216 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



the Constitution as to enable them to enslave 

 tire white freemen of the North, that would be 

 binding, I answer you by asking you what, in 

 your opinion, would be the effect of a law legal- 

 izing the crime of murder, whether, in your 

 opinion, you would be bound to obey such a law, 

 whether you would be bound to obey any law 

 that contravenes the moral law established by 

 the Creator? Sir, there is no sound argument 

 to be founded on the putting of such extreme 

 cases. The people of the United States hold 

 their liberties under their own protection and 

 in their own keeping. If the men they send to 

 the halls of legislation abuse the trust reposed 

 in them, if they enact immoral laws, unjust 

 laws, laws that subvert the very foundations of 

 human society, the remedy is with the people. 

 The people would, in that event, clear these 

 halls of the men who made them, and would 

 send here men who would enact laws in accord- 

 ance with their welfare, with justice, with mo- 

 rality, and with free and equal government. 



" Sir, when the gentleman from Ohio puts an 

 extreme case in order to overthrow the settled 

 principles which I have stated, namely, that 

 wherever you find a grant of power in the Con- 

 stitution that grant is unlimited, except it be 

 limited by the Constitution itself, he relies (he 

 will allow me to say, with the utmost respect 

 for him) on what can be shown to be a very 

 shallow fallacy. In the first place, there is no 

 danger of the Representatives of the people 

 enacting such laws ; and in the second place, if 

 they were to enact such laws they would be 

 whipped from these halls by the people whose 

 liberties and whoso rights they had outraged ; 

 and the people would send here men who would 

 repeal such laws, and punish those who made 

 them." 



Mr. Kalbfleisch, in opposition to the measure, 

 said : " Mr. Speaker, I desire to save the party 

 in power from itself, and I tell its leaders here 

 that they had better never have been born, than 

 live to see the day when their experiments in 

 legislation, of which this amendment is one, may 

 be the chief obstacle in the way of the realiza- 

 tion of that most dear to the truly loyal Ameri- 

 can heart the restoration of the Union. 



" "While I have argued, sir, against this measure 

 as if it were in truth an ' amendment ' to the 

 Constitution, I regard it as subversive of the en- 

 tire spirit of that instrument. We have been 

 warned by the 'Father of his country' to dis- 

 countenance irregular opposition to the Consti- 

 tution, ' and at the same time to resist with care 

 the spirit of innovation upon its principles, how- 

 ever specious the pretexts.' One method of as- 

 sault, he tells us, sir, 'may be to effect in the 

 forms of the Constitution alterations which will 

 impair the energy of the system, and thus to 

 undermine what cannot be directly overthrown.' 

 These, sir, are words of prophetic warning. 

 Under 'SPECIOUS PRETEXTS' of amending the 

 Constitution, you desire to make it the instru- 

 ment of depriving men of vested rights, and to 

 leave behind you a precedent which, if followed, 



will leave every right, civil or religious, which 

 the minority possesses at the will of the major- 

 ity. "When the Constitution went into opera- 

 tion, there were twelve slave States and but one 

 free State. It was within the power of the 

 twelve slave States to force slavery on Massa- 

 chusetts, in the same way that you propose to 

 force abolition on the South. Would Massachu- 

 setts, think you, have submitted to so gross a 

 perversion of the compact she had just entered 

 into ? Did she fight against England for seven 

 years for the right to manage her own affairs 

 only to transfer that right to another authority 

 against which she had no legal safeguard ? Sir, 

 Massachusetts might have been left a wilderness, 

 Tnit this right could not have been wrested from 

 her people. Do you propose to force from South 

 Carolina, men of Massachusetts, what you would 

 have yielded yourselves only with your lives? " 

 The question was then taken on the motion 

 to reconsider the vote by which the House on 

 June 15, 1864, rejected a joint resolution sub- 

 mitting to the Legislatures of the several States 

 a proposition to amend the Constitution, and 

 agreed to. The question then came up on the 

 adoption of the joint resolution, when the two- 

 thirds required by the Constitution voted in 

 favor of it, and it passed as follows : 



TEAS Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, Ar- 

 nold, Ashley, Baily, Augustus C. Baldwin, John D. 

 Baldwin, Baxter, Beaman, Blaine, Blair, Blow, Bout- 

 well, Boyd, Brandegee, Broomall, William G. Brown, 

 Ambrose W. Clark, Freeman Clark, Cobb, ^offroth, 

 Cole, Colfax, Creswell, Henry Winter Davis, Thomas 

 T. Davis, Dawes, Deming, Dixon, Donnelly, Driggs, 

 Dumont, Eckley, Eliot, English, Farnsworth, Frank, 

 Ganson, Garfield, Gooch, Grinnell, Griswold, Hale, 

 Herrick, Iligby, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Asahel W. Hub- 

 bard, John H. Hubbard, Hulburd, Hutchins, Inger- 

 'soli, Jenckes, Julian, Kasson, Kelley, Francis W. 

 Kellogg, Orlando Kellogg, King, Knox, Littlejolm, 

 Loan, Longyear, Marvin, McAllister, McBride, 

 McClurg, Mclndoe, Samuel F. Miller, Moorhend, 

 Morrill, Daniel Morris, Amos Myers, Leonard Myers, 

 Nelson, Norton, Odell, Charles O'Neill, Orth, Patter- 

 son, Perham, Pike, Pomeroy, Price, Radford, William 

 H. Randall, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Ed- 

 ward H. Rollins, James S. Rollins, Schenck, Scofield, 

 Shannon, Sloan, Smith, Smithers, Spalding, Starr, 

 John B. Steele, Stevens, Thaycr, Thomas, Tracv, 

 Upson, Van Valkenburgh, Elihu B. Washburne, Will- 

 iam B. Washburn, Webster, Whaley, Wheeler, Will- 

 iams, Wilder, Wilson, Windom, W oodbridge, Wor- 

 thington, and Yeaman 119. 



NATS Messrs. James C. Allen, William J. Allen, 

 Ancona, Bliss, Brooks, James S. Brown, Chanler, 

 Clay, Cox, Cravens, Dawson, Denison, Eden, Edger- 

 ton, Eldridge, Finck, Grider, Hall, Harding, Harring- 

 ton, Benjamin G. Harris, Charles M. Harris, Holrnan, 

 Philip Johnson, William Johnson. Kalbfleisch, Ker- 

 nan, Kuapp, Law, Long, Mallory, William II. Miller, 

 James R. Morris, Morrison, Noble, John O'Neill, Pen- 

 dleton, Pcrrv, Pruyn, Samuel J. Randall, Robinson, 

 Ross, Scott, WilliajnG. Steele, Stiles, Strouse, Stuart, 

 Sweat, Townsend^Wadsworth, Ward, Chilton A. 

 White, Joseph W. White, Winfield, Benjamin Wood, 

 and Fernando Wood 56. 



NOT VOTING Messrs. Lazear, LeBlond, Marcy, II c- 

 Dowell, McKinney, Middleton, Rogers, and Voorhees 

 8. 



The official report states as follows : 



"The SPEAKER: The constitutional majority of 



