provision as it now stands; and that is, that, for the purposes of representation, a person held in slavery, or in involuntary servitude, shall be esteemed three-fifths of a man and two-fifths property; and they established the same rule in relation to taxation. They very wisely concluded that, as it was all-important that some general rule should be adopted, this was the best rule, because promising more than any other rule to arrive at a just result of ascertaining the number of Representatives and ascertaining the quota of taxation."

Mr. Johnson did not think that the North needed such a provision as this amendment to render her able to cope with Southern statesmanship in Congress: "Are not the North and the statesmen of the North equal to the South and the statesmen of the South on all subjects that may come before the councils of the nation? What is there, looking to the history of the two sections in the past, which would lead us to believe that the North is inferior to the South in any thing of intellectual improvement or of statesmanship? You have proved--and I thank God you have proved--that if listening to evil counsels, rendered effective, perhaps, by your own misjudged legislation, and by the ill-advised course of your own population, exhibited through the press and the pulpit, a portion of the South involved the country in a war, the magnitude of which no language can describe--you have proved yourselves, adequate to the duty of defeating, them in their mad and, as far as the letter of the Constitution is concerned, their traitorous purpose. And now, having proved your physical manhood, do you doubt your intellectual manhood? Mr. President, in the presence in which I speak, I am restrained from speaking comparatively of the Senate as it is and the Senate as it has been; but I can say this, with as much sincerity as man ever spoke, that there is nothing to be found in the free States calculated to disparage them properly in the estimation of the wise and the good. They are able to conduct the Government, and they will not be the less able because they have the advice and the counsels of their Southern brethren."

In answer to the position that the Southern States were not possessed of a republican form of government, Mr. Johnson remarked: "Did our fathers consider that any one of the thirteen States who finally came under the provisions of that Constitution, and have ever since constituted a part of the nation, were not living under republican forms of government? The honorable member will pardon me for saying that to suppose it is to disparage the memory of those great and good men. There was not a State in the Union when the Constitution was adopted that was republican, if the honorable member's definition of a republican government is the one now to be relied upon. A property qualification was required in all at that time. Negroes were not allowed to vote, although free, in most of the States. In the Southern States the mass of the negroes were slaves, and, of course, were not entitled to vote. If the absence of the universal right of suffrage proves that the Government is not republican, then there was not a republican government within the limits of the United States when the Constitution was adopted; and yet the very object of the clause to guarantee a republican government--and the honorable member's citations prove it--was to prevent the existing governments from being changed by revolution. It was to preserve the existing governments; and yet the honorable member would have the Senate and the country believe that, in the judgment of the men who framed the Constitution, there was not a republican form of government in existence.

"The definition of the honorable member places his charge of antirepublicanism as against the present forms of constitution upon the ground of the right to vote. I suppose the black man has no more natural right to vote than the white man. It is the exclusion from the right that affects the judgment of the honorable member from Massachusetts. Voting, according to him, is a right derived from God; it is in every man inalienable; and its denial, therefore, is inconsistent and incompatible with the true object of a free government. If it be such a right, it is not less a right in the white man than in the black man; it is not less a right in the Indian than in the white man or the black man; it is not less a right in the female portion of our population than in the male portion. Then the honorable member from Massachusetts is living in an anti-republican government, and he ought not to stay there a moment if he can find any government which would be a government according to his theory. None has existed since the world commenced, and it is not at all likely that any will exist in all time to come; but if there is any such government to be found on the face of the earth, let him leave Massachusetts, let him hug that angelic delusion which he hopes will encircle the whole world, and go somewhere, where he can indulge it without seeing before him every day conclusive evidence that no such illusion exists at home. Leave Massachusetts, I beg the honorable member, just as soon as you can, or you will never be supremely happy."

In conclusion, Mr. Johnson remarked, referring to the recent rebels: "Let us take them to our bosom, trust them, and as I believe in my existence, you will never have occasion to regret it. You will, if the event occurs, look back to your participation in it in future time with unmingled delight, because you will be able to date from it a prosperity and a national fame of which the world furnishes no example; and you will be able to date from, it the absence of all cause of differences which can hereafter exist, which will keep us together as one people, looking to one destiny, and anxious to achieve one renown."

On Tuesday, February 13th, the Senate resumed the consideration of the Basis of Representation. Mr. Summer proposed to amend the proviso recommended by the committee--"all persons therein of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation"--by adding the words "and they shall be exempt from taxation of all kinds."

Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, occupied the attention of the Senate, during a considerable part of this and the following day, in a speech against the proposition of the Committee of Fifteen, which he considered a compromise, surrendering the rights of the negro out of the hands of the General Government into the hands of States not fit to be intrusted with them. In favor of his own amendment prohibiting the States from disfranchising citizens on the ground of color, Mr. Henderson said: "I propose to make the State governments republican in fact, as they are in theory. The States now have the power and do exclude the negroes for no other reason than that of color. If the negro is equally competent and equally devoted to the Government as the Celt, the Saxon, or the Englishman; why should he not vote? If he pays his taxes, works the roads, repels foreign invasion with his musket, assists in suppressing insurrections, fells the forest, tills the soil, builds cities, and erects churches, what more shall he do to give him the simple right of saying he must be only equal in these burdens, and not oppressed? My proposition is put in the least offensive form. It respects the traditionary right of the States to prescribe the qualifications of voters. It does not require that the ignorant and unlettered negro shall vote. Its words are simply that 'no State, in prescribing the qualifications requisite for electors therein, shall discriminate against any person on account of color or race.' The States may yet prescribe an educational or property test; but any such test shall apply to white and black alike. If the black man be excluded because he is uneducated, the uneducated white man must be excluded too. If a property test be adopted for the negro, as in New York, the same test must apply to the white man. It reaches all the States, and not a few only, in its operation. I confess that, so far as I am personally concerned, I would go still further and put other limitations on the power of the States in regard to suffrage; but Senators have expressed so much distrust that even this proposition can not succeed, I have concluded to present it in a form the least objectionable in which I could frame it. It will be observed that this amendment, if adopted, will not prevent the State Legislatures from fixing official qualifications. They may prevent a negro from holding any office whatever under the State organization. It is a singular fact, however, that to-day, under the Federal Constitution, a negro may be elected President, United States Senator, or a member of the lower branch of Congress. In that instrument no qualification for office is prescribed which rejects the negro. The white man, not native born, may not be President, but the native-born African may be. The States, however, may, in this respect, notwithstanding this amendment, do what the Federal Constitution never did."

Mr. Henderson closed his speech with the following words: "The reasons in favor of my proposition are inseparably connected with all I have said. I need not repeat them. Every consideration of peace demands it. It must be done to remove the relics of the rebellion; it must be done to pluck out political disease from the body politic, and restore the elementary principles of our Government; it must be done to preserve peace in the States and harmony in our Federal system; it must be done to assure the happiness and prosperity of the Southern people themselves; it must be done to establish in our institutions the principles of universal justice; it must be done to secure the strongest possible guarantees against future wars; it must be done in obedience to that golden rule which insists upon doing to others what we would that others should do unto us; it must be done if we would obey the moral law that teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves; in fine, it must be done to purify, strengthen, and perpetuate a Government in which are now fondly centered the best hopes of mankind."

Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, addressed the Senate on the pending measure. He made the following interesting historical statements: "As the traveler who has passed a difficult road, when he comes to some high hill looks back to see the difficulties which he has passed, I turn back, and I ask the Senator to turn back, to consider what occurred, as I say, about six years ago. In the session of 1859-60, in the old Senate-chamber, a bill was brought into the Senate of the United States by the then Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Brown], who was chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, a place which my friend from Maine [Mr. Morrill] now so worthily fills--a bill in aid of the education of the children of this District. The bill proposed to grant certain fines and forfeitures to the use of the schools, and also proposed to tax the people ten cents on every hundred dollars of the property in this District for the purpose of educating the children. That bill proposed to tax the white man and the black man alike; and fearing that the property of the black man would be taxed to educate the child of the white man, I proposed an amendment to the bill, that the tax collected from the black man should go to educate the black man's child.

"There was also a further provision of the bill, that if the District raised a certain amount of money for the education of the children, the Government of the United States would appropriate a like amount from the Treasury. If, for instance, you raised $20,000 by taxes on the people in the District, the Government should pay $20,000 more, to be added to it for the education of the children of the District. I moved the amendment that no child whose father paid any portion of that tax for the education of the children should be excluded from the benefit of it, be he white or black; but that there might be no inconvenience felt, I agreed to an amendment that the black child should not be put into the same school with the white child, but that they should be educated in different schools to be provided for them; but if the black man paid for educating the children of the District, his child should be educated. There was at once an outcry, 'Why, this is social equality of the two races; this is political equality;' and they would not consent that the black child should be educated, even with the money of the black father. That amendment was declared to be carried in the Senate of the United States, and after declaring it was carried, the Senate adjourned, and after the adjournment, the chairman of that committee, Mr. Brown, appealed to me personally if I would not withdraw it. I said to him, 'No, I would never withdraw it; if you tax the black man, the black man should have a part of the money that you raise from him to educate his child.'

"After some days, the bill came up again in the Senate of the United States, and the Senator from Mississippi, the chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, got up and in open Senate appealed to me, 'Will the Senator from New Hampshire withdraw that amendment?' 'Never, Mr. President.' 'Then,' said the Senator from Mississippi, 'I will lay the bill aside, and will not ask the Senate to pass it;' and so the whole scheme failed, because they would not consent that the money of the black man should educate his own child, and they could not vote it to educate a white child.

"Now I turn back to that time six years ago, and I mark the road that we have come along. I mark where we struck the chains from the black man in this same District, whose child you could not educate six years ago; I mark, in this Senate, at this very session, that we have passed a bill in aid of the Freedmen's Bureau to secure to him his rights in this District; I mark that all through this nation we have stricken off the chains of the slave and secured to the slave his rights elsewhere in the Union; and we have now come to the height of the hill, and are considering whether we will not enfranchise those very black men through all the country."

In favor of granting political rights to the negro, Mr. Clark made the following remarks: "Mr. President, the question of the negro has troubled the nation long. His condition as a slave troubled you; and his condition as a freedman troubles you. Are you sick, heart-sick of this trouble? and do you inquire when will it end? I will tell you. When you have given him equal rights, equal privileges, and equal security with other citizens; when you have opened the way for him to be a man, then will you have rendered exact justice which can alone insure stability and content.

"Sir, if I ever did hold that this Government was made or belonged exclusively to the white man, I should now be ashamed to avow it, or to claim for it so narrow an application. The black man has made too many sacrifices to preserve it, and endangered his life too often in its defense to be excluded from it. The common sentiment of gratitude should open its doors to him, if not political justice and equality.

"Mr. President, my house once took fire in the night-time; my two little boys were asleep in it, when I and their mother were away. The neighbors rushed into it, saved the children, and extinguished the flames. When I reached it, breathless and exhausted, the first exclamation was, 'Your children are safe.' Can you tell me how mean a man I should have been, and what execration I should have deserved, if the next time those neighbors came to my house I had kicked them out of it? Tell me, then, I pray you, why two hundred thousand black men, most of whom volunteered to fight your battles, who rushed in to save the burning house of your Government, should not be permitted to participate in that Government which they helped to preserve? When you enlisted and mustered these men, when your adjutant-general went South, and gathered them to the recruiting-office, and persuaded them to join your ranks, did he, or any one, tell them this was the white man's Government? When they came to the rendezvous, did you point to the sign over the door, 'Black men wanted to defend the white man's Government?' When you put upon them the uniform of the United States, did you say, 'Don't disgrace it; this is the white man's Government?' When they toiled on the march, in the mud, the rain, and the snow, and when they fell out of the ranks from sheer weariness, did you cheer them on with the encouragement that 'this is the white man's Government?'

"When they stood on picket on the cold, stormy night to guard you against surprise, did you creep up and warm their congealing blood with an infusion of the white man's Government? When, with a wild hurrah, on the 'double-quick,' they rushed upon the enemy's guns, and bore your flag where men fell fastest and war made its wildest havoc, where explosion after explosion sent their mangled bodies and severed limbs flying through the air, and they fell on glacis, ditch, and scarp and counterscarp, did you caution them against such bravery, and remind them that 'this was the white man's Government?' And when the struggle was over, and many had fought 'their last battle,' and you gathered the dead for burial, did you exclaim, 'Poor fools! how cheated! this is the white man's Government?' No, no, sir; you beckoned them on by the guerdon of freedom, the blessings of an equal and just Government, and a 'good time coming.'

"'White man's Government, 'do you say? Go to Fort Pillow; stand upon its ramparts and in its trenches, and recall the horrid butchery of the black man there because he had joined you against rebellion, and then say, if you will, 'This is the white man's Government.' Go to Wagner. Follow in the track of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, as they went to the terrible assault, with the guns flashing and roaring in the darkness. Mark how unflinchingly they received the pelting iron hail into their bosoms, and how they breasted the foe! See how nobly they supported, and how heroically they fell with their devoted leader; count the dead; pick up the severed limbs; number the wounds; measure the blood spilled; and remember why and wherefore and in whose cause the negro thus fought and suffered, and then say, if you can, 'This is the white man's Government.' Go to Port Hudson, go to Richmond, go to Petersburg, go anywhere and every-where--to every battle-field where the negro fought, where danger was greatest and death surest--and tell me, if you can, that 'this is the white man's Government.' And then go to Salisbury and Columbia and Andersonville, and as you shudder at the ineffable miseries of those dens, and think of those who ran the dead-line, and were not shot, but escaped to the woods and were concealed and fed and piloted by the black men, and never once betrayed, but often enabled to escape and return to their friends, and then tell me if 'this is a white man's Government.'

"In ancient Rome, when one not a citizen deserved well of the republic, he was rewarded by the rights of citizenship, but we deny them, and here in America--not in the Confederate States of America, where, attempting to found a government upon slavery and the subjection of one race to another, it would have been fitting, if anywhere, but in the United States of America, the cardinal principle of whose Government is the equality of all men. After these black men have so nobly fought to maintain the one and overthrow the other, when they ask us for the necessary right of suffrage to protect themselves against the rebels they have fought, and with whom they are compelled to live, we coolly reply, 'This is the white man's Government.' Nay, more, and worse, we have refused it to them, and allowed it to their and our worst enemies, the rebels. Sir, from the dim and shadowy aisles of the past, there comes a cry of 'Shame! shame!' and pagan Rome rebukes Christian America.

