168 



CONGRESS. (THE APPORTIONMENT.) 



the fifteenth amendment Congress has no power to 

 act against her under a fair and reasonable inter- 

 pretation of these two articles, of the Constitution 

 construed together. Mr. Elaine, in his Twenty 

 Years of Congress, says: 



" ' When therefore the nation by subsequent 

 change in its Constitution declared that the State 

 shall not exclude the negro from the right of suf- 

 frage, it neutralized and surrendered the contin- 

 gent right it before held to exclude him from the 

 basis of apportionment. Congress is thus plainly 

 deprived by the fifteenth amendment of certain 

 powers over representation in the South which it 

 previously possessed under the provisions of the 

 fourteenth amendment.' 



" When the fifteenth amendment says that the 

 States shall not deny or abridge the right to vote 

 on account of race, color, or previous condition of 

 servitude, the mentioning of these three condi- 

 tions, in my judgment, is an exclusion of all 

 others, and *is 'tacit permission to the States for 

 any other cause than race, color, or previous con- 

 dition of servitude to abridge or deny the right 

 of suffrage without penalty. The United States 

 Constitution in no wise deprives a State of the 

 right to prescribe qualifications for her voters, 

 nor does it, in my judgment, impose any penalty 

 upon the exercise of that right, and the true mean- 

 ing of the fifteenth amendment is that if a citizen 

 has the qualifications prescribed by a State, then 

 his right to vote shall not be denied on account 

 of race, color, or previous condition. But I call 

 the attention of the gentleman from Indiana to 

 this proposition, that Avhen the State of Massa- 

 chusetts has an educational qualification, and the 

 State of Pennsylvania a tax-paying qualification, 

 it is not a denial of the right of suffrage. 



"If the gentleman from Indiana will consider, 

 lie will find a vast distinction between a denial 

 of a right and the qualifying of that right. The 

 Supreme Court of the United States held that the 

 act of Congress which excludes from the mails 

 newspapers, etc., containing advertisements of lot- 

 teries and other lottery information does not 

 abridge the freedom of the press. It is certainly 

 a qualification of it. We frequently have rights 

 which are absolute in themselves, and yet in order 

 to enjoy them we must qualify ourselves. Re- 

 quiring those who desire appointments to stand 

 a civil-service examination is not a denial of the 

 right to hold office. When we say that a man 

 must be registered before he can vote it is not a 

 denial of the right to vote. W T e merely tell him 

 that he has the right, but before he can exercise 

 it he must qualify by registering. The law may 

 tell him that he must pay his poll-tax before he 

 can exercise the right he already has. Massachu- 

 setts tells him that he must be able to read and 

 write before he can exercise this right, and when 

 Massachusetts imposes the educational qualifica- 

 tion upon a voter she has not denied him the 

 right to vote, she has not abridged his right to 

 vote, because, as I gather from the dictionaries, 

 abridgment means to cut off. It practically means 

 the same thing as to deny. You have not cut off 

 a man's right, you have not denied the man's right 

 to vote when you prescribe reasonable qualifica- 

 tions. 



" The late Senator Charles Sumner in debating 

 suffrage admitted that knowledge was a proper 

 qualification for a voter. Hon. George S. Bout- 

 well, in answer to a direct question, said that the 

 fifteenth amendment would not prevent property 

 or educational qualifications. 



"Mr. Speaker, the State of North Carolina, 

 which has been so greatly misrepresented here, 

 in my judgment, has not denied the right to vote 



on account of race, color, or previous condition of 

 servitude. But I will not now discuss this,, as 

 during the last session I fully discussed the North 

 Carolina amendment. She has prescribed reason- 

 able qualifications. Chief among them is the edu- 

 cational test, the test that Massachusetts, Wyo- 

 ming, Connecticut, and other States have. After 

 ] 908 no one registers under the so-called ' grand- 

 father ' clause for the first time. 



" Mr. Speaker, I think that there is a bitter sec- 

 tional spirit in this proposition to reduce the 

 representation of North Carolina and other 

 States. While the great majority of business men 

 in the North, and, I believe, its best and most 

 patriotic statesmen, bear no sectional spirit hos- 

 tile to the South, this proposition has shown that 

 many men in the North still are ready to arouse 

 sectionalism and create prejudice against the 

 South. The time has not yet come when the Re- 

 publican party can be considered the friend of the 

 South. Let those who have thought so consider 

 this proposition and be undeceived. Yet I rejoice 

 that many of the ablest Republican leaders in this 

 House do not encourage this proposition." 



Mr. Wilson, of South Carolina, said: 



" I want now to talk to the gentleman from 

 Indiana a while. I can not make an argument in 

 full, as I intended, for I have not the time, and 

 I shall thereby be prevented from elaborating the 

 subject as I should wish; but I shall cite him 

 to decisions of the Supreme Court of this country 

 by which he will understand that his ridiculous 

 bill can not for a moment be sustained by that tri- 

 bunal. 



" His bill accords to every State its full number 

 of Representatives except South Carolina, North 

 Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and from 

 each of these four Southern States he takes three 

 Representatives, his reason for such arbitrary pro- 

 ceeding being that each of these States has denied 

 the right of suffrage to at least 40 per cent, of its 

 inhabitants, and consequently its representation 

 must, under the second clause of the fourteenth 

 amendment to the Constitution, be reduced to 

 that extent. 



" That clause provides that when the right to 

 vote at any election for Representatives in Con- 

 gress, etc., is denied to any male inhabitants of 

 a State twenty-one years of age and citizens of 

 the United States, or in any way abridged, except 

 for participation in rebellion or other crime, the 

 basis of congressional representation therein shall 

 be reduced in proportion which the number of 

 such male citizens shall bear to the whole number 

 of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such 

 State. 



" The right to vote does not come from the 

 United States, but from the State. The United 

 States Constitution nowhere confers that right. 

 That is explicitly decided in Minor vs. Happersett 

 (21 Wall., 166) and United States vs. Reese (92 

 U.S., 215). 



" The fifteenth amendment, which declares that 

 the right of citizens of the United States to vote 

 shall not be denied or abridged by the United 

 States or any State on account of race, color, or 

 previous condition of servitude, does not confer 

 the right to vote. Its only meaning, purpose, and 

 effect was this: Before its adoption preference in 

 suffrage could be given by a State to one race 

 over another; a State could have entirely disfran- 

 chised the negro. But now, since its adoption, if 

 citizens of one race having certain qualifications 

 are permitted to vote, those of another having- the 

 same qualifications must be. The right to vote, 

 therefore, comes from the State, but the fifteenth 

 amendment forbids any discrimination on account 



