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 groundupon 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

It should not exist; it does not exist.

whole nation at once.
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 fivefifths 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