CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



175 



voting," must take and subscribe an oath which, 

 among others, contains the following clause : 



That I accept the civil and political equality of all men, 

 and agree not to attempt to deprive any person^ or per- 

 sons, on account of race, color, or previous condition, of 

 any political or civil right, privilege, or immunity, enjoyed 

 by any other class of men. 



It is well known that a very large portion of the 

 electors in all the States, if not a large majority of all 

 of them, do not believe in or accept the political 

 equality of Indians, Mongolians, or negroes with the 

 race to which they belong. If the voters of any of 

 the States of the North and West were required to 

 take such an oath as a test of their qualification, 

 there is reason to believe that a majority of them 

 would remain from the polls rather than comply with 

 its degrading conditions. 



How far and to what extent this test oath prevent- 

 ed the registration of those who were qualified under 

 the laws of Congress, it is not possible to know ; buj 

 that such was its effect, at least sufficient to overcome 

 them all and give a doubtful majority in farvor of this 

 constitution, there can be no reasonable doubt. 



Should the people of Arkansas, therefore, desiring 

 to regulate the elective franchise so as to make it con- 

 form to the constitutions of a large proportion of the 

 States of the North and West, modify the provisions 

 referred to in the " fundamental condition," what is 

 to be the consequence ? Is it intended that a denial 

 of representation shall follow ? And if so, may we 

 not dread, at some future day, a recurrence of the 

 troubles which have so long agitated the country ? 

 Would it not be the part of wisdom to take for our 

 guide the Federal Constitution, rather than resort to 

 measures which, looking only to the present, may in 

 a few years renew, in an aggravated form, the strife 

 and bitterness caused by legislation which has proved 

 to be ill-timed and unfortunate ? 



ANDREW JOHNSON. 



WASHINGTON-, June 20, 1868. 



The bill subsequently became a law, by the 

 following vote in the House : 



YEAS Messrs. Allison, Ames, Anderson, Delos R. 

 Ashley, Bailey, Banks ; Beatnan, Beatty. Benjamin, 

 Benton, Bingham, Blame, Blair, Boutwell, Buckland, 

 Butler, Cake, Churchill, Eeader W. Clarke, Sidney 

 Clarke, Cobb, Coburn, Cook, Cornell, Covode, Cullom, 

 Delano, Donnelly, Driggs, Eckley, Eggleston, Ela, 

 Eliot, Farnsworth, Ferriss, Ferry, Fields. Garfield, 

 Griswold, Harding, Hawkins, Higby, Hill, Hooper, 

 Chester D. Hubbard, Hulburd, Ingersoll, Jenckes, 

 Judd, Julian, Kelsey, Ketcham, George V. Lawrence, 

 Lincoln, Loan, Logan, Loughridge, Lynch, Mallory, 

 Marvin, Maynard, McCarthy, McClurg, Mercur, 

 Moore, Moorhead, Morrill, Mullins, Newcomb, 

 O'Neill, Paine, Peters, Pike, Pile, Plants, Poland, 

 Polsley, Pomeroy, Price, Robertson, Sawyer, Schenck, 

 Scofield, Shanks, Shellabarger, Smith, Spalding, 

 Starkweather, Aaron F. Stevens, Thaddeus Stevens, 

 Stewart, Stokes, Taffe, Taylor, John Trimble, Trow- 

 bridge, Twichell, Upson. Van Aernam, Van Wyck, 

 Ward, Cadwalader C. Washburn, Henry D. Wash- 

 burn, William B. Washburn, Welker, William Wil- 

 liams. James F. Wilson, John T. Wilson, Windom, 

 Woodbridge, and the Speaker 111. 



NAYS Messrs. Adams, Archer, Axtell, Beck, 

 Boyer, Brooks, Gary, Eldridge, Fox, Getz, Glossbren- 

 ner, Golladay, Grover, Haight, Holman, Hotchkiss, 

 Johnson, Jones, Kerr, Knott, McCormick, Morrissey, 

 Mungen, Niblack, Pruyn, Robinson, Sitgreaves, 

 Taber, Lawrence S. Trimble, Van Trump, and Wood- 

 ward 31. 



NOT VOTING Messrs. Arnell, James M. Ashley, 

 Baker, Baldwin, Barnes, Barnum, Bromwell, Broom- 

 all, Burr, Chanler, Dawes, Dixon, Dodge, Finney. 

