YEAS-Messrs. Ambler, Ames, Atwood, Axtell, Beaman, Beatty, Bingham, Blair, George M. Brooks, Buck, Buffinton, Burdett, Benjamin F. Butler, Roderick R. Butler, Cake, Cessna, Churchill, Clinton L. Cobb, Coburn, Cook, Conger, Covode, Cullom, Davis, Donley, Dyer, Ferriss, Fisher, Garfield, Getz, Hamill, Harris, Hawley, Heaton, Hill, Hoar, Hoge, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Ingersoll, Jenckes, Alexander H. Jones, Kelley, Kellogg, Kelsey, Ketchum, Knapp, Laflin, Lash, Lawrence, Loughridge, Maynard, McCrary, McGrew, Mercur, Milnes, Eliakim H. Moore, Jesse II. Moore, William Moore, Morphis, Daniel J. Morrell, Samuel P. Morrill, Myers, Negley, O'Neill, Packard, Paine, Palmer, Perce, Peters, Phelps, Pat, Pomeroy, Prosser, Randall, Sargent, Sawyer, Schenck, Se field, Shanks, Lionel A. Sheldon, John A. Smith, William J. Smith, Worthington C. Smith, Starkweather, Stevens, Stevenson, Stiles, Stokes, Stoughton, Strickland, Strong, Swann, Taffe, Tanner, Tillman, Twichell, Upson, Van Horn, Cadwalader C. Washburn, William B. Washburn, Welker, Wheeler, Wilkinson, Willard, Williams, John T. Wilson, Witcher, and Woodward-109.

Nars-Messrs. Allison, Archer, Biggs, Bird, Booker, Boyd, James Brooks, Burchard, Burr, CalKin, Cox, Crebs, Dickinson, Dox, Finkelnburg, GibGriswold, Haight, Hambleton, Hawkins, Hay, la, Heflin, Holman, Johnson, Thomas L. Jones, Jal Kerr, Marshall, Mayham, McCormick, McNeely, Mungen, Niblack, Orth, Potter, Ridgeway, Rogers, Schumaker, Sherrod, Joseph S. Smith, Sae, Trimble, Tyner, Voorhees, Winans, and

Wood-47.

Nor VOTING-Messrs. Adams, Armstrong, Arnell, Asper, Ayer, Bailey, Banks, Barnum, Beck, Benjamin, Bennett, Benton, Boles, Bowen, Buckley, Clarke, Cleveland, Amasa Cobb, Cowles, Dawes, Deweese, Dickey, Dixon, Dockery, Duval, Ela, Eldridge, Farnsworth, Ferry, Fitch, Fox, Gilfillan, frolladay, Haldeman, Hale, Hamilton, Julian, Knott, Logan, Lynch, McCarthy, McKee, McKenzie, Moran Morrissey, Packer, Poland, Porter, Reading, Reves, Rice, Roots, Sanford, Sheldon, Slocum, WilSmyth, Strader, Sweeney, Townsend, Van Aaken, Van Trump, Van Wyck, Ward, Wells, Eugee M. Wilson, and Winchester-66.

In the Senate, on December 16th, the bill perfect the reconstruction of the State of Georgia was considered. The following was reported as the bill:

That the Governor of the State of Georgia be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed forthwith by clamation to summon all persons elected to the Geteral Assembly of said State, as appears by the clamation of George G. Meade, the general comnding the military district including the State of Georgia, dated June 25, 1868, to appear on some day tain, to be named in said proclamation, at Atlanta, aid State; and thereupon the said General Asbly of said State shall proceed to perfect its orZanization, in conformity with the Constitution and As of the United States, according to the provis of this set.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That, when the babers so elected to said Senate and House of presentatives shall be convened as aforesaid, each 4 every member and each and every person claimto be elected as a member of said Senate or House Representatives shall, in addition to taking the or oaths required by the constitution of Georgia, take and subscribe and file, in the office of the retary of State of the State of Georgia, one of the Rowing oaths or affirmations, namely: "I do solnly swear" (or affirm, as the case may be), "that are never held the office or exercised the duties of Senator or Representative in Congress, nor been a aber of the Legislature of any State of the United

