156 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



Union, but. a condition to follow the State, at 

 all times thereafter to be inviolate, and out of 

 the power of the State to escape from. 



" I agree with the honorable member from 

 Michigan that that cannot be so, first, because, 

 as I have stated, the Union is a Union of equal 

 States; secondly, because, as will be seen by 

 those who consult the proceedings of the con- 

 vention, and consult those masterly essays which 

 were written by Madison and Jay and Hamil- 

 ton, recommending the Constitution to the 

 adoption of the American people, it was as- 

 sumed to be true (and without that assump- 

 tion the Constitution never could have been 

 adopted) that the subject of franchise was to 

 remain with the States just as it remained be- 

 fore the Constitution was adopted, they then 

 living under the Articles of Confederation. Is 

 it to be supposed now this amendment not 

 being proposed as a constitutional amendment 

 and to operate upon all the States of the Union, 

 but proposed only as applicable to the particu- 

 lar State which asks to be received into the 

 Union is it to be supposed for a moment that 

 when that State escapes from her infancy, 

 ripens into maturity, contains a population not 

 of forty-five or fifty thousand but of millions, 

 she will consent to live under the domination 

 of a badge to which even the State of Dela- 

 ware or the State of Ehode Island is not sub- 

 jected? 



" Suppose she refuses it, she calls a conven- 

 tion and they regulate by their constitution the 

 franchise without regard to this limitation; 

 they admit some to its exercise and exclude 

 others ; they admit the white and exclude the 

 black ; they require a property qualification or 

 fail to require it ; they adopt a constitution 

 according to the opinion which they may en- 

 tertain upon these particular points. The State 

 is organized, the Governor elected, the mem- 

 bers are here representing the State as she was 

 originally created ; and are you going to get rid 

 of them, and how ? Is there any legal process 

 known to the law by which it can be accom- 

 plished, and is there any power which by force 

 of arms or in any other way this body, or the 

 President of the United States, or all Congress, 

 could attain that end expel from their seats in 

 this body two Senators elected by Nebraska and 

 whose terms had not expired, because after their 

 admission that State adopted a constitution dis- 

 regarding the condition which you had affixed 

 to her admission ? I say no, you would be help- 

 less, helpless in point of law ; and the public 

 judgment would hold that you ought to be 

 helpless, that you had no such power because 

 the exertion of the power would put an end to 

 the equality of the States ; that you had no 

 power to impose a condition on Nebraska that 

 was not common to all States in the Union, and 

 as you had no power to change the constitu- 

 tions of the other States so as to take from them 

 the rights which belonged to them, because you 

 cannot change by legislation the constitutions 

 of those States, you had no power to make this 



particular constitution an exception to the gen- 

 eral rule. 



" Mr. President, the honorable member, the 

 author of this amendment, is not to be told that 

 the authority of Congress to affix conditions to 

 the admission of a State is not now for the first 

 time called into question. It presented itself 

 in the case of Missouri, wind the agitation to 

 which it led threatened at that moment almost 

 the disruption of the Union. It was avoided 

 by a compromise which at the time and almost 

 ever since that time has been attributed to Mr. 

 Clay. He never claimed it for himself, and he 

 was not the author of it. It was avoided by 

 establishing a line on one side of which slavery 

 was expressly prohibited, leaving it to the peo- 

 ple of the Territories on the other side to es- 

 tablish it or not as they thought proper. The 

 condition there proposed to be inserted was that 

 slavery should not exist in the State of Mis- 

 souri. 



"The affirmative of the question as to the 

 power to impose such a condition was argued 

 with very great ability in the House of Repre- 

 sentatives by Mr. Sergeant, a Representative 

 from Pennsylvania, and others, and by Mr. 

 King, then a distinguished member of this 

 body, from the State of New York, and whose 

 whole career served to add to the reputation 

 of his country both at home and abroad. But 

 in all the debates that have since occurred it 

 has been received as a political maxim grow- 

 ing out of the very nature of our institutions, 

 that these States must be in all respects equal. 

 And in that debate I speak what I think I 

 recollect distinctly it was not pretended that 

 Congress possessed any authority to impose 

 any other condition than that which had its 

 seat in a high moral and religious principle, 

 because in their judgment slavery itself was a 

 crime, and it could not be that the Congress 

 of the United States would be forced to admit 

 into the Union a State and give it, or without 

 guarding against it, the power to perpetuate a 

 crime a crime in the eye of humanity, a crime 

 in that Higher Eye, a crime in the judgment of 

 One above who sways the harmonious mysteries 

 of the world. But so far as related to any mere 

 political condition, looking to mere measures 

 of policy alone, looking above all others to the 

 question of franchise, there was not a man who 

 engaged in the debate in favor of affixing to 

 the admission of that State into the Union the 

 condition that slavery should not exist, who 

 pretended to maintain the right of affixing any 

 mere political condition which would place the 

 State to be admitted in a condition of inequality 

 with regard to her sisters. 



" Now, let me test the opposite doctrine for 

 a moment and see to what it will lead. As I 

 have stated, and in that I am sure I cannot be 

 contradicted, the States before the Constitu- 

 tion was adopted were all equal; I mean in 

 political rights. When the Constitution was 

 adopted that equality was preserved, and all 

 their powers remained just as they were before, 



