"Two things are of vital importance: 1. So to establish a principle that none of the rebel States shall be counted in any of the amendments of the Constitution until they are duly admitted into the family of States by the law-making power of their conqueror. For more than six months the amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery has been ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States that acted on its passage by Congress, and which had Legislatures, or which were States capable of acting, or required to act, on the question.

"I take no account of the aggregation of whitewashed rebels, who, without any legal authority, have assembled in the capitals of the late rebel States and simulated legislative bodies. Nor do I regard with any respect the cunning by-play into which they deluded the Secretary of State by frequent telegraphic announcements that 'South Carolina had adopted the amendment,' 'Alabama has adopted the amendment, being the twenty-seventh State,' etc. This was intended to delude the people and accustom Congress to hear repeated the names of these extinct States as if they were alive, when, in truth, they have now no more existence than the revolted cities of Latium, two-thirds of whose people were colonized, and their property confiscated, and their rights of citizenship withdrawn by conquering and avenging Rome."

A second thing of vital importance to the stability of this republic, Mr. Stevens asserted to be "that it should now be solemnly decided what power can revive, recreate, and reinstate these provinces into the family of States, and invest them with the rights of American citizens. It is time that Congress should assert its sovereignty, and assume something of the dignity of a Roman senate. It is fortunate that the President invites Congress to take this manly attitude. After stating, with great frankness, in his able message, his theory—which, however, is found to be impracticable, and which, I believe, very few now consider tenable—he refers the whole matter to the judgment of Congress. If Congress should fail firmly and wisely to discharge that high duty, it is not the fault of the President."

Mr. Stevens closed his speech by setting the seal of reprobation upon a doctrine which is becoming too fashionable, that "this is a white man's Government." He uttered a severe rebuke to those who thus "mislead and miseducate the public mind."

There were some Republicans in Congress who disagreed with Mr. Stevens in his theory of the condition of the late rebel States, yet no one ventured immediately, to use a contemporary expression, "to take the Radical bull by the horns."

At length, three days afterward, Mr. Raymond, as a representative of the "Conservatives," ventured a reply. He thus set forth his theory as in opposition to that of Mr. Stevens: "I can not believe that these States have ever been out of the Union, or that they are now out of the Union. I can not believe that they ever have been, or are now, in any sense a separate power. If they were, sir, how and when did they become so? They were once States of this Union—that every one concedes; bound to the Union and made members of the Union by the Constitution of the United States. If they ever went out of the Union, it was at some specific time and by some specific act. Was it by the ordinance of secession? I think we all agree that an ordinance of secession passed by any State of this Union is simply a nullity, because it encounters in its practical operation the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law of the land. It could have no legal, actual force or validity. It could not operate to effect any actual change in the relations of the States adopting it to the National Government, still less to accomplish the removal of that State from the sovereign jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States.

"Well, sir, did the resolutions of these States, the declarations of their officials, the speeches of members of their Legislatures, or the utterances of their press accomplish the result? Certainly not. They could not possibly work any change whatever in the relations of these States to the General Government. All their ordinances and all their resolutions were simply declarations of a purpose to secede. Their secession, if it ever took place, certainly could not date from the time when their intention to secede was first announced. After declaring that intention, they proceeded to carry it into effect. How? By war. By sustaining their purpose by arms against the force which the United States brought to bear against it. Did they sustain it? Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished fact; if not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt, a purpose unfulfilled. This, then, is simply a question of fact, and we all know what the fact is. They did not succeed. They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms; in other words, they failed to secede.

"But the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] insists that they did secede, and that this fact is not in the least affected by the other fact that the Constitution forbids secession. He says that the law forbids murder, but that murders are, nevertheless, committed. But there is no analogy between the two cases. If secession had been accomplished; if these States had gone out, and overcome the armies that tried to prevent their going out, then the prohibition of the Constitution could not have altered the fact. In the case of murder the man is killed, and murder is thus committed in spite of the law. The fact of killing is essential to the committal of the crime, and the fact of going out is essential to secession. But in this case there was no such fact. I think I need not argue any further the position that the rebel States have never for one moment, by any ordinances of secession, or by any successful war, carried themselves beyond the rightful jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States. They have interrupted for a time the practical enforcement and exercise of that jurisdiction; they rendered it impossible for a time for this Government to enforce obedience to its laws; but there has never been an hour when this Government, or this Congress, or this House, or the gentleman from Pennsylvania himself, ever conceded that those States were beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution and laws of the United States."