"But not chiefly, Mr. President, do I advocate this right of the black man to vote because he has fought the battles of the republic and helped to preserve the Union, but because he is a citizen and a man--one of the people, one of the governed--upon whose consent, if the Declaration of Independence is correct, the just powers of the Government rest; an intelligent being, of whom and for whom God will have an account of us, individually and as a nation; whose blood is one with ours, whose destinies are intermingled and run with ours, whose life takes hold on immortality with ours, and because this right is necessary to develop his manhood, elevate his race, and secure for it a better civilization and a more enlightened and purer Christianity."

On the 15th of February, Mr. Sumner presented a memorial from George T. Downing, Frederick Douglass, and other colored citizens of the United States, protesting against the pending constitutional amendment as introducing, for the first time, into the Constitution a grant to disfranchise men on the ground of race or color. In laying this memorial before the Senate, Mr. Sumner said: "I do not know that I have at any time presented a memorial which was entitled to more respectful consideration than this, from the character of its immediate signers and from the vast multitudes they represent. I hope I shall not depart from the proper province of presenting it if I express my entire adhesion to all that it says, and if I take this occasion to entreat the Senate, if they will not hearken to arguments against the pending proposition, that they will at least hearken to the voice of these memorialists, representing the colored race of our country."

Mr. Williams, of Oregon, argued in favor of the resolution reported by the committee as the best measure before the Senate. He was for proceeding slowly in the work of reconstruction. In his opinion, neither the negro nor his master was now fit to vote. Upon this point he said: "It seems to me there can be little doubt that at this particular time the negroes of the rebel States are unfit to exercise the elective franchise. I have recently conversed with two officers of the Federal army from Texas, who told me that there, in the interior and agricultural portions of the State, the negroes do not yet know that they are free; and one of the officers told me that he personally communicated to several negroes for the first time the fact of their freedom. Emancipation may be known in the towns and cities throughout the South, but the probabilities are that in the agricultural portions of that country the negroes have no knowledge that they are free, or only vague conceptions of their rights and duties as freemen. Sir, give these men a little time; give them a chance to learn that they are free; give them a chance to acquire some knowledge of their rights as freemen; give them a chance to learn that they are independent and can act for themselves; give them a chance to divest themselves of that feeling of entire dependence for subsistence and the sustenance of their families upon the landholders of the South, to which they have been so long accustomed; give them a little time to shake the manacles off of their minds that have just been stricken from their hands, and I will go with the honorable Senator from Massachusetts to give them the right of suffrage. And I will here express the hope that the day is not far distant when every man born upon American soil, within the pale of civilization, may defend his manhood and his rights as a freeman by that most effective ballot which

"'Executes the freeman's will As lightning does the will of God.'"

Concerning the amendment proposed by Mr. Henderson, Mr. Williams said: "All the impassioned declamation and all the vehement assertions of the honorable Senator do not change or affect the evidence before our eyes that the people of these United States are not prepared to surrender to Congress the absolute right to determine as to the qualifications of voters in the respective States, or to adopt the proposition that all persons, without distinction of race or color, shall enjoy political rights and privileges equal to those now possessed by the white people of the country. Sir, some of the States have lately spoken upon that subject. Wisconsin and Connecticut, Northern, loyal, and Republican States, have recently declared that they would not allow the negroes within their own borders political rights; and is it probable that of the thirty-six States, more than six, at the most, would at this time adopt the constitutional amendment proposed by the gentleman?"

Notwithstanding the temporary darkness of the political sky, Mr. Williams saw brilliant prospects before the country. "This nation," said he, "is to live and not die. God has written it among the shining decrees of destiny. Inspired by this hope and animated by this faith, we will take this country through all its present troubles and perils to the promised land of perfect unity and peace, where freedom, equality, and justice, the triune and tutelar deity of the American Republic, will rule with righteousness a nation 'whose walls shall be salvation and whose gates praise.'"

At the close of this speech, the Senate being about to proceed to a vote upon the pending amendment, it was proposed to defer action and adjourn the question over to the following day, for the purpose of affording an opportunity for speeches by Senators who were not prepared to proceed immediately. Mr. Fessenden, who had the measure in charge, protested against the delays of the Senate. "This subject," said he, "has dragged along now for nearly two weeks. If members desire to address the Senate, they must be prepared to go on and do so without a postponement from day to day for the purpose of allowing every gentleman to make his speech in the morning, and then adjourning early every evening. We shall never get through in that way. I give notice to gentlemen that I shall begin to be a little more quarrelsome--I do not know that it will do any good--after to-day."

On the day following, Mr. Hendricks delivered a speech of considerable length in opposition to the constitutional amendment. After having maintained that the proposition did not rest the right of representation upon population, nor upon property, nor upon voters, Mr. Hendricks inquired: "Upon what principle do Senators propose to adopt this amendment to the Constitution? I can understand it if you say that the States shall be represented in the House of Representatives upon their population; I can understand it if you say that they shall be represented upon their voters; but when you say that one State shall have the benefit of its non-voting population and another State shall not, I can not understand the principle of equity and justice which governs you in that measure. Sir, if it does not stand upon a principle, upon what does it rest? It rests upon a political policy. A committee that had its birth in a party caucus brings it before this body, and does not conceal the fact that it is for party purposes. This measure, if you ever allow the Southern States to be represented in the House of Representatives, will bring them back shorn of fifteen or twenty Representatives; it will bring them back so shorn in their representation that the Republican party can control this country forever; and if you cut off from fifteen to thirty votes for President of the United States in the States that will not vote for a Republican candidate, it may be that you can elect a Republican candidate in 1868."

Mr. Hendricks thought that "this proposition was designed to accomplish three objects: first, to perpetuate the rule and power of a political party; in the second place, it is a proposition the tendency of which is to place agriculture under the control and power of manufactures and commerce forever; and, in the third place, it is intended, I believe, as a punishment upon the Southern States."

In reference to changing the basis of representation as a punishment for the Southern States, Mr. Hendricks said: "Now that the war is over; now that the Southern people have laid down their arms; now that they have sought to come again fully and entirely into the Union; now that they have pledged their honors and their fortunes to be true to the Union and to the flag; now that they have done all that can be done by a conquered people, is it right, after a war has been fought out, for us to take from them their political equality in this Union for the purpose of punishment? The Senator from Maine, the chairman of the committee, says that the right to control the suffrage is with the States, but if the States do not choose to do right in respect to it, we propose to punish them. You do not punish New York for not letting the foreigner vote until he resides there a certain period. You do not punish Indiana because she will not allow a foreigner to vote until he has been in the country a year. These States are not to be punished because they regulate the elective franchise according to their sovereign pleasures; but if any other States see fit to deny the right of voting to a class that is peculiarly guarded and taken care of here, then they are to be punished."

Referring to the speech of the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Hendricks asked: "Had the white men of this country a right to establish a Government, and thereby a political community? If so, they had a right to say who should be members of that political community. They had a right to exclude the colored man if they saw fit. Sir, I say, in the language of the lamented Douglas, and in the language of President Johnson, this is the white man's Government, made by the white man for the white man. I am not ashamed to stand behind such distinguished men in maintaining a sentiment like that. Nor was my judgment on the subject changed the day before yesterday by the lamentations of the Senator from New Hampshire, [Mr. Clark,] sounding through this body like the wailing of the winds in the dark forest, 'that it is a horrible thing for a man to say that this is a white man's Government.'

