CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



183 



" The State of Pennsylvania has had a repub- 

 lican form of government from the year 17T6, 

 during all of which time it has excluded negro 

 suffrage, and during a part of which time it had 

 negro slavery, because it did not formally abol- 

 ish slavery till 1790 ; and it had slavery long 

 after the a"ct of abolition was passed, for it was 

 a gradual abolition. That was a republican 

 form of government. 



"And now, sir, I will tell the gentleman 

 another legal historical fact, which is worthy 

 of his attention, that, from the very formation 

 of the confederacy after the Declaration of 

 Independence, the right of suffrage was the 

 conceded right of the States, over which the 

 Articles of Confederation and the Constitution 

 of the United States had no power whatever. 

 I say he will find it written in the chronicles, 

 when he comes to read them aright, that from 

 the Declaration of Independence down to the 

 date of this bill, suffrage, whether white or 

 black, has been a State power with which the 

 Federal Government has nothing under the 

 heavens to do. 



" His bill proposes that the Federal Govern- 

 ment shall overturn the suffrage in the States 

 and force negro suffrage upon them. The 

 Federal Government has no suffrage to bestow 

 on anybody, black or white. It never had, 

 and it never will have, unless you revolutionize 

 the Government and make it something the 

 fathers did not make it. It never had the con- 

 trol of suffrage, and yet my innocent young 

 student does not seem to be aware of it. He 

 proposes that the Federal Government shall go 

 into the States aud dictate who shall be voters. 

 It must have been understood by my friend 

 that he sits in this House by virtue of State 

 suffrage, -regulated, conferred, and protected by 

 the State of Pennsylvania, and not by the 

 General- Government at all. There is not a 

 man among you who does not sit here by suf- 

 frage regulated by the States, and that, too, 

 provided for in the Constitution of the United 

 States. The Constitution declares : 



The House of Representatives shall be composed 

 of members chosen every second year by the people 

 of the several States ; and the electors in each State 

 shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of 

 the most numerous branch of the State Legislature. 



"Yet what does their Representative pro- 

 pose by this bill? After reciting that we 

 have no republican government in Pennsyl- 

 vania, he then goes on in the second section as 

 follows : 



SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That if any per- 

 son shall prevent any qualified citizen of the United 

 States from exercising the right of suffrage at any 

 election in any State under the pretence that such 

 citizen is disqualified by the constitution and laws 

 of such State on account of his parentage, race, 

 lineage ; or color, such person shall be deemed guilty 

 of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof m the 

 proper court, shall be sentenced to pay a fine not 

 exceeding $5,000, or to undergo imprisonment not 

 exceeding five years, or both, at the discretion of the 

 court. 



"That is a provision which is proposed to be 



enacted by the Federal Government, which 

 never had any suffrage to confer, by a Repre- 

 sentative who sits in this House at this mo- 

 ment by virtue of State suffrage, and who, but 

 for that State suffrage, would not have been 

 here, perhaps, to make it. I have heard some 

 strange things since I have had the honor to 

 sit here ; but I declare to you I never heard 

 any thing more strange than this. We are told 

 that it is all a mistake to suppose we have been 

 living under a republican government ; that 

 the States had the right to regulate suffrage, 

 that you had the right to send members of 

 Congress here to enlighten the nation. We are 

 told that it is all a mistake, and any man here- 

 after who shall say otherwise is to be subjected 

 to the penalty of $5,000. 



" Mr. Speaker, I maintain that suffrage, be it 

 universal or limited, is a State affair, and not 

 the affair of the Federal Government." 



Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said : " This, 

 Mr. Speaker, is a grave question of argument ; 

 it is not a question for demagogues. The 

 world is going on in its progress of human 

 government, and is every day advancing in 

 the great science which is to make man happy 

 or make him miserable. We are either to re- 

 lapse into a state of barbarism where that infa- 

 mous doctrine that one man can own another 

 is to be reestablished, or we are to establish the 

 doctrine where every man governs himself and 

 has rights which are inalienable. Among those 

 inalienable rights, I start by saying, is the right 

 of universal suffrage, which no man will dare, 

 after this generation shall have passed away, 

 to dispute. We are not now merely expounding 

 a government ; we are building one. We are 

 making a nation. We are correcting the in- 

 justice, the errors, the follies which were 

 heaped upon other times by necessity. From 

 the dark ages up, mankind have been ground 

 down by despots and by tyrants whom they 

 could not in any way control. They were 

 unable to form governments such as ought to 

 control the human race and enable us to gov- 

 ern ourselves. Europe, Asia, every country 

 in the world, till within the last century, has 

 been thus held in chains which they could not 

 break, in chain* and withes which the world 

 could not snap in its then condition. But a 

 period arrived when the Almighty Governor 

 of the universe placed within the power of our 

 fathers both the knowledge and finally the 

 power to break those chains and give the 

 world an opportunity, if it would, to be free. 

 When the dawn of the Revolution came it 

 broke upon this world as a new, a mighty, a 

 glorious revelation. That which never before 

 had opened the eyes of mankind, and given 

 them a clear insight into the rights of the hu- 

 man race, opened the eyes of our great and 

 glorious fathers and taught them precisely- 

 what we have to carry out, and when we have- 

 carried it out human government will become- 

 perfect and tyrants everywhere must tremble, 

 and demagogues who talk to us about differ- 