Referring to the citation of authorities made by Mr. Stevens, Mr. Raymond maintained that they did not lend the "slightest countenance to the inference which was drawn from them."

In reply to the theory maintained by Mr. Stevens, that States forfeited their State existence by the fact of rebellion, Mr. Raymond said: "I do not see how there can be any such forfeiture involved or implied. The individual citizens of those States went into the rebellion. They thereby incurred certain penalties under the laws and Constitution of the United States. What the States did was to endeavor to interpose their State authority between the individuals in rebellion and the Government of the United States, which assumed, and which would carry out the assumption, to declare those individuals traitors for their acts. The individuals in the States who were in rebellion, it seems to me, were the only parties who, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, could incur the penalties of treason. I know of no law, I know of nothing in the Constitution of the United States, I know of nothing in any recognized or established code of international law, which can punish a State as a State for any act it may perform. It is certain that our Constitution assumes nothing of the kind. It does not deal with States, except in one or two instances, such as elections of members of Congress and the election of electors of President and Vice-President.

"Indeed, the main feature which distinguishes the Union under the Constitution from the old Confederation is this: that whereas the old Confederation did deal with States directly, making requisitions upon them for supplies and relying upon them for the execution of its laws, the Constitution of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, made its laws binding on the individual citizens of the several States, whether living in one State or in another. Congress, as the legislative branch of this Government, enacts a law which shall be operative upon every individual within its jurisdiction. It is binding upon each individual citizen, and if he resists it by force, he is guilty of a crime, and is punished accordingly, any thing in the constitution or laws of his State to the contrary notwithstanding. But the States themselves are not touched by the laws of the United States or by the Constitution of the United States. A State can not be indicted; a State can not be tried; a State can not be hung for treason. The individuals in a State may be so tried and hung, but the State as an organization, as an organic member of the Union, still exists, whether its individual citizens commit treason or not."

Mr. Raymond subsequently cited some of the consequences which he thought must follow the acceptance of the position assumed by Mr. Stevens. "If," said Mr. Raymond, "as he asserts, we have been waging war with an independent Power, with a separate nation, I can not see how we can talk of treason in connection with our recent conflict, or demand the execution of Davis or any body else as a traitor. Certainly if we were at war with any other foreign Power, we should not talk of the treason of those who were opposed to us in the field. If we were engaged in a war with France, and should take as prisoner the Emperor Napoleon, certainly we could not talk of him as a traitor or as liable to execution. I think that by adopting any such assumption as that of the honorable gentleman, we surrender the whole idea of treason and the punishment of traitors. I think, moreover, that we accept, virtually and practically, the doctrine of State sovereignty, the right of a State to withdraw from the Union, and to break up the Union at its own will and pleasure.

"Another of the consequences of this doctrine, as it seems to me, would be our inability to talk of loyal men in the South. Loyal to what? Loyal to a foreign, independent Power, as the United States would become under those circumstances? Certainly not. Simply disloyal to their own Government, and deserters, or whatever you may choose to call them, from that to which they would owe allegiance, to a foreign and independent State.

"Now, there is another consequence of the doctrine which I shall not dwell upon, but simply suggest. If that confederacy was an independent Power, a separate nation, it had the right to contract debts; and we, having overthrown and conquered that independent Power, according to the theory of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, would become the successors, the inheritors, of its debts and assets, and we must pay them."

Mr. Raymond set forth his theory of the conditions and relations of the late rebel States in the following language: "I certainly do not think these States are to be dealt with by us as provinces—as simply so much territory—held to us by no other ties than those of conquest. I think we are to deal with them as States having State governments, still subject to the jurisdiction of the Constitution and laws of the United States, still under the constitutional control of the National Government; and that in our dealings with them we are to be guided and governed, not simply by our sovereign will and pleasure as conquerors, but by the restrictions and limitations of the Constitution of the United States, precisely as we are restrained and limited in our dealings with all other States of the American Union."

In answer to the question how we are to deal with the late rebel States, Mr. Raymond remarked: "I think we have a full and perfect right to require certain conditions in the nature of guarantees for the future, and that right rests, primarily and technically, on the surrender we may and must require at their hands. The rebellion has been defeated. A defeat always implies a surrender, and, in a political sense, a surrender implies more than the transfer of the arms used on the field of battle. It implies, in the case of civil war, a surrender of the principles and doctrines, of all the weapons and agencies, by which the war has been carried on. The military surrender was made on the field of battle, to our generals, as the agents and representatives of the Commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States.