"Mr. President, there is a great deal said about the part the colored soldiers have taken in putting down this rebellion--a great deal more than there is any occasion for, or there is any support for in fact or history. This rebellion was put down by the white soldiers of this country."

Criticising sentiments toward the South, expressed by Senators, Mr. Hendricks said: "We hear a good deal said about blood now. Yesterday the Senator from Oregon [Mr. Williams] criticised the President for his leniency toward the South. A few days ago, the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade] made a severe criticism on the President for his leniency, and my colleague asks for blood. Mr. President, this war commenced with blood; nay, blood was demanded before the war. When the good men and the patriotic, North and South, representing the yearning hearts of the people at home, came here, in the winter and spring of 1861, in a peace congress, if possible to avoid this dreadful war, right then the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Chandler] announced to his Governor and the country that this Union was scarcely worth preserving without some blood-letting. His cry before the war was for blood. Allow me to say that when the Senator's name is forgotten because of any thing he says or does in this body, in future time it will be borne down upon the pages of history as the author of the terrible sentiment that the Union of the people that our fathers had cemented by the blood of the Revolution and by the love of the people; that that Union, resting upon compromise and concession, resting upon the doctrine of equality to all sections of the country; that that Union which brought us so much greatness and power in the three-quarters of a century of our life; that that Union that had brought us so much prosperity and greatness, until we were the mightiest and proudest nation on God's footstool; that that grand Union was not worth preserving unless we had some blood-letting!"

Mr. Chandler, of Michigan, replied: "The Senator from Indiana has arraigned me upon an old indictment for having written a certain letter in 1861. It is not the first time that I have been arraigned on that indictment of 'blood-letting.' I was first arraigned for it upon this floor by the traitor John C. Breckinridge; and I answered the traitor John C. Breckinridge; and after I gave him his answer, he went out into the rebel ranks and fought against our flag. I was arraigned by another Senator from Kentucky and by other traitors upon this floor. I expect to be arraigned again. I wrote the letter, and I stand by the letter; and what was in it? What was the position of the country when that letter was written? The Democratic party, as an organization, had arrayed itself against this Government--a Democratic traitor in the presidential chair, and a Democratic traitor in every department of this Government; Democratic traitors preaching treason upon this floor, and preaching treason in the hall of the other house; Democratic traitors in your army and in your navy; Democratic traitors controlling every branch of this Government. Your flag was fired upon, and there was no response. The Democratic party had ordained that this Government should be overthrown; and I, a Senator from the State of Michigan, wrote to the Governor of that State, 'Unless you are prepared to shed blood for the preservation of this great Government, the Government is overthrown.' That is all there was to that letter. That I said, and that I say again; and I tell that Senator if he is prepared to go down in history with the Democratic traitors who then coöperated with him, I am prepared to go down on that 'blood-letting' letter, and I stand by the record as then made." [Applause in the galleries.]

On the 19th of February, Mr. Howard, of Michigan, offered an amendment providing that the right of suffrage should be enjoyed by all persons of African descent belonging to the following classes: those who have been in the military service of the United States, those who can read and write, and those who possess $250 worth of property.

Mr. Yates, of Illinois, addressed the Senate for three hours on the pending amendment of the Constitution. On the 29th of January preceding, Mr. Yates had proposed a bill providing that no State or Territory should make any distinction between citizens on account of race, or color, or condition; and that all citizens, without distinction of race, color, or condition should be protected in the enjoyment and exercise of all their civil and political rights, including the right of suffrage.

This bill Mr. Yates made the basis of his argument. His reason for preferring a bill to a constitutional amendment was presented as follows: "There is only one way of salvation for the country. Your amendments to the Constitution of the United States can not be adopted. If we have not the power now under the Constitution of the United States to secure full freedom, then, sir, we shall not have it, and there is no salvation whatever for the country. Let not freedom die in the house, and by the hands of her friends."

Mr. Yates maintained that the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery gave to Congress power to legislate to the full extent of the measure proposed by him. "Let gentlemen come forward," said he, "and meet the issue like men. Let them come forward and do what they have by the Constitution the clear power to do, and that is a sine qua non in order to carry into effect the constitutional prohibition of slavery. As for me, I would rather face the music and meet the responsibility like a man, and send to the people of the State of Illinois the boon of universal suffrage, and of a full and complete emancipation, than meet the taunt of Northern demagogues that I would force suffrage upon North Carolina, and Tennessee, and Delaware, while I had not the courage to prescribe it for our own free States. Sir, it will be the crime of the century if now, having the power, as we clearly have, we lack the nerve to do the work that is given us to do.

"Let me say to my Republican friends, you are too late. You have gone too far to recede now. Four million people, one-seventh of your whole population, you have set free. Will you start back appalled at the enchantment your own wand has called up? The sequences of your own teachings are upon you. As for me, I start not back appalled when universal suffrage confronts me. When the bloody ghost of slavery rises, I say, 'Shake your gory locks at me; I did it.' I accept the situation. I fight not against the logic of events or the decrees of Providence. I expected it, sir, and I meet it half way. I am for universal suffrage. I bid it 'All hail!' 'All hail!'

"Four million people set free! What will protect them? The ballot. What alone will give us a peaceful and harmonious South? The ballot to all. What will quench the fires of discord, give us back all the States, a restored Union, and make us one people? The ballot, and that alone. Is there no other way? None other under the sun. There is no other salvation.

"The ballot will lead the freedman over the Red Sea of our troubles. It will be the brazen serpent, upon which he can look and live. It will be his pillar of cloud by day, and his pillar of fire by night. It will lead him to Pisgah's shining height, and across Jordan's stormy waves, to Canaan's fair and happy land. Sir, the ballot is the freedman's Moses. So far as man is concerned, I might say that Mr. Lincoln was the Moses of the freedmen; but whoever shall be the truest friend of human freedom, whoever shall write his name highest upon the horizon of public vision as the friend of human liberty, that man--and I hope it may be the present President of the United States--will be the Joshua to lead the people into the land of deliverance."

Mr. Yates maintained that for the exercise of the right of suffrage there should be no test of intelligence, wealth, rank or race. To bring the people up to the proper standard, the ballot itself was "the greatest educator." He said: "Let a man have an interest in the Government, a voice as to the men and measures by which his taxes, his property, his life, and his reputation shall be determined, and there will be a stimulus to education for that man.

"As the elective franchise has been extended in this country, we have seen education become more universal. Look throughout all our Northern States at our schools and colleges, our academies of learning, our associations, the pulpit, the press, and the numerous agencies for the promotion of intelligence, all the inevitable offspring of our free institutions. Here is the high training which inspires the eloquence of the Senate, the wisdom of the cabinet, the address of the diplomatist, and which has developed and brought to light that intelligent and energetic mind which has elevated the character and contributed to the prosperity of the country. It is the ballot which is the stimulus to improvement, which fires the heart of youthful ambition, which stimulates honorable aspiration, which penetrates the thick shades of the forest, and takes the poor rail-splitter by the hand and points him to the shining height of human achievement, or which goes into the log hut of the tailor boy and opens to him the avenue of the presidential mansion."

