Section 3, of Article IV, of the Constitution, says: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." And again: "The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territory or other property belonging to the United States." Section 4 says:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion."

In noticing the first of these sections of the Constitution, it is evident that the sole power of admitting States is exclusively in the National Congress, and any attempt to admit States by any other process, so long as that clause of the Constitution is in force which says, "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union," is a direct violation of its provisions.

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government.' This Section does not define, nor indeed does any part of the Constitution even mention, what is necessary to constitute a Republican form of Government. If the existing Governments of the several States at the adcption of the Federal Constitution, be regarded as a rule, the great inequality and almost Anti-Republican condition of some of them at that period, would but ill suit the progressive notions of what should be Republican at this time, and what standard of Republicanism should be guaranteed and enforced, should any of the original States, in the lapse of time, become divested of their Republican qualities, or remain. stationary while other States in the march of Freedom left them behind, as stumbling blocks, obstructing and retarding Republican progress. (See Reconstruction.)

Article 1, of the first amendment to the Constitu

tion, establishing religious freedom and religious equality, exhibits the wisdom of its authors. It is the safety-valve of Republican Freedom. Any encroachment upon it would endanger the very existence of the Nation. In obedience to the law of God, it leaves all men free to worship as to them may seem best; and wherever this sacred right of man is invaded, liberty cannot exist. The enlightened and truly religious always accord to others what they themselves demand; but the ignorant, superstitious, and selfish prescribe limits for their fellow beings, but demand the right of conscience for themselves. No nation or people can be free where the laws establish and maintain forms of worship. Religion is divine in its origin, and operates through the conscience and sympathies of our nature, and is not dependent upon force for its quantity or quality.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution is a master-piece in the history of American legislation. By this the last relic of barbarism was annihilated, and an end forever put to the traffic in men, and its attendant evils, that had so long and so sorely afflicted the country. By it four millions of human beings were guaranteed continued liberty to themselves and their posterity forever, and the American Nation became a Republic in fact as well as in name.

This amendment was proposed in the United States Senate on the 1st day of February, 1864. It came to a vote on April 8th, 1864-38 for it, all Republicans, 6 against it, all Democrats; so it was carried in the Senate. It went before the House for action on the 31st day of January, 1865. The vote was, for the amendment, 103 Republicans, also 16 Democrats, making in all 119; against it, 56 all Democrats; not vot

ing 8, all Democrats; so it passed the House, and was in due time ratified by 27 States, the necesssry legal majority, and took effect as a part of the Constitution on the 18th day of December, 1865. The amendment is as follows:

"SECTION 1. Neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was proposed in the House on the 30th day of April, 1867. It went before the Senate for action on the 8th day of June, 1867. The vote for it was 33 Republicans; against it 11-all Democrats. It went before the House for action, January 13th, 1867. The vote was as follows: for it 138-all Republicans; against it 36 -all Democrats. So it was carried in the Congress. Andrew Johnson did not veto either of these amendments, solely because the veto does not extend to Constitutional amendments. But on the 22d of June, 1867, he sent a communication to Congress expressing his displeasure with the proposed Fourteenth Amend

ment.

This amendment went to the States for action, as is provided by the Federal Constitution, and in July, 1868, the Secretary of State made official announcement of the necessary number of States having ratified it, and that it was a part of the Constitution of the United States, and of the laws of the land.

The amendment is another step up the ladder of National greatness; it defines who are citizens of the United States. It declares that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the iurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States

By the 2d

and of the State wherein they reside." Section, any State may deny the right to vote to any class of its inhabitants. But if they do so, then their representation shall be reduced in the National Congress, in the proportion that such persons so disfranchised shall bear to the whole male population in such State 21 years of age and upwards.

Doubtless the American people will soon see the evils of thus tampering with the sacred rights of the citizen, in leaving to the States the power to disfranchise American citizens, and will by further amendment to the Federal Constitution place citizenship where it belongs, under the exclusive control of the National Congress and the Federal Constitution, and no longer leave the highest privileges and liberties of the American citizen to be frittered away by dominant factions in the communities called States. Had the Fourteenth Amendment gone to the extent of guaranteeing to every citizen in the Republic the right to vote at all clections, it would have dispelled the hope now entertained by the subjects of the late Confederacy, of some day disfranchising large classes of the citizens of the Southern States, and have saved the Republic the political, and it may be the physical, struggle that must eventually take from the people of the States a power which they never should have held-which belongs, and must at no distant day be controlled by the National Government that of guaranteeing to every citizen of the Republic the exercise of the franchise in every election, State and Federal, within the Union.

CHAPTER XXV.

TOTAL AREA AND POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES.-FOREIGNERS IN AMERICA. THEIR NUMBERS, INFLUENCE, POLITICS, PECULIARITIES, CONDITIONS.-ARCHBISHOP HUGHES AS A CITIZEN.-HIS LETTER.

No nation on the globe possesses so cosmopolitan a population as does the Republic of America. The enumeration of the population made by Federal authority every ten years, presents many interesting facts connected with the composition of our population.

The vastness of the American Republic, now reaching from the Atlantic seaboard to Behring Straits, affords an inviting field for exploration and the founding of new States. But, as if the American idea of national boundaries had no limit, the rock-bound and snow-clad regions of Alaska, with 578,000 square miles of territory, has been added. And now, between the new territory of the north and the advancing civilization of the new States forming along the northern American boundary toward the Pacific, British royalty in Canada and in British Columbia is being hard pressed for an early acquiescence in the decreed confederation.

Still seeking to widen the area of the Republic, Mexico, with its genial climate, great natural resources, and internal political disorders, is looked to as a precious boon of acquisition; and the tropical island of Cuba, San Domingo, St. John's and St. Thomas invite alike the attention of profoundest statesman and wildest adventurer, as future members of a Republic destined, eventually, to embrace the whole area of North America.

With the acquisition of Alaska, in 1867, the area of