CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



255 



of age. The majority required as a basis of ac- 

 tion is so many of enrolled persons taking the 

 oath as, with the soldiers, shall constitute a 

 majority of the persons enrolled; that majority, 

 through defect or fraud in enrolment, may be 

 not even one-tenth of the males of the State 

 over twenty-one years of age. 



"4. The effect is the absolute disfranchise- 

 ment of eleven States and their continuance in 

 a state of war until they accept ' the abandon- 

 ment of slavery,' as dictated to them by the 

 United States, and until by organic law they 

 declare that all persons shall have ' equality of 

 civil rights before the law ' of the State ; a well- 

 seeming phrase of broad import, the precise 

 meaning of which I do not understand. A 

 woman is a person, a negro is a person, an alien 

 is a person, and the right of suffrage is a civil 

 right. Does this high-sounding phrase of the 

 bill mean that women, negroes, and aliens shall 

 all have equal right to vote in a regenerated 

 State with white male citizens? What does 

 ' equality of civil rights before the law for all 

 persons ' mean ? 



" Now, it is to be borne in mind that these 

 will be the effects of the proposed bill upon 

 States in which the bill itself assumes as a con- 

 dition precedent of this Federal dictation that 

 'military resistance to the United States has 

 been suppressed, and the people have sufficiently 

 returned to their allegiance to the Constitution 

 and laws of the United States.' If so, why treat 

 them as aliens and enemies, conquered subjects 

 of an imperial power? 



" In fact and in purpose, then, the bill before 

 the House is one to abolish slavery in the United 

 States, and to enfranchise and elevate negroes, 

 and to disfranchise and degrade white men ; a 

 bill to change the social and industrial systems 

 and internal policy of eleven States ; a bill to 

 take from those States their inherent reserved 

 constitutional right to regulate in their own way 

 their internal policy, not inconsistent with the 

 Constitution of the United States. It is a bill 

 to punish treason without trial or conviction ; 

 a bill to confiscate private property without 

 adequate compensation ; in short, a bill to re- 

 construct States and make State constitutions, 

 when in truth no States or their constitutions 

 have been destroyed, or need reconstruction, 

 unless by the voluntary action of their own 

 people. 



" Where, sir, is the power in the Federal Gov- 

 ernment to do all these things? Where the 

 power to make a State, known as such to'the 

 Constitution and laws of the United States, a 

 province or Territory of the United States, and 

 to govern it as such, in defiance of the laws of 

 such State not inconsistent with the Constitu- 

 tion of the United States ? Where the power 

 to put a State, not in rebellion or disobedient to 

 the Constitution, under military duress for in- 

 definite years, until you force its people to re- 

 model their constitution, not in itself anti-repub- 

 lican nor in any sense unconstitutional, and 

 make it conform to the changeful will of a Fed- 



eral Congress? Sir, there is no such power 

 but in usurpation and physical force. This bill 

 is in every element revolutionary, and had the 

 issue now made by it with the slaveholding States 

 been made with them on the 4th of March, 

 1861, and an attempt made then, as now, to en- 

 force it by war, no man who is capable of dis- 

 tinguishing between the rhapsodies of fanatical 

 abolitionists and the plain provisions of the Fed- 

 eral Constitution would hesitate to say that the 

 people of the Southern States whose rights were 

 thus assailed would have been justified in resist- 

 ing such conditions to the extremity of revolu- 

 tion." 



Mr. Ashley, of Ohio, followed, withdrawing 

 a motion to recommit the bill, and also with- 

 drawing, by authority of the committee, the 

 bill which was the original text, and introdu- 

 cing another. He made the following explana- 

 tion: " At the last session of Congress, the 

 committee of which I am a member reported a 

 bill which received the sanction of this body 

 and of the Senate, but failed to receive the ap- 

 proval of the President. Since that time, and 

 during this session, it has been my earnest de- 

 sire to conciliate all gentlemen on this side of 

 the House who had scruples in regard to the 

 bill as it originally passed, and, if possible, to 

 secure a united vote in its favor. For that 

 purpose I consented to what might properly be 

 termed a compromise, in providing for the re- 

 admission or recognition of the new govern- 

 ments of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. 

 The conditions were not such as I would pre- 

 scribe if those States stood separately and alone. 

 But in order to secure what I thought of para- 

 mount importance universal suffrage to the 

 liberated black men of the South I consented 

 to ingraft in the bill which I had the honor of 

 proposing the other day a conditional recogni- 

 tion of the existing governments of the States 

 of Louisiana and Arkansas, and the government 

 now being organized in Tennessee. 



"Disappointed in my efforts to secure the 

 cooperation of gentlemen who profess to enter- 

 tain, and who I am willing to concede do enter- 

 tain, practically the same opinions which I do 

 in favor of securing universal suffrage to the 

 colored man, and in favor of the early recogni- 

 tion of every rebel State wtich has a population 

 sufficient to sustain and maintain a government ; 

 failing in that, I now decline to offer my sub- 

 stitute, and at the request and with the concur- 

 rence of the committee we have offered the bill 

 of the last session, with the modifications which 

 members will notice when the bill is read. 

 Those modifications are to strike out all the bill 

 contains to which gentlemen have raised ob- 

 jection, in that it seemingly authorized the ex- 

 ecution of the State laws as they existed at the 

 time of the rebellion. In order to make per- 

 fectly clear what the committee meant, they 

 have inserted a provision that the provisional 

 governor shall execute only such laws as relate 

 to the protection of persons and property ; and 

 that all laws inconsistent with this bill, and all 