 Gravely, Halsey, Hopkins, Asahel W. Hubbard, 

 Richard D. Hubbard, Humphrey, Hunter, Kelley, 

 Kitchen, Koontz. Laflin, William Lawrence, Mar- 

 shall, McCullough, Miller, Myers, Nicholson, Nunn, 



Orth, Perham, Phelps, Randall, Raum, Ross, Selye, 

 Stone, Thomas, Van Auken, Burt Van Horn, Robert 

 T. Van Horn, Elihu B. Washburne, Thomas Wil- 

 liams, Stephen F. Wilson, and Wood 48. 



In the Senate, the vote was as follows : 



YEAS Messrs. Chandler, Cole, Conkling, Conness, 

 Corbett, Cragin, Edmunds, Ferry, Fessenden, Har- 

 lan, Howard, Morgan, Morrill of Vermont, Nye.Pat- 

 terson of New Hampshire, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Ross, 

 Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Thayer, Tipton. 

 Trumbull, Van Winkle, Wade, Willey, Wilson, and 

 Yates 30. 



NAYS Messrs. Bayard, Davis, Doolittle, Hen- 

 dricks, McCreery, Patterson 01 Tennessee, and 

 Saulsbury 7. 



ABSENT Messrs. Anthony, Buckalew, Cameron, 

 Cattell, Dixon, Drake, Fowler, Frelinghuysen, 

 Grimes, Henderson, Howe, Johnson, Morrill of 

 Maine, Morton, Norton, Vickers, and Williams IT. 



Upon the admission of the three members 

 from Arkansas on June 24th, the following 

 protest was presented and entered on the jour- 

 nal: 



The recognized presence of three persons on the 

 floor of this House from the State of Arkansas, sent 

 here by military force acting under a brigadier- 

 general of the Army, but nevertheless claiming to 

 be members of this Congress, and to share with us, 

 the Representatives from free States, in the imposi- 

 tion of taxes and customs and other laws upon our peo- 

 ple, makes it our imperative duty in this, the first case, 

 to remonstrate most solemnly, and to protest as sol- 

 emnly, against this perilous and destructive innova- 

 tion upon the principles and practices of our hitherto 

 constitutional self-government. The so-called Re- 

 construction Acts, which created the military govern- 

 ment in Arkansas and like governments in other 

 Southern States, to share with us in the legislative 

 power of the Northern and Western free people, we 

 have every reason to believe have been held to be 

 unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United 

 States, the public declaration of which fact was 

 avoided only by the extraordinary and strange device 

 of this Congress in snatching jurisdiction from the 

 court in the McCardle case when such a public deci- 

 sion was about to be made. 



Of the three great branches of the Government it 

 seems, then, that after the Executive vetoed these 

 acts as unconstitutional, the judiciary adjudicated 

 them to be so, while a Congress, the creation of but 

 twenty-seven of the thirty-seven States of the Union, 

 overrides these equal and coordinate branches of that 

 Government, first by voting down the vetoes, next 

 by nullifying the judgments of the court 1 In an era 

 of profound peace, when not an armed man rises 

 against the Government from the Potomac to the 

 Rio Grande, there, in ten States, our American his- 

 torical way of creating the organic law has been 

 utterly subverted by the bayonet. Ever since the 

 Declaration of Independence, with scarcely an ex- 

 ception, and even amid the battles of the Revolution, 

 conventions have been convoked through, and con- 

 stitutions created by, the electors of the States, the 

 only authorized depositaries of the sovereign power 

 of every State without exterior dictation or domina- 

 tion, as well under the old confederation as under 

 the existing Federal Constitution. The hardest and 

 harshest test oath required from 1766 to the peace of 

 1783 was an abjuration oath of allegiance to George 

 III., while some of the now so-called bayonet-made 

 constitutions from the South propose absurd and 

 cruel tests, absurd as in Arkansas, where is inter- 

 woven in the organic law a mere party test between the 

 Radical reconstructionists and the Democratic con- 

 servatives, such as would exclude from voting, if liv- 

 ing there, the thousands and tens of thousands and 

 hundreds of thousands of Democrats in the free States 

 (art. 8, sec. 4), or cruel, as in Alabama, where no 