Mr. Yates then declared his confidence in the triumph of the principle of universal suffrage: "It is my conscientious conviction that if every Senator on this floor, and every Representative in the other House, and the President of the United States, should, with united voices, attempt to oppose this grand consummation of universal equality, they will fail. It is too late for that. You may go to the head-waters of the Mississippi and turn off the little rivulets, but you can not go to the mouth, after it has collected its waters from a thousand rivers, and with accumulated volume is pouring its foaming waters into the Gulf, and say, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no further.'

"It is too late to change the tide of human progress. The enlightened convictions of the masses, wrought by the thorough discussions of thirty years, and consecrated by the baptism of precious blood, can not now be changed. The hand of a higher power than man's is in this revolution, and it will not move backward. It is of no use to fight against destiny. God, not man, created men equal. Deep laid in the solid foundations of God's eternal throne, the principle of equality is established, indestructible and immortal.

"Senators, sixty centuries of the past are looking down upon you. All the centuries of the future are calling upon you. Liberty, struggling amid the rise and wrecks of empires in the past, and yet to struggle for life in all the nations of the world, conjures you to seize this great opportunity which the providence of Almighty God has placed in your hands to bless the world and make your names immortal, to carry to full and triumphant consummation the great work begun by your fathers, and thus lay permanently, solidly, and immovably, the cap-stone upon the pyramid of human liberty."

On the 21st of February, the proposed amendment being again before the Senate, Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, delivered an elaborate speech in opposition to the measure. He had previously refrained from speech-making, supposing that "while the passions of the country were inflamed by the war, reason could not be heard." He regretted that questions pertaining to the war still occupied the attention of Congress to the exclusion of those connected with economy, revenue, finance, ordinary legislation, and the administration of justice--questions which require intelligence, investigation, labor, and the habits of the student. As an argument against changing the basis of representation as it existed, Mr. Buckalew gave statistical details, showing the various ratios of representation in the Senate, as possessed respectively by the East, West and South. He maintained that New England had too great a preponderance of power in the Senate, both, as to membership and the chairmanships of committees, "While," said he, "the population of the East is less than one-seventh of the population of the States represented in the Senate, she has the chairmanships of one-third of the committees. The chairmanship of a committee is a position of much influence and power. The several distinguished gentlemen holding that position have virtual control over the transaction of business, both in committee and in the Senate."

Mr. Buckalew thus presented the effect of restoration of representation to the Southern States upon the relative position of New England: "Twenty-two Senators from the Southern States and two from Colorado--being double the number of those from the East--would reduce the importance of the latter in the Senate and remit her back to the condition in which she stood in her relations to the Union before the war. True, she would even then possess much more than her proportion of weight in the Senate, regard being had to her population, but she would no longer dominate or control the Government of the United States."

Mr. Buckalew argued at some length that representation should continue to be based upon population. He thought that the two-fifths added to the representative population in the South by the abolition of slavery would be counterbalanced by the mortality of the slave population since the outbreak of the war. He then presented the following objections to "any propositions of amendments at this time by Congress:"

"1. Eleven States are unrepresented in the Senate and House. They are not heard in debate which may affect their interests and welfare in all future time.

"2. Any amendment made at this time will be a partisan amendment.

"3. The members of this Congress were not chosen with reference to the subject of constitutional amendment.

"4. Whatever amendments are now proposed by Congress are to be submitted to Legislatures, and not to popular conventions in the States; and most of those Legislatures are to be the ones now in session.

"5. In submitting amendments at this time, we invite a dispute upon the question of the degree of legislative assent necessary to their adoption. If ratified by the Legislatures of less than three-fourths of all the States, their validity will be denied, and their enforcement resisted."

Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, replied to Mr. Buckalew's imputations against New England. "The Senator gave us to understand that he had not wasted reason, thought, and culture upon the stormy passions engendered by the war, but now, when reason had resumed her empire, he had come forth to instruct his country.

"The Senators from New England, unlike the Senator from Pennsylvania, remained not silent during the great civil war through which the nation has passed. They have spoken; they have spoken for the unity of their country and the freedom of all men. They have spoken for their country, their whole country, and for the rights of all its people of every race. Their past is secure, and the imputations of the Senator from Pennsylvania will pass harmless by them.

"When the Constitution was formed, New England had eight of the twenty-six Senators--nearly one-third of the body; now she has twelve of the seventy-two Senators--one-sixth of the body. Her power is diminishing in this body and will continue to diminish. When the Constitution was adopted, quite as great inequalities existed among the States as now. The illustrious statesmen who framed the Constitution knew and recognized that fact; they based the Senate upon the States, and upon the equality of the States. They were so determined in that policy of equal State representation in the Senate that they provided that the Constitution should never be amended in that respect without the consent of every State.

"The Senator suggests that the Senators from New England are actuated by local interests and love of power in their action regarding the admission of the Representatives of the rebel States. Nothing can be more unjust to those Senators. It is without the shadow of fairness or justice, or the semblance of truth. I can say before God that I am actuated by no local interests, no love of power, in opposing the immediate and unconditional admission of the rebel States into these chambers; and I know my associates from New England too well to believe for a moment that they are actuated by interest or the love of power. Thousands of millions of money have been expended, and hundreds of thousands of brave men have bled for the unity and liberty of the republic. I desire--my associates from New England desire--to see these vacant chairs filled at an early day by the Representatives of the States that rebelled and rushed into civil war. We will welcome them here; but before they come it is of vital importance to the country, to the people of all sections, to the interests of all, that all disturbing questions should be forever adjusted, and so adjusted as never again to disturb the unity and peace of the country. It is now the time to settle forever all matters that can cause estrangement and sectional agitations and divisions in the future. Nothing should be left to bring dissensions, and, it may be, civil war again upon our country. The blood poured out to suppress the rebellion must not be shed in vain."

Prominent Republican Senators bringing earnest opposition to bear against the proposed constitutional amendment, and a sentiment evidently gaining ground that it did not meet the requirements of the case, caused its friends to urge it with less zeal than had at first characterized them. Meanwhile, other important propositions coming up from the Committee of Fifteen, which occupied the attention of the Senate, as detailed in a subsequent chapter, the subject of changing the basis of representation was allowed to lie over for nearly a fortnight.

On the 5th of March, the subject being resumed, Mr. Pomeroy addressed the Senate. He feared that the nation was not ready to adopt a constitutional amendment such as the necessities of the country required. "This nation," said he, "although severely disciplined, has not yet reached the point of giving to all men their rights by a suffrage amendment; three-fourths of the States are not ready. And any patchwork, any 'step toward it' (as said the chairman of the committee) which does not reach it, I fear to take, because but one opportunity will ever be afforded us to step at all; and lost opportunities are seldom repeated."

Mr. Pomeroy did not think the case was without remedy, however, since "the last constitutional amendment embraced all, gave the most ample powers, even if they did not exist before; for, after having secured the freedom of all men wherever the old flag floats, it provided that Congress might 'secure' the same by 'appropriate legislation.'

"What more could it have said? And who are better judges of appropriate legislation than the very men who first passed the amendment and provided for this very case?

"Sir, what is 'appropriate legislation' on the subject, namely, securing the freedom of all men? It can be nothing less than throwing about all men the essential safeguards of the Constitution. The 'right to bear arms' is not plainer taught or more efficient than the right to carry ballots. And if appropriate legislation will secure the one, so can it also the other. And if both are necessary, and provided for in the Constitution as now amended, why, then, let us close the question of congressional legislation.

