the Supreme Court of the United States will determine that a ratification by that number of States is a constitutional approval of an amendment so as to make it the supreme law of the land. I have no doubt about it.

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

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

It

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

vengeance follows man's wrong and oppression, and it will always be so. If you wish to avoid a war of races, if you wish to produce harmony and peace among these people, you must enfranchise them all."

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

Mr. Johnson did not think that the North needed such a pròvision as this amendment to render her able to cope with Southern statesmanship in Congress: "Are not the North and the statesmen of the North equal to the South and the statesmen of the. South on all subjects that may come before the councils of the nation? What is there, looking to the history of the two sections in the past, which would lead us to believe that the North is inferior to the South in any thing of intellectual improvement or of statesmanship? You have proved-and I thank God you have proved-that if listening to evil counsels, rendered effective, perhaps, by your own misjudged legislation, and by the ill-advised course of your own population, exhibited through the press and the pulpit, a portion of the South involved the country in a war, the magnitude of which no language can describe-you have proved yourselves, adequate to the duty of defeating them in their mad and, as far as the letter of the Constitution is concerned, their traitorous purpose. And now, having proved your physical manhood, do you doubt your intellectual manhood? Mr. President, in the presence in which I speak, I am restrained from

speaking comparatively of the Senate as it is and the Senate as it has been; but I can say this, with as much sincerity as man ever spoke, that there is nothing to be found in the free States calculated to disparage them properly in the estimation of the wise and the good. They are able to conduct the Government, and they will not be the less able because they have the advice and the counsels of their Southern brethren,"

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

"The definition of the honorable member places his charge of antirepublicanism as against the present forms of constitution upon the ground of the right to vote. I suppose the black man has no more natural right to vote than the white man. It is the exclusion from the right that affects the judgment of the honorable member from Massachusetts. Voting, according to him, is a right derived from God; it is in every man inalienable; and its denial, therefore, is inconsistent and incompatible with the true

object of a free government. If it be such a right, it is not less a right in the white man than in the black man; it is not less a right in the Indian than in the white man or the black man; it is not less a right in the female portion of our population than in the male portion. Then the honorable member from Massachusetts is living in an antirepublican government, and he ought not to stay there a moment if he can find any government which would be a government according to his theory. None has existed since the world commenced, and it is not at all likely that any will exist in all time to come; but if there is any such government to be found on the face of the earth, let him leave Massachusetts, let him hug that angelic delusion which he hopes will encircle the whole world, and go somewhere, where he can indulge it without seeing before him every day conclusive evidence that no such illusion exists at home. Leave Massachusetts, I beg the honorable member, just as soon as you can, or you will never be supremely happy."

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

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

Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, occupied the attention of the Senate, during a considerable part of this and the following day, in a speech against the proposition of the Committee of Fifteen, which he considered a compromise, surrendering the rights of the negro out of the hands of the General Government into the hands of States not fit to be intrusted with them. In favor of his own amendment prohibiting the States from disfranchising citizens on

ご

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