CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



129 



" The argument, that, if this power is with 

 the States, and not subject to the ultimate con- 

 trol and regulation of the national Government, 

 the States have it in their power to refuse to 

 act upon the question, and thereby fail or neg- 

 lect to send Representatives to Congress and 

 thus destroy the Government, has very little 

 force. Congress having the power to regulate 

 the time, place, and manner of holding the 

 elections, has all the power that was thought 

 necessary, all that is necessary. This heing 

 done, the persons qualified to vote for mem- 

 bers of the most numerous branch of the State 

 Legislature can and will meet and elect Repre- 

 sentatives. It can make no difference that the 

 electors are determined by the State. Electors 

 qualified to elect and having the right to vote 

 for members of the State Legislature exist, 

 and must always exist so long as the State it- 

 self, as such, exists ; and Congress can require 

 them to meet at the time and place and cast 

 their ballots in the manner it may see fit to 

 designate. 



" But the gentleman from Massachusetts, my 

 colleague on the committee, made one other 

 argument which I cannot fail to notice. He 

 claimed, as I understood him, that the power 

 of Congress to make or alter such regulations 

 as the State might prescribe was coextensive 

 with the power granted to the State, and that, 

 if the Congress could not regulate the qualifica- 

 tions of electors, the States did not possess the 

 power to prescribe them. This is a fundamen- 

 tal error I had almost said blunder. It is 

 basing the argument upon the most fatal heresy 

 of these times the heresy out of which the 

 evils have grown that threaten the very life 

 of the republic of States. It reverses the en- 

 tire order and system of our Government. The 

 gentleman must have forgotten that the Fed- 

 eral Government is a Government of delegated 

 powers : 



That the powers not delegated to the United States 

 by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 

 States, are reserved to the States respectively or to 

 the people. Tenth Amendment of Constitution. 



" The power to determine the qualifications 

 of electors was, in the States, conferred, as we 

 have before stated, by the people of the States, 

 in most if not all of them embedded in their 

 constitutions when the Federal Constitution 

 was formed and adopted. And that power has 

 never been delegated to the General Govern- 

 ment, and has not been prohibited to the 

 States. It rests, therefore, where the people of 

 the States placed it in the States themselves. 

 Sir, the powers and rights and liberties of the 

 States and people do not come down from Con- 

 gress or the Federal Government. There are 

 some powers with which Congress has not 

 been intrusted. Congress cannot determine 

 just how much of liberty the people shall en- 

 joy, just how they shall speak and move and 

 breathe. All the powers of the Federal Gov- 

 ernment come up from the States and people, 

 and it never had and never can have the right- 

 VOL. ix. 9. A 



ful authority to exercise any power not granted 

 in and by the Constitution. The exercise of 

 any other is rank usurpation. 



" I do not suppose it is seriously believed, or 

 will be seriously contended, that the passage 

 of this bill is warranted under the clause of 

 the Constitution : ' The United States shall 

 guarantee to every State in this Union a re- 

 publican form of government.' For Congress 

 to intervene, under the pretence that the States 

 to which the bill is to apply have not now a 

 republican form of government, is to decide 

 that there are no States now in the Union that 

 have a republican form; for the bill applies 

 alike to all the States. It is to decide that 

 there never have been any States of this Union 

 that have had a republican form. If there be 

 any State that has a republican form, that State 

 ought to be excepted from its operation. I am 

 not aware of any one who has the hardihood 

 to claim that the original States were not re- 

 publican in form, and, if they were, that settles 

 the question of the power of Congress to inter- 

 fere with them under this provision. 



" The United States is not to guarantee any 

 particular form of republican government. The 

 States certainly have the right to select or 

 choose for themselves the form, only so that it 

 is republican. All are not by the Constitution 

 required to be Massachusetts. Ohio's form 

 may at least suit her people better, and the 

 United States has no power to dictate or guar- 

 antee the one or the other as a choice of par- 

 ticular republican forms. 



" If it were claimed that no State is repub- 

 lican in form that does not allow all its citizens 

 to vote, then we should have no republican 

 States, because no one of the States does allow 

 all its citizens to exercise this privilege. It will 

 not be claimed, I suppose, that the State has 

 not a republican form of government for the 

 reason only that it denies to its negro citizens 

 what it also denies to our citizens' wives and 

 daughters. And if citizenship alone confers 

 the right to vote, and a State is not republican: 

 that denies the right to an uneducated, half- 

 civilized colored man, how much more is the 

 State not republican in form that denies the 

 educated, cultivated, and refined woman the..' 

 right. But, sir, citizenship does not necessari- 

 ly carry with it the right to vote or hold office 

 under our system. Nor can the denial to a> 

 citizen of the right to vote by a State des-troy 

 the republican form of its government. It was 

 not so understood at the adoption of the Con- 

 stitution, and has never been so claimed by 

 any sane man. That the question of who shall 

 exercise the right of suffrage is a delicate and 

 most important question, I admit. That the 

 power of determining it ought to be dispassion- 

 ately and wisely exercised is equally true. On 

 its being so used depend greatly the welfare 

 and happiness of the body-politic and the per- 

 manence and endurance of our republican- 

 Government and institutions. But, that this- 

 power rests in the States,, and ought to rest 