"Now, there must be at the end of the war, a similar surrender on the political field of controversy. That surrender is due as an act of justice from the defeated party to the victorious party. It is due, also, and we have a right to exact it, as a guarantee for the future. Why do we demand the surrender of their arms by the vanquished in every battle? We do it that they may not renew the contest. Why do we seek, in this and all similar cases, a surrender of the principles for which they fought? It is that they may never again be made the basis of controversy and rebellion against the Government of the United States.

"Now, what are those principles which should be thus surrendered? The principle of State sovereignty is one of them. It was the corner-stone of the rebellion—at once its animating spirit and its fundamental basis. Deeply ingrained as it was in the Southern heart, it must be surrendered. The ordinances in which it was embodied must not only be repealed, the principle itself must be abandoned, and the ordinances, so far as this war is concerned, be declared null and void, and that declaration must be embodied in their fundamental constitutions."

The speech was here interrupted by Mr. Bingham, who insisted that the adoption of the principle in the State constitutions would not be sufficient guarantee. Adoption in the Constitution of the United States was essential to its permanent effective force.

Mr. Raymond thought the Constitution of the United States as plain as possible in its declaration against the doctrine of State sovereignty. If any more explicit denial could be got into the Constitution, he would favor it.

"Another thing," said Mr. Raymond, "to be surrendered by the defeated rebellion is the obligation to pay the rebel war debt. We have the right to require this repudiation of their debt, because the money represented by that debt was one of the weapons with which they carried on the war against the Government of the United States.

"There is another thing which we have the right to require, and that is the prohibition of slavery. We have the right to require them to do this, not only in their State constitutions, but in the Constitution of the United States. And we have required it, and it has been conceded. They have also conceded that Congress may make such laws as may be requisite to carry that prohibition into effect, which includes such legislation as may be required to secure for them protection of their civil and personal rights—their 'right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"

Mr. Spalding having inquired whether there was any limit to the right to make these requisitions, except the good judgment of Congress, Mr. Raymond answered:

"My impression is that these requisitions are made as a part of the terms of surrender which we have a right to demand at the hands of the defeated insurgents, and that it belongs, therefore, to the President, as Commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, to make them, and to fix the limit, as to what they shall embrace."

By way of setting forth the opinions of the "Radicals" in as strong a light as possible, Mr. Raymond said: "It may be for the welfare of this nation that we shall cherish toward the millions of our people lately in rebellion feelings of hatred and distrust; that we shall nurse the bitterness their infamous treason has naturally and justly engendered, and make that the basis of our future dealings with them. Possibly we may best teach them the lessons of liberty, by visiting upon them the worst excesses of despotism. Possibly they may best learn to practice justice toward others, to admire and emulate our republican institutions, by suffering at our hands the absolute rule we denounce in others. It may be best for us and for them that we discard, in all our dealings with them, all the obligations and requirements of the Constitution, and assert as the only law for them the unrestrained will of conquerors and masters."

In contrast with this, he placed what he supposed to be a different policy: "I would exact from them, or impose upon them through the constitutional legislation of Congress, and by enlarging and extending, if necessary, the scope and powers of the Freedmen's Bureau, proper care and protection for the helpless and friendless freedmen, so lately their slaves. I would exercise a rigid scrutiny into the character and loyalty of the men whom they may send to Congress, before I allowed them to participate in the high prerogative of legislating for the nation. But I would seek to allay rather than stimulate the animosities and hatred, however just they may be, to which the war has given rise. But for our own sake as well as for theirs, I would not visit upon them a policy of confiscation which has been discarded in the policy and practical conduct of every civilized nation on the face of the globe."

Mr. Raymond having closed his speech, it was moved that the Committee of the Whole should rise, but the motion was withdrawn to allow Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, five minutes for reply. He said: "The gentleman states, and properly, that every act or ordinance of secession was a nullity. Undoubtedly it was. Upon that question of law we do not disagree. But he seems to me to overlook entirely what was the state of facts from the time of the passage of the ordinances of secession until the time of the surrender of Lee's army. During that period what were the relations which all that territory—I will not use the term States, but all that territory—between the Potomac and the Rio Grande sustained to the Government of the United States? Who could see States there for any purpose for which legislation was required by the Constitution of the United States?

