RIGHT OF A STATE TO WITHDRAW RATIFICATION.

389

Senator Wilson urged a liberal treatment of the reconstructed States. They had reformed their constitutions, he said; had granted equal suffrage to all classes and conditions of men, without discrimination on account of color or race, and should be welcomed back into the Union.1 But his generous sentiments were not shared by the majority of his own party. They insisted that the return of the South must be in strict exactness with the letter and spirit of the reconstruction acts. The debate wandered to the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified even without the vote of Arkansas. Wilson believed that the amendment, when ratified by the constitutional majority of the loyal States, had become a part of the Constitution, but he confessed that many of the ablest legal minds of the country denied this, and he doubtless knew that it was denied by the majority of his colleagues. Two of the free States had already withdrawn their assent. Senator Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, one of the States which had withdrawn, denied the right of withdrawal, and in this he expressed the opinion of his colleagues and doubtless of the majority of the voters in the country. On the first of June the bill, as amended, passed the Senate. The House refused to concur in the amendments, and a Committee of Conference was appointed, whose report was agreed to by the Senate on the sixth, and by the House two days later.2 The fundamental condition of the original bill was retained.

On the twentieth, the President returned the bill to the House without his signature but with objections, repeating those made by him all along to the reconstruction acts. Arkansas, he said, was not out of the Union, and Congress could not impose conditions upon

1 Congressional Globe, May 30, 1868; 2690-2691.

2 Globe, 2938.

a State. The question before Congress was, solely, to judge of the qualifications of the representatives whom the State chose to send. The fundamental condition intended to regulate the elective franchise was a plain violation of the Constitution. This failed to provide in what manner the State should signify its acceptance of the condition, and failed to prescribe any penalty for neglect to do so. Moreover, the acceptance of the civil and political equality imposed upon the people of the State as a condition of their return to the Union, it was well known, was contrary to the wishes of a large portion of the electors. If the voters in many of the States, north and west, were required to take such an oath as a test of their qualification, there was reason to believe that the majority of them would remain away from the polls rather than comply with its degrading condition. If the State should choose to reject the fundamental condition, might there not be, at some future day, a recurrence of the troubles which had so long agitated the country? The veto message having been read, the House, without debate, passed the bill by a larger vote than before,2 as the Senate did, also, two days later.3

While the Arkansas bill was under discussion, Florida ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Individual bills for the admission of the five other southern States that had now complied with the reconstruction acts had been offered in Congress, while the Arkansas bill was before it. Their fate was like that of the various constitutional amendments which, proposed early in 1867, had at last

1 Richardson, VI, 648-650.

2 June 20, 1868; 111 yeas, 31 nays, 48 not voting. Globe, p. 331. 3 June 22, 1868; 30 yeas, 7 nays, 17 absent. Globe, p. 3363. For

the act see Statutes at Large, Vol. XV, pp. 72-73.

4 June 9, 1868; see Doc. Hist., II, p. 751. It was the 25th State to ratify. Senate, 10 ayes, 3 nays; House, 23 ayes, 6 nays,

given place to the joint resolution of the Committee on Reconstruction. Thaddeus Stevens of this committee, on the eleventh of May, reported an omnibus bill for the admission of these States, and the individual bills were straightway abandoned. It resembled the Arkansas bill by prescribing fundamental conditions: the first, the same as that for that State; the second, that no person should ever be held to service or labor as a punishment for crime in the States, except by public officers charged with the custody of convicts by the law; and the third, that the readmission of the States to the Union should take effect when the President should officially proclaim that their legislatures had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.1

The principal objection of the minority to the measure was the permanency it guaranteed to negro suffrage. The prevailing exclusion of the negro from the exercise of this right, at the North was reiterated as a sufficient reason for a like exclusion at the South. The Republican majority, which had inflexibly carried through the reconstruction acts, was not now to be diverted from seizing their fruit, and Stevens, whose watchfulness over the rights of the negro and whose hatred of secession were controlling passions, further amended the bill by imposing a special condition upon Georgia, that it should not be admitted to representation until its general assembly, by a solemn public act, had declared the objectionable section of its constitution null and void. The objectionable clause was construed by Congress as a discrimination against the loyal men of the State. With this amendment the bill

passed the House.3

1 Congressional Globe, May 11, 1864, 2412-2413.

2 Article V, Section 17; see pp. 350-351. The Stevens amendment was adopted by a vote of 78 to 50; 61 not voting. Globe, May 14, 1868, p. 2465.

3 109 to 35; not voting, 45. Globe, Id,

392

THE OMNIBUS BILL.

On the second of June, Lyman Trumbull, of the Committee on the Judiciary, reported the bill to the Senate with an amendment which chiefly affected the State of Georgia, going further than the condition imposed by the Stevens amendment. It affected the rights of loyal citizens whom it sought to protect, and aimed to cut off all claims that might arise under contracts for slave labor. The chief objections to the bill advanced in the Senate were the familiar ones which had been urged against the whole reconstruction policy of the Republicans. There were now added, as objections, the inexpediency of including all the States in one bill, and the doubtful constitutionality of the condition imposed on Georgia, which might be construed by the Supreme Court as a violation of the principles of contracts. All these objections were silenced in the Senate on the tenth of June, when the bill passed by a vote of more than six to one.1

On the twelfth, Bingham of the Committee of Reconstruction reported a bill to the House, with the recommendation that it concur in the Senate amendments.2 Farnsworth, a Representative from Illinois, urged that all relating to Florida be struck out from the bill, because its constitution had been irregularly formed, and was indeed the work of the minority of its convention. They had erected a little oligarchy in the State by giving to its governor the power to appoint nearly all the State offices. The constitution so apportioned representation as to give the control of the legislature to the sparsely populated portions of the State. Paine, of Wisconsin, also urged the exclusion of Florida, because she was inferior in wealth and numbers, he said, to an average congressional district of the country. But the friends of Florida

1 31 to 5; absent, 18. Globe, 3029.

2 Globe, 3090.

cited the approval which General Meade had given to its constitution, and Shellabarger, of Ohio, made answer to most of the objections, saying that the State had complied in substance and spirit with the acts of Congress, and that the objectionable details in its constitution related to matters not affecting the loyalty and safety of the State government, which was presented for the approval of Congress. Farnsworth's amendment was rejected1 and the bill as amended by the Senate was passed.2

On the twenty-fifth, the President returned the bill with a veto message. It superseded, he said, the plain and simple mode prescribed by the Constitution for the admission of the Senators and Representatives from these States to their seats; assumed an authority over six States of the Union which had never been delegates to Congress, and which was not even warranted by previous unconstitutional legislation upon the subject of restoration. The conditions which the bill imposed were in derogation of the equal rights of the States and subversive of the fundamental principles of the Government. In the case of Alabama, the bill violated the plighted faith of Congress by forcing upon its people a constitution which they had rejected at an election held in strict accordance with the express terms of an act of Congress, requiring that a majority of the registered electors should vote upon the question of its ratification. The Senate immediately repassed the bill, notwithstanding the objections of the President, by a vote of thirty-five to eight; and the House, also, by a vote of one hundred to thirty-one.

1 99 to 45.

3

2 111 to 28; not voting, 50. Globe, June 12, 1868, p. 3097.

3 Richardson, Vol. VI, pp. 650-651.

4 June 25, 1868; Globe, p. 3466.

5 Id. p. 3485. See the act in the Statutes at Large, Vol. XV, pp.