States, nor held any civil office created by law for the administration of any general law of a State, or for the administration of justice in any State or under the laws of the United States, nor held any office in the military or naval service of the United States, and thereafter engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or gave aid or comfort to. its enemies, or rendered voluntary or involuntary support or aid to any insurrection or rebellion against the United States, nor held any office under or given any support to any government of any kind organized or acting in hostility to the United States or levying war against the United States. So help me God" (or on the pains and penalties of perjury, as the case may be). Or the following oath or affirmation, namely: "I do solemnly swear" (or affirm, as the case may be), "that I have been relieved by an act of Congress of the United States from disability as provided for by section three of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. So help me God" (or on the pains and penalties of perjury, as the case may be). Which oath or affirmation, when so filed, shall be entered of record by the Secretary of State of the State of Georgia, and said oath or affirmation, or a copy of the record thereof, duly certified by said Secretary of State, shall be evidence in all courts and places. And every person claiming to be so elected, who shall refuse, or decline, or neglect, or be unable, to take one of said oaths or affirmations above provided, shall not be admitted to a seat in said Senate or House of Representatives, or to a participation in the proceedings thereof, but shall be deemed ineligible to such seat.

SEO. 8. And be it further enacted, That if any person claiming to be elected to said Senate or House of Representatives, as aforesaid, shall falsely take either of said oaths or affirmations above provided, he shall be deemed guilty of perjury, and shall suffer the pains and penalties thereof; and may be tried, convicted, and punished, therefor by the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Georgia, in which district said crime was committed; and the jurisdiction of said court shall be sole and exclusive for the purpose aforesaid.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That the persons elected, as aforesaid, and entitled to compose such Legislature, and who shall comply with the provisions of this act, by taking one of the oaths or affirmations above prescribed, shall thereupon proceed, in said Senate and House of Representatives to which they have been elected, respectively, to reorganize said Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, by the election of the proper officers of each House.

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That if any person shall by force, violence, or fraud, wilfully hinder or interrupt any person or persons elected as aforesaid from taking either of the oaths or affirmations prescribed by this act, or from participating in the proceedings of said Senate or House of Representatives after having taken one of said oaths or affirmations, and otherwise complied with this act, he shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and may be tried, convicted, and punished, therefor by the Circuit or District Court of the United States for the District of Georgia in which district said offence shall be committed; and shall be punished therefor by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than two nor more than ten years, in the discretion of the court; and the jurisdiction of said courts shall be sole and exclusive for the purpose aforesaid.

SEO. 6. And be it further enacted, That it is hereby declared that the exclusion of any person or persons elected as aforesaid, and being otherwise qualified, from participation in the proceedings of said Senate or House of Representatives, upon the ground of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, would be illegal and revolutionary, and is hereby prohibited.

SEC. 7. And be it further enacted, That, upon the

application of the Governor of Georgia, the President of the United States shall employ such military or naval forces of the United States as may be necessary to enforce and execute the provisions of this act. SEC. 8. And be it further enacted, That the Legislature of Georgia shall be regarded as provisional only until the further action of Congress.

Mr. Morton, of Indiana, offered the following amendment, which was, to strike out the eighth section, and in lieu thereof to insert the following:

That the Legislature shall be provisional only, and until after it has ratified the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and Senators and Representatives in Congress from the State of Georgia have been admitted to their

seats.