"Let us not take counsel of our own fears, but of our hopes; not of our enemies, but of our friends. By all the memories which cluster about the pathway in which we have been led; by all the sacrifices, suffering, blood, and tears of the conflict; by all the hopes of a freed country and a disenthralled race; yea, as a legacy for mankind, let us now secure a free representative republic, based upon impartial suffrage and that human equality made clear in the Declaration of Independence. To this entertainment let us invite our countrymen and all nations, committing our work, when done, to the verdict of posterity and the blessing of Almighty God."

On the day following, Mr. Saulsbury took the floor. His speech, ostensibly against the pending measure, was a palliation of the conduct of the Southern States, and a plea for their right of being admitted to representation in Congress. All that the Senator said directly upon the subject under discussion was contained in the following paragraph:

"Now, suppose your constitutional amendment passes. If it passes, it ought to meet with the respect of some body. If this constitutional amendment shall be presented to the States who are now represented in Congress, and shall be adopted by simply three-fourths of those States, is there any body that will have the least respect for it? Then suppose you could go with the bayonet--which I think now, under the brighter dawn of a better day which we begin to realize, you are not going to have the liberty to do--suppose you were to go with the bayonet and present it to the other eleven States, and they, acting under duress, not as free agents and as free men, could get some people in their section so miserable and poor in spirit and craven in soul as to vote to adopt in their Legislatures such an amendment, would it command the respect of any body in this land? Not at all. Open your doors, sir; admit the Representatives of the Southern States to seats in this body; require no miserable degrading oath of them; administer to them the very oath that you first took when you entered this body, and the only oath that the Constitution of the United States requires, and the only oath which Congress has any right to exact, an oath to support the Constitution of the United States; and then, if you think your Constitution is defective, if you think it needs further amendment, or if you have not sufficiently exhausted your bowels of mercy and love and kindness toward your sable friends whose shadows darken this gallery every day, submit your amendments to the States represented in the Congress of the United States; and if they choose, acting freely as citizens of their States, to agree to your amendments, it will command the respect of themselves, but still it will not command mine. I should despise a people who would voluntarily assume so degrading a position."

On the 7th of March, Mr. Sumner occupied the attention of the Senate for three hours, with a second speech in opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment. He used very strong language to express his abhorrence of the proposition: "It reminds me of that leg of mutton served for dinner on the road from London to Oxford, which Dr. Johnson, with characteristic energy, described 'as bad as bad could be, ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-dressed.' So this compromise--I adopt the saying of an eminent friend, who insists that it can not be called an 'amendment,' but rather a 'detriment' to the Constitution--is as bad as bad can be; and even for its avowed purpose it is uncertain, loose, cracked, and rickety. Regarding it as a proposition from Congress to meet the unparalleled exigencies of the present hour, it is no better than the 'muscipular abortion' sent into the world by the 'parturient mountain.' But it is only when we look at the chance of good from it that this proposition is 'muscipular.' Regarding it in every other aspect it is infinite, inasmuch as it makes the Constitution a well-spring of insupportable thralldom, and once more lifts the sluices of blood destined to run until it comes to the horse's bridle. Adopt it, and you will put millions of fellow-citizens under the ban of excommunication; you will hand them over to a new anathema maranatha; you will declare that they have no political rights 'which white men are bound to respect,' thus repeating in a new form that abomination which has blackened the name of Taney. Adopt it, and you will stimulate anew the war of race upon race. Slavery itself was a war of race upon race, and this is only a new form of this terrible war. The proposition is as hardy as it is gigantic; for it takes no account of the moral sense of mankind, which is the same as if in rearing a monument we took no account of the law of gravitation. It is the paragon and masterpiece of ingratitude, showing more than any other act of history what is so often charged and we so fondly deny, that republics are ungrateful. The freedmen ask for bread, and you send them a stone. With piteous voice they ask for protection. You thrust them back unprotected into the cruel den of their former masters. Such an attempt, thus bad as bad can be, thus abortive for all good, thus perilous, thus pregnant with a war of race upon race, thus shocking to the moral sense, and thus treacherous to those whom we are bound to protect, can not be otherwise than shameful. Adopt it, and you will cover the country with dishonor. Adopt it, and you will fix a stigma upon the very name of republic. As to the imagination, there are mountains of light, so are there mountains of darkness; and this is one of them. It is the very Koh-i-noor of blackness. Adopt this proposition, and you will be little better than the foul Harpies who defiled the feast that was spread. The Constitution is the feast spread for our country, and you are now hurrying to drop into its text a political obscenity, and to spread on its page a disgusting ordure,

"'Defiling all you find, And parting leave a loathsome stench behind.'"

Having presented his objections to the pending proposition, at great length, he summed them up as follows: "You have seen, first, how this proposition carries into the Constitution itself the idea of Inequality of Rights, thus defiling that unspotted text; secondly, how it is an express sanction of the acknowledged tyranny of taxation without representation; thirdly, how it is a concession to State Rights at a moment when we are recovering from a terrible war waged against us in the name of State Rights; fourthly, how it is the constitutional recognition of an oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color; fifthly, how it petrifies in the Constitution the wretched pretensions of a white man's government; sixthly, how it assumes what is false in constitutional law, that color can be a 'qualification' for an elector; seventhly, how it positively ties the hands of Congress in fixing the meaning of a republican government, so that, under the guarantee clause, it will be constrained to recognize an oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color, together with the tyranny of taxation without representation, as not inconsistent with such a government; eighthly, how it positively ties the hands of Congress in completing and consummating the abolition of slavery according to the second clause of the constitutional amendment, so that it can not, for this purpose, interfere with the denial of the elective franchise on account of color; ninthly, how it installs recent rebels in permanent power over loyal citizens; and, tenthly, how it shows forth, in unmistakable character, as a compromise of human rights, the most immoral, indecent, and utterly shameful of any in our history. All this you have seen, with pain and sorrow, I trust. Who that is moved to sympathy for his fellow-man can listen to the story without indignation? Who that has not lost the power of reason can fail to see the cruel wrong?"

Mr. Doolittle mentioned some facts which he thought would prove the apprehension of an increase of the basis of representation in the South to be without foundation. "The destruction of the population," said he, "both white and black, during the civil war, has been most enormous. Of the white population, there were in those States in 1860, of white males over twenty years of age, about one million six hundred thousand. Nearly one-third of that white population over twenty years of age has perished. The actual destruction of the black population since 1860 has been at least twenty-five per cent. of the whole population. The population of the South has been so destroyed and wasted and enfeebled in consequence of this war, that I do not for one, I confess, feel those apprehensions which some entertain that, if they are admitted to representation under the Constitution just as it stands, they will have any increase of Representatives. My opinion is, that after the next census their representation will be diminished unless emigration from the North or from Europe shall fill up their population and increase it so as to entitle it to an increased representation."

Mr. Doolittle argued that the amendment was capable of being evaded by a State disposed to disfranchise colored men: "I do not see," said he, "that there is any thing in the resolution which would prevent South Carolina or any other State from passing a law that any person who was born free, or whose ancestors were free, should exercise the elective franchise, and none others. That would exclude the whole of the colored population, and yet would leave the State to have its full representation. There is nothing which would prevent the State of South Carolina or any other State from saying that only those persons who had served in the military service, and their descendants, should exercise the elective franchise. That would exclude the colored population, and the Union population, too, if they refused to serve in the army."

