CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



155 



State government that is not loyal to the Gov- 

 ernment of the United States. Now, sir, as to 

 the use of means that are not prescribed in the 

 Constitution, I call the attention of the Senate 

 to the eighteenth clause of section eight of the 

 first article of the Constitution of the United 

 States, which declares that 



The Congress shall have power to make all laws 

 which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into 

 execution the foregoing powers and all other powers 

 vested by this Constitution in the Government of the 

 United States or any department or officer thereof. 



"Here is a declaration of what would other- 

 wise be a general principle anyhow, that Con- 

 gress shall have the power to pass all laws 

 necessary to carry into execution all powers 

 that are vested in the Government under the 

 Constitution. As Congress has the power to 

 guarantee or maintain a loyal republican gov- 

 ernment in each State, it has the right to use 

 whatever means may be necessary for that pur- 

 pose. As I before remarked, the character of 

 the means will depend upon the character of 

 the case. In one case it may be the use of an 

 army*; in another case perhaps it may be simply 

 presenting a question to the courts, and having 

 it tested in that way ; in another case it may 

 go to the very foundation of the Government 

 itself. And I now propound this proposition : 

 that if Congress, after deliberation, after long 

 and bloody experience, shall come to the con- 

 clusion that loyal republican State govern- 

 ments cannot be erected and maintained in the 

 rebel States upon the basis of the white popu- 

 lation, it has a right to raise up and make 

 voters of a class of men who had no right to 

 vote under the State laws. This is simply the 

 use of the necessary means in the execution 

 of the guarantee. If we have found after re- 

 peated trials that loyal republican State gov- 

 ernments, governments that shall answer the 

 purpose that such governments are intended to 

 answer, cannot be successfully founded upon 

 the basis of the white population, because the 

 great majority of that population are disloyal, 

 then Congress has a right to raise up a new 

 loyal voting population for the purpose of estab- 

 lishing these governments in the execution of 

 the guarantee. I think, sir, this proposition is 

 so clear that it is not necessary to elaborate it. 

 We are not required to find in the Constitution 

 a particular grant of power for this purpose ; 

 but we find a general grant of power, and we 

 find also another grant of power authorizing 

 us to use whatever means may be necessary to 

 execute the first ; and we find that the Supreme 

 Court of the United States has said that the 

 judgment of Congress upon this question shall 

 be conclusive, that it cannot be reviewed by 

 the courts, that it is a purely political matter ; 

 and therefore the determination of Congress, 

 that raising up colored men to the right of suf- 

 frage is a means necessary to the execution of 

 that power, is a determination which cannot be 

 reviewed by the courts, and is conclusive upon 

 the people of this country. 



"But, Mr. President, time passed on. At 

 last, in 1866, the constitutional amendment, the 

 fourteenth article, was brought forward as a 

 basis of settlement and reconstruction; and 

 there was a tacit understanding, though it was 

 not embraced in any law or resolution, that if 

 the Southern people should ratify and agree to 

 that amendment, then their State governments 

 would be accepted. But that amendment was 

 rejected, contemptuously rejected. The South- 

 ern people, counselled and inspired by the 

 Democracy of the North, rejected that amend- 

 ment. They were told that they were not 

 bound to submit to any conditions whatever; 

 that they had forfeited no rights by rebellion. 

 Why, sir, what did we propose by this amend- 

 ment? By the first section we declared that 

 all men born upon our soil were citizens of the 

 United States a thing that had long been re- 

 cognized by every department of this Govern- 

 ment until the Dred Scott decision was made 

 in 1857. The second section provided that 

 where a class or race of men were excluded 

 from the right of suffrage they should not be 

 counted in the basis of representation an ob- 

 vious justice that no reasonable man for a 

 moment could deny; that if four million people 

 down South were to have no suffrage, the men 

 living in their midst and surrounding them, and 

 depriving them of all political rights, should 

 not have members of Congress on their account. 

 I say the justice of the second clause has never 

 been successfully impugned by any argument, 

 I care not how ingenious it may be. What was 

 the third clause ? It was that the leaders of 

 the South, those men who had once taken an 

 official oath to support the Constitution of the 

 United States and had afterward committed 

 perjury by going into the rebellion, should be 

 made ineligible to any office under the Govern- 

 ment of the United States or of a State. It 

 was a very small disfranchisement. It was in- 

 tended to withhold power from those leaders 

 by whose instrumentality we had lost nearly 

 half a million lives and untold treasure. The 

 justice of that disfranchisement could not be 

 disproved. And what was the fourth clause 

 of the amendment? That this Government 

 should never assume and pay any part of the 

 rebel debt; that it should never pay the rebels 

 for their slaves. This was bitterly opposed in 

 the North as well as in the South. How 

 could any man oppose that amendment unless 

 he was in favor of this Government assuming a 

 portion or all of the rebel debt and in favor of 

 paying the rebels for their slaves ? When the 

 Democratic party North and South opposed 

 that most important and perhaps hereafter to 

 be regarded as vital amendment, they were 

 committing themselves in principle, as they 

 had been before by declaration, to the doctrine 

 that this Government was bound to pay for the 

 slaves, and that it was just and right that we 

 should assume and pay the rebel debt. 



"This amendment, as I have before said, 

 was rejected, and when Congress assembled in 