"At the time of the passage of the ordinance of secession, States were organized there, in existence, in action, known to the Constitution and the constitutional authorities under it. But were they loyal? Did they obey the Constitution of the United States? This is a question that needs no answer other than that which is conveyed to every mind by the recollection of the last four years of war, with their expenditure of treasure and blood. Those States were not destroyed, in the technical language of the law—they simply died out. As their Governors passed out of office, as the terms of their legislatures expired, who knew those facts? None but themselves. And yet, behind this grand cordon of armies, stretching from here to the Rio Grande, there were States in existence, organized as States, but States in rebellion, occupying the territory belonging to the people of the United States. They were not acting in concert with this Government, but against it. That, Mr. Chairman, is a matter of fact. My eyes are not dimmed or blinded by the parchment upon which constitutions or laws are written. I, like the men who carried the bayonets and planted the cannon, recognize the fact that was before us during all this time. There was a state of rebellion. There were in that part of our territory no States known to our Constitution or the laws that we enact, or the officers whose duty it is to enforce those laws.

"I recognize, too, the next fact. Bear in mind, I am simply stating now what I conceive to be the facts. The question as to what may be the law can be reserved for discussion on another occasion. I recognize fully the duties of the Executive. And it was the duty of the President of the United States, as the head of the civil and military power of this great republic—not 'empire;' God forbid that this country should ever be so designated with applause or even with toleration—to beat down armed opposition to it, whether it came from a foreign power or from domestic insurrection. That was the duty of the President, and he recognized it; and it was not the duty of any one in this Congress to gainsay it. It was written on the face of the Constitution that the President was to see that the laws should be faithfully executed, and the power of this republic maintained, and he did so.

"The next fact—the fact which seems to me to be the one most pertinent for consideration now—is that the military power which was opposed to this Government has been destroyed. It was the duty of the Executive to see that this was done, and to report to the Congress of the United States that it has been done. But what then? Then there comes the third question of fact, intimately connected with the last, and hardly separable from it, because it requires the immediate action of the Executive and of Congress. All the power that existed in the shape of Confederated States behind rebel bayonets and fortifications has fallen to the earth. The territory which these States in rebellion occupied was the property of the people of the United States, and never could be taken from us. I hold it to be a question of public law, worthy of consideration by the representatives of the American people, by the President and the Administration generally, to ascertain what existed in the shape of civil constitutions and laws behind the military government that has been overthrown. I hesitate not to say, here or elsewhere, that the Executive of this Government has done his duty in this matter. All conquering nations, when they overcome a rebellious people by overthrowing their military power, look, as did the Government of Great Britain when it had overcome the mutiny in India, to see what government of a civil kind has existed or may exist from custom among the people who are conquered. I see no reason in this view to discriminate between the argument of the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the argument of the gentleman from New York. It seems to me, that if they will look at the particular questions which are now before us, and which require our action, the differences would be in terms and not in substance."

The people of the predominant party generally acquiesced in the opinion of Mr. Jenckes, as expressed in the conclusion of his remarks as above presented. They conceived that the difference between the various views of the whole question was "one of details and not of essence." The question of reconstruction was purely practical. All shades of opinion in the Republican party blended in this: that the States in question were not to be restored until satisfactory pledges were given to the United States. All speculation or attempt at argument in reference to their abstract condition was consequently superfluous—"a pernicious abstraction," in the language of Mr. Lincoln.

If some were not prepared to accept the deductions of Mr. Stevens, yet accepting the logic of Mr. Raymond, they would be carried almost as far. The latter held that the citizens of those States were defeated insurgents who must submit to any conditions of surrender imposed by the victorious commander. Certain concessions could be rightfully demanded as parts of their surrender and conditions of their restoration. Their acquiescence had been required in a constitutional amendment affecting the great social and industrial interests of Southern society. After this none could deny the right, whatever might be the expediency, of requiring their assent to other amendments bearing upon the political structure of the Southern States.

Some of the predominant party were willing to stop short in their demands upon the rebel States with requiring acceptance of the emancipation amendment, repudiation of the rebel debt, legal protection of freedmen, and revocation of the ordinances of secession. The majority, however, were disposed to go still further, and demand other conditions and guarantees which should become a part of the fundamental law of the land. This was the practical work of reconstruction for which the Joint Committee of Fifteen was preparing the way, and upon which Congress was soon to enter.



CHAPTER 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 coextensive 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 reestablishing 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 reelected 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."