Mr. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, said: "Mr. President, that provision requiring the Legislature to adopt the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution was omitted from the bill by the committee, or a majority of the committee, purposely, and not by accident. My objection personally to the Senator's amendment is twofold: first, I think it wholly unnecessary. If the people of Georgia do not understand already that they will not be admitted into the Union until the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution is adopted by them, they certainly will understand it before they get in. But I think the amendment is pernicious in this respect it will be claimed hereafter, and will be the subject of much discussion, that these Southern States have not voluntarily ratified that amendment to the Constitution. I do not say that that claim is well founded; I do not believe it is; but we shall hear it, and I am opposed to any amendment of this bill which shall lead manifestly to the discussion of these troublesome subjects hereafter. They will say that they were held by military power; they will say that Congress dictated to them the terms upon which they were to come into the Union; that they were practically and substantially in duress, and are not bound by the vote of adoption they have passed."

Mr. Drake, of Missouri, said: "I did not know but that the question of whether those constitutional amendments were ratified was in some future day to be brought for decision before the Supreme Court of the United States, where it might be denied that they had been constitutionally adopted, and the plea of duress put in by the State of Georgia to show that she had been coerced into the ratification, and therefore that her ratification was void. Unless this subject is in that way to go before some outside tribunal, which is regarded by the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate as having a higher power than that of Congress, I do not see that we need have any particular apprehension about the matter being put in the shape proposed by the Senator from Indiana. If it is to come before Congress, then it will probably make no difference whether Georgia ratifies these amendments under the coercion of this section or not.

"Mr. President, I want that these rebel States should be made to feel the power of this nation through its Congress. I want that the rebels of the South, as much rebels probably in heart to-day as they ever were, may be made to feel that there is a power here that can hold them to their places under this Government. I wish especially that the infamy of that Georgia Legislature should be wiped out by this kind of retribution. I was the first to raise a voice in the Senate-chamber against the swearing in of the two Senators-elect from that State; and I am glad to see that, after the lapse of more than a year, the time has come when the rights of the loyal men of Georgia are to have a hearing upon the floor of this Senate, and the arm of the United States Government is to reach down there and vindicate them. I am glad to find that the time is approaching when the men who seized the dominion of the Legislature of Georgia are to be told that that dominion must end, and that the loyal men elected by the people of Georgia to the Legislature of that State shall have their seats there no matter what the color of their skin may be. And, sir, I want the thing to appear right on the face of this bill if it is to become a law; I want it to be understood throughout the United States that there is a Congress of the United States that wields the sovereignty of this nation, and that that sovereignty can neither be arrested by States nor by the Supreme Court of the United States.

"Sir, I hope that the amendment offered by the Senator from Indiana will prevail."

Mr. Morton, of Indiana, said: "Mr. President, the objection made by the Senator from Wisconsin, I take it, is a direct impeachment of the whole reconstruction policy from first to last. The original act provided as a condition-precedent, as one of the conditions of reconstruction, that the rebellious States should ratify the fourteenth amendment. We did not put them in durance; we cannot require them to do it; we do not by this amendment propose to require them to do it, but we put it to them as a condition upon which they may retarn, for the future security and peace of this nation.

"Sir, it is not our fault that Georgia has not been reconstructed. It is the result of her treachery, the treachery of her Legislature, the violation of good faith upon her part. She ha by her acts put off her reconstruction until the fifteenth amendment has come before the coun try, and until reflection and experience have shown that the ratification of the fifteenth amendment is necessary to the preservation of the whole work of reconstruction from the beginning.

"Without the fifteenth amendment, there is no security for colored suffrage in any of the Southern States. When the late rebels shal get the power, and when colored suffrage i secured in no other way except by the constitu

tion of the State, they will disfranchise, one after another, the colored men in every Southern State. There is no security for colored suffrage, there is no security for the whole work of reconstruction, except by putting universal suffrage in the Constitution and under the protection of the laws of the United States." Mr. Thurman, of Ohio, said: "Mr. President, what I beg to call the attention of the Senate to is this: that this is not a question simply which concerns the State of Georgia; this is not, as the Senator from Missouri and the Senator from Indiana seem to suppose, a question of the merits or the demerits of the people of Georgia; this is not a question as to what conditions might properly be imposed apon Georgia, if Georgia stood affected alone by those conditions; but this is a question whether you shall impose an amendment to the Constitution upon the entire people of the Tnited States by coercing Georgia into the adoption of that amendment. The question is whether you shall force that amendment on the people of Ohio, notwithstanding their fifty thousand majority against it, by coercing Georgia against her will to adopt it. There is not a member of the Senate who does not know that, if Mississippi and Texas and Virginia and Georgia were left to their free, unbiassed judgment on this amendment, not one of those States would adopt it, not one of them would think of adopting it; and every Senator well knows that, without the votes of all four of hose States, the amendment cannot become a part of the Constitution.

