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PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



guished writers, it may also be urged that the domi- 

 nant party in each House may, by the expulsion of a 

 sufficient number of member,g, or by the exclusion 

 from representation of a requisite number of States, 

 reduce the minority to less than one-third. Congress, 

 by these means, might be enabled to pass a law, the 

 objections of the President to the contrary notwith- 

 standing, Avhich would render impotent the other two 

 departments of the Government, and make inopera- 

 tive the wholesome and restraining power which it 

 was intended by the framers of the Constitution 

 should be exerted by them. This would be a practi- 

 cal concentration of all power in the Congress of the 

 United States this, in the language of the author of 

 the Declaration of Independence, would be "precise- 

 ly the definition of despotic government." . 

 * I have preferred to reproduce these teachings of the 

 great statesmeu and constitutional lawyers of the ear- 

 ly and later days of the Republic rather than to rely 

 simply upon an expression of my own opinions. 

 We cannot top often recur to them, especially at a 

 conjuncture like the present. Their application to 

 our actual condition is so apparent that they now 

 come to us a living voice, to be listened to with more 

 attention than at any previous period of our history. 

 We have been and are yet in the midst of popular 

 commotion. The passions aroused by a great civil 

 war are still dominant. It is not a time favorable to 

 that calm and deliberate judgment which is the only 

 safe guide when radical changes in our institutions 

 are to be made. The measure now before me is one 

 of those changes. It initiates an untried experiment 

 for a people who have said, with one voice, that it is 

 not for their good. This alone should make us pause ; 

 but it is not all. The experiment has not been tried, 

 or so much as demanded by the people of the several 

 States for themselves. In but few of the States has 

 such an innovation been allowed as giving the ballot 

 to the colored population without any other qualifica- 

 tion than a residence of one year, and in most of 

 them the denial of the ballot to this race is absolute, 

 and by fundamental law placed beyond the domain 

 of ordinary legislation. In most of those States the 

 evil of such suffrage would be partial ; but, small as 

 it would be, it is guarded by constitutional barriers. 

 Here the innovation assumes formidable proportions 

 which may easily grow to such an extent as to make 

 the white population a subordinate element in the 

 body-politic. 



After full deliberation upon this measure, I cannot 

 bring myself to approve it, even upon local consider- 

 ations, nor yet as the beginning of an experiment on 

 a larger scale. I yield to no one in attachment to 

 that rule of general suffrage which distinguishes our 

 policy as a nation. But there is a limit, wisely ob- 

 served hitherto, which makes the ballot a privilege 

 and a trust, and which requires of some" classes a time 

 suitable for probation and preparation. To give it 

 indiscriminately to a new class wholly unprepared by 

 previous habits and opportunities, to perform the 

 trust which it'demands, is to degrade it, and finally 

 to destroy its power ; for it may be safely assumed 

 that no political truth is better established than that 

 such indiscriminate and all-embracing extension of 

 popular suffrage must end at last in its destruction. 

 ANDREW JOHNSON. 

 WASHINGTON, January 5, 1867. 



Veto of the Bill for the admission of Colorado, 



January 28, 1S67. 

 To. the Senate of the United States : 

 ' 



session, submitted to the President for his approval, 

 returned with the objections contained in a message 

 bearing date the loth of May last, and yet awaiting 

 the reconsideration of the Senate. 



A second bill, having in view the same purpose, 

 has now passed both Houses of Congress, and been 

 presented for my signature. Having again carefully 

 considered the subject, I have been unable to per- 

 ceive any reason for changing the opinions which 

 have already been communicated to Congress. I 

 find, on the contrary, that there are many objections 

 to the proposed legislation of which I was not at that 

 time aware, and that while several of those which I 

 then assigned have in the interval gained in strength, 

 yet others have been created by the altered character 

 of the measures now submitted. 



The constitution under which this State govern- 

 ment is proposed to be formed very properly con- 

 tains a provision that all laws in force at the time of 

 its adoption and the admission of the State into the 

 Union shall continue as if the constitution had not 

 been adopted. Among those laws is one absolutely 

 prohibiting negroes and mulattoes from voting. At 

 the recent session of the Territorial Legislature a 

 bill for the repeal of this law, introduced into the 

 council, was almost unanimously rejected ; and the 

 very time when Congress was engaged in enacting 

 the bill now under consideration, the Legislature 

 passed an act excluding negroes and mulattoes from 

 the right to sit as jurors. This bill was vetoed by 

 the Governor of the Territory, who held that by the 

 laws of the United States negroes and mulattoes 

 are citizens, and subject to the duties as well as en- 

 titled to the rights of citizenship. The bill, however, 

 was passed, the objections of the Governor to the 

 contrary notwithstanding, and is now a law of the 

 Territory. Yet in the bill now before me, by which 

 it is proposed to admit the Territory as a State, it is 

 provided that "there shall be no denial of the elec- 

 tive franchise or any other rights to any person by 

 reason of race or color, excepting Indians not taxed." 

 The incongruity thus exhibited between the legisla- 

 tion of Congress and that of the Territory, taken in 

 connection with the protest against the admission of 

 the State hereinafter referred to, would seem clearly 

 to indicate the impolicy and injustice of the proposed 

 enactment. 



It might, indeed, be a subject of grave inquiry, 

 and doubtless will result in such inquiry if this bill 

 becomes a law, whether it does not attempt to exer- 

 cise a power not conferred upon Congress by the 

 Federal Constitution. That instrument simply de- 

 clares that Congress may admit new States into the 

 Union. It nowhere says that Congress may make 

 new States for the purpose of admitting them into 

 the Union, or for any other purpose ; and yet this 

 bill is as clear an attempt to make the institutions as 

 any in which the people themselves could engage. 



In view of this action of Congress, the House of 

 Representatives of the Territory have earnestly pro- 

 tested against being forced into the Union without 

 first having the question submitted to the people. 

 Nothing could be more reasonable than the position 

 which they thus assume ; and it certainly cannot be 

 the purpose of Congress to force upon a community 

 against their will a government which they do not 

 believe themselves capable of sustaining. 



The following is a copy of the protest alluded to, 

 as officially transmitted to me : 



Whereas it is announced in the public prints that it is the 

 intention of Congress to admit Colorado as a State into the 

 Union : Therefore, 



Resolved by the House of Representative* of the Terri- 



Jtesoivea oy me JHntse oj Jieprcsvii uiiivta iy <e J.CTT** 



I return to the Senate, in which House it originated, tory, That, representing as we do the last and only legal 

 a bill entitled "An act to admit the State of Colorado expression of public opinion on^his^question^we earnestly 

 into the Union," to which I cannot, consistently with 

 my sense of duty, give my approval. With the ex- 

 ception of an additional section, containing new pro- 

 visions, it is substantially the same as the bill of a 

 similar title passed by Congress during the last 



