Senate insisted on its amendment, and refused to appoint a Committee of Conference. The bill having gone back to the House of Representatives, they resolved by a vote of one hundred and twenty-six to fortysix to recede from their disagreement to the amendment of the Senate, and to concur in the same with amendments, providing that no person excluded from holding office by the recently proposed Constitutional Amendment should be eligible for membership in the convention to frame a constitution for any of the rebel States, nor should any such person be allowed to vote for members of such convention. Another amendment proposed by the House was the addition of a section (sixth) to the bill providing that until the rebel States should be admitted to representation in Congress, any civil governments existing therein should be deemed provisional only, and subject to the paramount authority of the United States, who may at any time abolish, modify, control, or supersede them. This qualified concurrence on the part of the House having been announced in the Senate, that body proceeded immediately to consider the question of acquiescence. Mr. Sherman said that his only objection to the amendment of the House was, that it disfranchised ten or fifteen thousand leading rebels from voting at the elections, yet he was willing to agree to the amendment. Mr. Sumner congratulated Mr. Sherman on the advanced step he had taken. "To-morrow," said Mr. Sumner, "I hope to welcome the Senator to some other height." Mr. Sherman was unwilling to admit that he had come to Mr. Sumner's stand-point. He was willing to accept the bill, although it excluded a few thousand rebels from voting, yet "I would rather have them all vote," said he, "white and black, under the stringent restrictions of this bill, and let the governments of the Southern States that are about now to rise upon the permanent foundation of universal liberty and universal equality, stand upon the consent of the governed, white and black, former slaves and former masters." Then followed an extended discussion of the question as to whether the Senate should agree to the amendments proposed by the House. Mr. Doolittle proposed and advocated an amendment providing that nothing in the bill should be construed to disfranchise persons who have received pardon and amnesty. This amendment was rejected-yeas, 8; nays, 33. The vote was then taken upon the final passage of the bill as amended by the House; it passed the Senate-yeas, 35; nays, 7. The Bill "to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States," having thus passed both houses of Congress on the 20th of February, it was immediately submitted to the President for his approval. On the second of March the President returned the bill to the House, in which it originated, with his objections, which were so grave that he hoped a statement of them might "have some influence on the minds of the patriotic and enlightened men with whom the decision must ultimately rest." The Veto Message was immediately read by the clerk of the House of Representatives. The following extracts present the President's principal objections to the measure: * * * * "The bill places all the people of the ten States therein named under the absolute domination of military rulers. "It is not denied that the States in question have each of them an actual government, with all the powers, executive, judicial, and legislative which properly belong to a free State. They are organized like the other States of the Union, and like them they make, administer, and execute the laws which concern their domestic affairs. An existing de facto government, exercising such functions as these, is itself the law of the State upon all matters within its jurisdiction. To pronounce the supreme law-making power of an established State illegal is to say that law itself is unlawful. * * "The military rule which it establishes is plainly to be used, not for any purpose of order or for the prevention of crime, but solely as a means of coercing the people into the adoption of principles and measures to which it is known that they are opposed, and upon which they have an undeniable right to exercise their own judgment. * "I submit to Congress whether this measure is not, in its whole character, scope, and object, without precedent and without authority, in palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, and utterly destructive to those great principles of liberty and humanity for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much blood and expended so much treasure. "The power thus given to the commanding officer over all the people of each district is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take the place of all law. The law of the States is now the only rule applicable to the subjects placed under his control, and that is completely displaced by the clause which declares all interference of State authority to be null and |