Mr. Doolittle closed his remarks by advocating an amendment basing representation upon actual voters under State laws.

Mr. Morrill, of Maine, addressed the Senate in support of the proposition to amend the Constitution. He said: "Some amendment is rendered absolutely necessary, unless the American Constitution is to give to the nation the expression of utterly contradictory sentiments, saying involuntary servitude no longer exists, in one portion of it; in another, bearing on its front in marked contrast, that three-fifths only of the 'other persons' are to still constitute the basis of representation."

He recalled a time not far remote when amendments of the Constitution were adopted by those who now oppose any alteration of the fundamental law: "I do not forget," said he, "that within the last five years a class of statesmen and politicians, who now resist all propositions for an amendment of the Constitution, here and elsewhere urged and demanded amendments of the Constitution of the nation. What were the circumstances then? Several States threatened to dissolve this Union; several States had taken an attitude hostile to the Government of the country. They demanded the extension, the protection, and the perpetuation of slavery; and upon that question the country was divided. Then amendments to the Constitution were proposed without number here, elsewhere, and every-where. Amendments to the Constitution seemed to be the order of the day. To what end, and for what purpose? To increase the power in the hands of the few who wielded the political power in those States, and who were demanding it.

Referring to an argument presented by the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Morrill remarked: "But yesterday we had an additional reason given why this amendment should not be adopted; and that was that it was wholly unnecessary, because, it was said, by the events which were transpiring in the country in regard to the recent slave population, there need be no apprehension of excess of representation based on the whole 'numbers' instead of three-fifths, from the important fact that they were passing away. If I gather the force of that argument, it is this: we are to base no legislation and no action upon the idea that this race, recently slave, now free, is part and parcel of the American people, the object of our care, solicitude, and protection. They are passing away--dying; let them be represented as slaves now, and let them never enter into the basis hereafter of the representative system. Sir, that is the old argument--an argument worthy of another period than this. Our people have been an inexorable people, in some respects, in regard to the races that have been within their power. In the march of our civilization across the continent, the iron heel of that civilization has rested upon the Indian, and he is passing away. We seem to contemplate the probable extinction of the Indians from our limits with composure. He is a nomad; he is a savage; he is a barbarian; he is not within our morals or our code of law; he is not within the pale of the Constitution, but flits upon the verge of it, outside our protection, the subject of our caprices, and sometimes, I think, of our avarice. And, now, if any consequence is to be attached to the remark of the honorable Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Doolittle] yesterday, this 'inferior race' is not to be the subject of our solicitude. They, too, are passing away; it is not worth while to change your Constitution in regard to them. Let them be represented as two-fifths slaves on the old basis until they shall have perished, and then your Constitution will need no amendment. The laws of a fearful antagonism of superior and inferior races are expected to accomplish what, if American statesmanship does not incite, it contemplates with apparent satisfaction."

Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, profoundly regretted to see indications that the amendment was doomed to defeat. He said: "My heart, my conscience, and my judgment approve of this amendment, and I support it without qualification or reservation. I approve of the purpose for which it is introduced. I approve it because I believe it would sweep the loyal States by an immense majority; that no public man could stand before the people of the loyal States in opposition to it, or oppose it with any force whatever. I approve it because I believe if it were put in the Constitution every black man in America, before five years could pass, would be enfranchised and weaponed with the ballot for the protection of life, liberty, and property."

Referring to the opposition brought to bear against the measure by his colleague, Mr. Wilson said: "We are also told that it is immoral and indecent, an offense to reason and to conscience. Sir, this measure came into Congress with the sanction of the Committee on Reconstruction, composed as it is of men of individual honor and personal character, and as true to the cause of the colored race as any other men here or elsewhere. It comes to the Senate by an overwhelming vote of the House of Representatives. It is sustained by ninety-nine out of every hundred of the public journals that brought the present Administration into power, and were it submitted to the American people, it would, I am quite sure, be sustained by men in the loyal States who believe that the soldier who fought the battles of the republic is the equal of the traitor who fought against the country. I see no compromise in it, no surrender in it, no defilement of the Constitution in it, no implication that can be drawn from it against the rights or interests of the colored race. On the contrary, I believe the black men, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, would go for it and rejoice to see it adopted."

Mr. Wilson described the results that would follow the adoption of this amendment. "Being incorporated in the Constitution, the practical effect would be this, and only this: it would raise up a party in every one of these States immediately in favor of the enfranchisement of the colored race. That party might be animated and influenced by the love of power, by pride, and by ambition. These men might begin the contest, for they would not like to yield the power of their States in Congress; they might begin the battle animated by no high and lofty motives; but as soon as the discussion commenced, it would address itself to the reason, to the heart, and to the conscience of the people. The advocates of negro enfranchisement would themselves speedily grow up to believe in the justice, equity, and right of giving the ballot to the black men. There would be discussion on every square mile of the rebel States. Appeals would be made to their pride, to their ambition, to their justice, to their love of fair play, to their equity; all the interests and passions, and all the loftier motives that can sway, control, and influence men, would impel them to action. They would coöperate with the friends of freedom throughout the country; would seek their counsel and aid. They would be the left wing of the great army of freedom, of elevation, and improvement in the country. We would give them our influence, our voices, and our aid in fighting the battle of enfranchisement. They would have the support and the prayers of the poor black men of the South; and before five years had passed away, there would not be a rebel State that did not enfranchise the bondman."

Referring to the policy of "enlightened Christian States," in refusing the right of suffrage to the negro, Mr. Wilson said: "After all the fidelity and heroic conduct of these men, prejudice, party spirit, and conservatism, and all that is base and mean on earth, combine to deny the right of suffrage to the brave soldier of the republic. God alone can forgive such meanness; humanity can not. After what has taken place, is taking place, I can not hope that the constitutional amendment proposed by the Senator from Missouri will receive a majority of three-fourths of the votes of the States. I, therefore, can not risk the cause of an emancipated race upon it. In the present condition of the nation we must aim at practical results, not to establish political theories, however beautiful and alluring they may be."

It was the understanding of the Senate that the discussion would close and the vote would be taken on the 9th of March. On that day Mr. Fessenden took the floor in reply to objections urged by those who had previously spoken. In reply to the objection that the advocates of this measure were wrong in attempting to accomplish by indirection that which they could not accomplish directly, Mr. Fessenden said: "If negro suffrage can be secured by the indirect action of an amendment of the Constitution which appeals to the interest of those who have hitherto been and who are yet probably the ruling class among whom this large population is situated, and with whom they live, it will be far better than to run the risk of all the difficulties that might arise from a forcible imposition, which would create ill-feeling, generate discord, and produce, perhaps undying animosities."

To the objection urged by Mr. Hendricks, that it was intended for a party purpose, Mr. Fessenden replied: "Has he any right to attack the motives of those who support it? Must it necessarily be attended with benefit to a particular party? If so, it is necessarily attended with injury to another party, of which the honorable Senator is a prominent member; and it would as well become me to say that his opposition to it is for party purposes and for party objects as it became him to say that its introduction and its support were intended for party purposes. It is well known here and out of this Senate that the honorable Senator from Indiana is a gentleman who never, in any of his addresses here, says any thing that is in the slightest degree calculated to effect a party purpose, and has so little of that party feeling which presses itself upon other men as to be hardly suspected of being a party man at all." [Laughter.]