"What, then, is the effect of coercing Georzia to adopt it? When you strangle her, when yon deprive her citizens of the free election which the Constitution gives them to say what shall be a part of the Constitution of the Union, when you force her vote into the urn to be counted in favor of the amendment, you free that amendment on the people of Ohio, on the people of Indiana, on the people of nois, on the whole people, however much they may be opposed to its adoption. My State Las voted upon the amendment; her Legislatare has voted upon it and rejected it; and Then you compel Georgia against the will of er people to adopt this amendment you nullify vote of the State of Ohio on this great estion of amending the Constitution. Therete. Mr. President, not simply in the name of e people of Georgia, but in the name of all the ple. I protest against this mode of coercing people of the United States to adopt an endment to their Constitution.

"The sole power that is given by the Constition to Congress is to propose amendments. It is then for every State, of its own free will, thout coercion, without compulsion, to say ether it will accept your proposition or not; d it is simply idle and frivolous to say that a State freely and voluntarily accepts your propition of amendment to the Constitution when you say in the same breath to the State,

'If you do not accept it you shall have no rights in this Union; you shall be taxed without representation; you shall be governed by military instead of civil law; the civil courts shall be trampled down and drum-head courtmartials shall take their place; every right that is sacred to an American, every right that is sacred to a freeman, shall be at the mercy of military tribunals and drum-head courtmartials unless you of your own free will, forsooth, of your free choice, forsooth, agree to alter the fundamental law of the land.'

"Call that free choice! Call that a free election, accepting or rejecting an amendment to the Constitution! Why, sir, I should be insulting the understanding and intelligence of the Senate if I were to discuss such a proposition as that. No, sir; you give no free choice to Georgia; you give no free choice to any one of these States when you attach these conditions; when you say to them, with your hand on their throats, Accept this amendment or else continue to be deprived of the most sacred rights of the American people.'

6

"But, as I said before, it is not simply a question as to Georgia; it is a question as to Ohio as well as to Georgia; and your decision on this proposition affects my State just as much as it affects the State of Georgia; every bit as much. If this is to become a part of the Constitution, it will be a part of the Constitution in Ohio as well as in Georgia."

Mr. Sawyer, of South Carolina, said: "Mr. President, we do not say to the people of Georgia, by adopting the amendment which has been proposed by the Senator from Indiana to this bill, that they must ratify the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments; that is not the spirit of what we propose to say; but we say we want evidence that the people of the State of Georgia are in such a condition, have so far repented of their rebellion, and so far changed their minds, that they are fit to be received back into the family of States. We say that the State of Georgia is not a State which is in a condition to be received back after the history of the last eight years, and especially after the history of the last two years, unless her people have come to that spirit and mind which induce them to adopt the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. It is because we want an index of their change of feeling and change of purpose that we propose to insert this condition."

Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, said: "Mr. President, on the first day that this body convened at the present session, a bill entitled 'An act to perfect the reconstruction of the State of Georgia' was introduced by the honorable Senator from Indiana. On the 8th it was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and reported back to this body with amendments on the 13th. Here we stand on the morning of the 16th to consider an act the effect of which simply is to remand that which this Congress has called a State back to the condition of a

something new. I say that the time of such an act has nothing to do with its character; it is dishonorable under any circumstances.

