146 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



Committee on Reconstruction, reported the fol- 

 lowing joint resolution : 



Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives 

 of the United States of America in Congress assembled 

 (two-thirds of both Houses concurring), That the 

 following article be proposed to the Legislatures of 

 the several States as an amendment to the Consti- 

 tution of the United States ; which, when ratified by 

 three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid 

 as part of said Constitution, namely : 



ARTICLE . Representatives and direct taxes shall 

 be apportioned among the several States which may 

 be included within this Union according to their re- 

 spective numbers, counting the whole number of 

 persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed ; 

 Provided, That whenever the elective franchise shall 

 be denied or abridged in any State on account of 

 race or color, all persons of suck race or color shall 

 be excluded from the basis of representation. 



On the question of ordering the joint reso- 

 lution to be engrossed and read a third time, 

 Mr. Stevens said : 



" There are twenty-two States whose Legis- 

 latures are now in session, some of which will 

 adjourn within two or three weeks. It is very 

 desirable, if this amendment is to be adopted, 

 that it shoxild go forth to be acted upon by the 

 Legislatures now in session. It proposes to 

 change the present basis of representation to a 

 representation upon all persons, with the pro- 

 viso that wherever any State excludes a par- 

 ticular class of persons from the elective fran- 

 chise, that State to that extent shall not be 

 entitled to be represented in Congress. It does 

 not deny to the States the right to regulate the 

 elective franchise as they please ; but it does 

 say to a State, ' If you exclude from the right 

 of suffrage Frenchmen, Irishmen, or any partic- 

 ular class of people, none of that class of per- 

 sons shall be counted in fixing your representa- 

 tion in this House. You may allow them to 

 vote or not, as you please ; but if you do allow 

 them to vote, they will he counted and repre- 

 sented here ; while if you do not allow them to 

 vote, no one shall be authorized to represent 

 them here; they shall be excluded from the 

 basis of representation.' " 



Mr. Rogers, of New Jersey, followed, saying 

 it was the first time a proposition of this kind 

 had ever been offered in the House ; it was in 

 violation of the main principle upon which the 

 Revolutionary War had been conducted ; its 

 adoption would prevent any State, North or 

 South, from allowing qualified suffrage to its 

 colored population ; it would drive every State, 

 except where the negroes were in a majority, 

 to allow to the negroes unqualified suffrage, 

 and that it attempted in an indirect manner to 

 iccomplish what the party in power dare not 

 boldly and openly meet before the people. 



Mr. Conkling, of New York, followed, saying 

 that the proposition commended itself for many 

 reasons: First, it provided for representation 

 coextensive with taxation ; second, it brought 

 into the basis both sexes and all ages, and so 

 counteracted and avoided, as far as possible, the 

 casual and geographical inequalities of popula- 

 tion ; third, it put every State on an equal foot- 



ing in the requirement prescribed; fourth, it 

 left every State unfettered to enumerate all its 

 people for representation or not, just as it 

 pleased. 



Mr. Brooks, of New York, said : " Mr. Speak- 

 er, I do not rise, of course, to debate this resolu- 

 tion in the few minutes allowed me by my col- 

 league, nor, in my judgment, does the resolution 

 need any discussion unless it may be for the mere 

 purpose of agitation. I do not suppose that 

 there is an honorable gentleman upon the floor 

 of this House who believes for a moment that 

 any movement of this character is likely to be- 

 come the fundamental law of the land, and 

 these propositions are, therefore, introduced 

 only for the purpose of agitation. If the honor- 

 able gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Stevens) 

 had been quite confident of adopting this amend- 

 ment, he would at the start have named what 

 are States of this Union. 



" The opinion of the honorable gentleman 

 himself, that there are no States in this Union 

 but those that are now represented upon this 

 floor, I know full well; but he knows as well 

 that the President of the United States recog- 

 nizes thirty-six States of this Union, and that 

 it is necessary to obtain the consent of three- 

 fourths of those thirty-six States, which number 

 it is not possible to obtain. He knows very 

 well that if his amendment should be adopted 

 by the Legislatures of States enough, in his judg- 

 ment, to carry it, before it could pass the tri- 

 bunal of the executive chamber it would be 

 obliged to receive the assent of twenty-seven 

 States in order to become an amendment to the 

 Constitution. The whole resolution, therefore, 

 is for the purpose of mere agitation. It is an 

 appeal from this House to the outside constit- 

 uencies that we know by the name of Bun- 

 combe. Here it was born, and here, after its 

 agitation in the States, it will die." 



Mr. Shellabarger offered the following objec- 

 tions to the resolution of Mr. Stevens from the. 

 Reconstruction Committee : 



" 1. It contemplates and provides for, and in 

 that way, taken by itself, authorizes the States 

 to wholly disfranchise entire races of its people, 

 and that, too, whether those races be white or 

 black, Saxon, Celtic, or Caucasian, and without 

 regard to their numbers or proportion to the en- 

 tire population of the State. 



" 2. It is a declaration made in the Constitu- 

 tion of the only great and free Republic in the 

 world that it is permissible and right to deny 

 to the races of men all their political rights, 

 and that it is permissible to make them the 

 hewers of wood and drawers of water, the 

 mud-sills of society, provided only you do not 

 ask to have these disfranchised races represent- 

 ed in that Government, provided you wholly 

 ignore them in the State. The moral teaching 

 of the clause offends the free and just spirit 

 of the age, violates the foundation principle 

 of our own Government, and is intrinsically 

 wrong. 



" 3. The clause, by being inserted into the 