Mr. Fessenden thus replied to the objections of two opponents of the measure: "The Senator [Mr. Hendricks] objected to this measure upon another ground, and that was, that in one sense it was intended as a punishment, and that was wrong; and in another sense it was what he called a bribe, a reward, and that was wrong. If he considers it a punishment, he differs very much from his leading associate on this question, the honorable Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Sumner,] for he does not consider it a punishment at all. The Senator from Massachusetts says there is nothing punitive in it. On the contrary, it is a reward to these States; it is conferring power upon them; it is strengthening power in the hands of the whites of the South, and only oppressing the colored race. Behold how doctors disagree! They operate upon the same patient, and are operating at the same time, with different remedies and in different directions.

"Suppose it is a punishment, and suppose it is a bribe, a reward; it does not differ very much from the principle upon which all criminal legislation is founded, to say the least of it. We punish men when they do wrong. I never heard that it was an objection to legislation that it punished those who perpetrate a wrong. I never heard that it was an objection to legislation that it held out rewards to those who did right."

Referring to Mr. Buckalew's argument, Mr. Fessenden remarked: "Eight out of sixteen pages of his speech were devoted to abuse of New England, and to showing that New England had too much power, and that it ought to be abridged in some way. "He closed those remarks by saying (for which I was very much obliged to him) that he did not despise New England. We are happy to know it. I will say to him that New England does not despise him that I am aware of. [Laughter.] I am not aware that it is really affected in any degree by the elaborate attack of eight pages which he delivered against New England on that occasion, and which he thought were views so important that he could not be justified if he failed to give them utterance."

Of Mr. Sumner's part in the debate, Mr. Fessenden said: "On this subject I think he has occupied about eight or nine hours of the time of the Senate, and on the last occasion, while saying that principles were to be considered, he has undertaken to designate the character of this proposed amendment. I have already stated who the men were who were in favor of it. What does the Senator call it? I have chosen a few, and but a few, flowers of rhetoric from the speech of the honorable Senator: 'Compromise of human rights,' 'violating the national faith,' 'dishonoring the name of there public,' 'bad mutton,' 'new muscipular abortion,' 'a new anathema maranatha,' 'abomination,' 'paragon and masterpiece of ingratitude,' 'abortive for all good,' 'shocking to the moral sense,' 'the very Koh-i-noor of blackness,' 'essential uncleanliness,' 'disgusting ordure,' 'loathsome stench;' and the men who support it, if they pass it, will be 'Harpies,' 'Pontius Pilate, with Judas Iscariot on his back.'

"The Senator from Massachusetts makes several points against this proposition, to which my answer is the same. His first point is, that it recognizes 'the idea of inequality of rights founded on race or color.' I deny in toto the correctness, or even the plausibility, to a man of sense, any point that he has raised on the subject. There is not one of them that is tenable; and more than that, there is not one of them but what is just as tenable against the proposition he is in favor of to found representation on voters as this. What lawyer in the world ever heard that a denial is an admission? What lawyer ever heard that a penalty is a permission? By this proposition, we say simply this: 'If, in the exercise of the power that you have under the Constitution, you make an inequality of rights, then you are to suffer such and such consequences.' What sane man could ever pretend that that was saying, 'Make an inequality of rights and we will sanction it?' We do not deny--nobody can deny--that the power may be thus exercised. What we say by this amendment is, 'If you attempt to exercise it in this wrongful way, you create an inequality of rights; and if you do create an inequality of rights'--not we, but you--'if you undertake to do it under the power which exists in the Constitution, then the consequence follows that you are punished by a loss of representation.' That is all that is in it."

Having replied to the most of Mr. Sumner's objections in order, Mr. Fessenden said: "The last point of the Senator is, that this proposition is 'a compromise of human rights, the most immoral, indecent, and utterly shameful in our history.'

"Mr. President, I stand rebuked, but I do not feel so bad as I might. The Committee of Fifteen, the friends and associates of the honorable Senator, stand rebuked. More than two-thirds of the House of Representatives and a large majority of this body, all the political friends and associates of the Senator, stand charged with proposing a compromise of human rights the most immoral, indecent, and shameful in our history! All I can say with regard to that is, that neither on its face, in its effect, nor in its intention is it any compromise. None such was dreamed of."

Mr. Fessenden thus described the remarkable combination of Senators opposing the amendment: "I can not close, however, without saying how amusing seems to me the character of the opposition to this joint resolution. That opposition is composed of men of all shades of opinion. The Democrats on the other side of the House oppose it because they say it is unjust to the Southern States; my honorable friends who have been some time with us are opposed to it because--I do not know why, except that the President is opposed to it, and I believe that is the ground; my honorable friend from Massachusetts objects because it is unjust to the negro. Why, sir, just imagine all the gentlemen opposed to this resolution met in caucus together, and looking around at each other, would there not be a smile on all their faces to see what company they had fallen into? I think Senators would be surprised to find themselves there, and, like the countryman looking at the reel in the bottle, they would consider how the devil they did get there. [Laughter.] It would be a very strange meeting; and yet they are all against this proposition."

After a running debate between several Senators, the vote was taken upon the substitute proposed by Mr. Henderson as a constitutional amendment, viz.: "No State, in prescribing the qualifications requisite for electors therein, shall discriminate against any person on account of color or race." The amendment was lost--yeas, 10; nays, 37. The question was then taken on Mr. Sumner's substitute, which was simply a joint resolution providing 'there shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, or monopoly invested with peculiar privileges, and no denial of rights, civil or political, on account of color or race, anywhere within the United States." This resolution was lost--yeas, 8; nays, 39. The vote was then taken on the amendment proposed by Mr. Yates, providing that no State shall make or enforce any distinction between citizens of the United States on account of race or color, and that all citizens shall hereafter be protected in the exercise of all civil and political rights, including the right of suffrage. This amendment was lost--yeas, 7; nays, 38. The vote was then taken upon the original amendment as reported by the joint Committee of Fifteen. The following was the result:

YEAS--Messrs. Anthony, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Cragin, Creswell, Fessenden, Foster, Grimes, Harris, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane of Indiana, McDougall, Morgan, Morrill, Nye, Poland, Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Trumbull, Wade, Williams, and Wilson--25.

NAYS--Messrs. Brown, Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Guthrie, Henderson, Hendricks, Johnson, Lane of Kansas, Nesmith, Norton, Pomeroy, Riddle, Saulsbury, Stewart, Stockton, Sumner, Van Winkle, Willey, and Yates--22.

ABSENT--Messrs. Foot, Howard, and Wright--3.

Two thirds of the Senators not having voted for the joint resolution, it was lost. The defeat of the proposed constitutional amendment was accomplished by the combination of five "Radical" Senators with six "Conservatives," elected as Republicans, whose vote, added to the regular Democratic strength, prevented its adoption by the required constitutional majority of two-thirds.

The advocates of constitutional reform, though foiled in this attempt, were not disheartened. Their defeat taught them the important lesson that pet measures and favorite theories must be abandoned or modified in order to secure the adoption of some constitutional amendment to obviate difficulties of which all felt and acknowledged the existence.

Meanwhile other measures, designed to lead to the great end of reconstruction, were demanding and receiving the consideration of Congress.

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