"If this doctrine of examining into the actions of the Legislatures of the different States, virtually depriving them of their power to sit in judgment upon the qualification of their members, is to be carried out in the case of the State of Georgia, how long will it be before it is exercised against States of the more northern section of the Union? The honorable Senator from Wisconsin suggests that which I fancy has occurred to every man's mind before, that the consent of a State or of an individual to any bargain, wrung from him by duress of coereion, is worthless in morals as it is in law. Do Senators suppose, because they can by inilitary rule compel these Southern provinces-for I will not call them States-to adopt amendments to the Constitution of the United States, that other States who are equally grievously affected by this absurd misnomer of adoption or consent will not question it? Why, sir, it the spirit of constitutional liberty exists in our people, that question will yet arise. The dominant party, who, having no other power under the Constitution than to propose an amendment to the Constitution for the acceptance or rejection of the States, have yet held them by force and thrust amendments down their throats, will hereafter find in this country, not perhaps from the States which have been the victims of that illegality directly, but from other States, the question raised as to whether an amendment so obtained has any legal, binding force upon a free and a brave people.

Therefore it is, feeling that this bill and the detrine involved in it are not only sought now to be applied to Georgia, but may with equal validity, with equal justice, be applied to the State which I in part represent and to any other State of this Union whose people may differ in pinion from the present dominant majority of Congress, that I do protest against the passage of any such act."

Mr. Williams, of Oregon, said: "A word as to the coercion imposed upon the State of Georria by this proposed amendment. It may be led coercion or not, as you please. Georgia * proper, for reasons best known to herself, to engage in a conspiracy for the dissolution of the Union; she withdrew her representation from Congress and undertook to destroy the Government of the United States; and Congress undertakes to say that before she shall resume her representation in these halls she all comply with certain terms and conditions which, in the judgment of Congress, are necessary for the peace and welfare of the country. That Congress has the power to impose these terms and conditions upon the rebel States is a question that I regard settled forever in this country. It is now too late to disass or controvert the right of Congress upon that subject. Sir, it has been determined, not aly by repeated decisions of the legislative

department of the Government, but it has been submitted to, reviewed by, and affirmed by the American people time and again, and the doctrine has been recognized, too, by the Supreme Court of the United States in affirming that it belongs to the political department of the Government to say when a State government does or not exist within a State.

"Who is to determine when an amendment to the Constitution is ratified? Congress proposes the amendment, and the States are to take action in reference to it, and then some department of the Government must necessarily decide whether it has or has not been ratified by the requisite number of States. Congress beyond question has that power, for it is a political power to decide as to what is or is not the Constitution of the United States; but it is the province of the judicial department of the Government to construe that Constitution and determine its meaning. More than once the Supreme Court of the United States have determined that it was the province of Congress to decide as to whether a State government did or did not exist, and so it is the province of Congress to decide as to what is or is not the Constitution of the United States. I maintain that that is exclusively a political question and belongs to the political department of the Government; but when Congress affirm that an amendment has been adopted by the requisite number of States, then, of course, the judiciary can decide as to the meaning and effect of that constitutional amendment."

Mr. Casserly, of California, said: "The Senator from Oregon has been eminent as a judge, and certainly would not be less so as an expositor of the Constitution. I desire to ask him if I understand him now in his place to lay down the proposition that it is never a judicial question, but always a political question, what articles are or are not portions of the Constitution of the United States; in other words, whether a constitutional law has been validly passed or not?"

Mr. Williams: "I maintain the doctrine that when Congress proposes to the several States an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, it is exclusively within the province of Congress to determine as to whether or not that amendment has been adopted, and that the decision of Congress upon that question concludes the executive and judicial departments of the Government. This is the doctrine which I affirm, and I believe it to be a correct construction of the Constitution."

Mr. Casserly: "Suppose before the war, and before there could be any question as to whether a State was in the Union or not, an amendment to the Constitution had been proposed, and upon the record-there must be a record somewhere, I take it-it appeared as a matter of arithmetical calculation that less than the requisite number of three-fourths had ratified it; suppose upon that state of the record