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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



from Indiana whether he intends to class the 

 intelligent, respectable Israelites of this country 

 who believe in one superintending God, with 

 the pagans and heathens of Asia, for that is the 

 argument?" 



Mr. Hendricks: "No, sir; I am not mak- 

 ing any such argument as that. That was the 

 Senator's argument, and I was trying to com- 

 bat it. The Senator insisted that a man must 

 be a Christian to be a voter in this country." 



Mr. Frelinghuysen : " No." 



Mr. Hendricks : " Because we were a Chris- 

 tian people, he said." 



Mr. Frelinghuysen: "My insistment was 

 this : not that a man must be a Christian to be 

 a voter, but that it was not our duty to extend 

 the rights of naturalization and citizenship to a 

 pagan and heathenish class." 



Mr. Hendricks; "The Senator added, 'Be- 

 cause we are a Christian as well as a free 

 people.' I think that was the Senator's ex- 

 pression. So that the argument was that none 

 but Christians ought to vote, and I was carry- 

 ing out the Senator's own argument. Sir, I 

 am in favor of men voting in this country who 

 belong to the white race, and conduct them- 

 selves properly." 



Mr. Stewart : "I should like to ask the Sen- 

 ator if he is in favor of naturalizing Chinese 

 and pagans who acknowledge no allegiance to 

 the Government of the United States." 



Mr. Hendricks : " That is a very remarkable 

 question. Of course I am in favor of naturali- 

 izing no such man as that ; and anybody who 

 is naturalized under our law must abjure all 

 allegiance to any other Government, and in 

 the most formal manner possible recognize the 

 authority of our Government. The Senator is 

 not in favor, I believe, of allowing the Chinese 

 to Tote, while he is in favor of allowing the 

 negro to vote ; and I am speaking of the posi- 

 tion occupied by the Senators from the Pacific 

 coast upon this particular question. It does 

 not suit them to have the Chinese vote, for 

 some reason or other. I guess it is not popu- 

 lar out there to have the Chinese vote, and 

 they are opposed to it. I would not wish to 

 force the Chinese vote upon the people of the 

 Pacific coast unless they wanted it themselves ; 

 ::nd if I desired to amend the Constitution so 

 as to force the Chinaman to vote in California, 

 I would say, * Let the people of California have 

 a chance to express their wish on that sub- 

 ject ; ' and, if they voted it down, I would not 

 attempt to force it upon them. They are the 

 best judges of the interests of their society, 

 and that which will contribute to the strength 

 and purity of their State government. And 

 the same is true in Indiana. But Nevada, with 

 her twenty-five thousand people, has just as 

 large a vote upon the adoption of this consti- 

 tutional amendment as Indiana with her fifteen 

 hundred thousand. But Nevada does not want 

 the Chinaman, and she does want the colored 

 man to vote. She has no colored people, but 

 she has Chinamen. That is the style of this 



controversy. It suits certain purposes that the 

 suffrage should be extended to the negro; it 

 does not suit for other purposes that it should 

 be extended to other races." 



Mr. Morton, of Indiana, said: "Sir, I wish 

 to call the attention of the Senate for one mo- 

 ment to the character of the whole train of 

 argument that has been offered against this 

 amendment. Take that of the Senator from 

 Kentucky, the Senator from Delaware, and 

 other Senators that I might refer to. I say 

 that the whole train of argument is based upon 

 those broad doctrines and those old theories 

 upon which the right of secession rested. We 

 were not told by the Senator from Kentucky 

 and the Senator from Delaware that they be- 

 lieved in the right of secession, but they advo- 

 cated the same theories, urged the same argu- 

 ments, and cited the same history upon which 

 the right of secession has been based for the 

 last twenty years." 



Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, said : " Will the 

 honorable Senator allow me to ask him a ques- 

 tion ? I ask whether the historical references 

 that I made were not true references; and 

 whether the facts in relation to the formation 

 of the Federal Constitution are not evidenced 

 by the records of the convention which framed 

 it?" 



Mr. Morton : " Mr. President, I might admit 

 the Senator's references, but I should deny his 

 deductions. The Senator told us to-day frank- 

 ly that we were not pne people. He said in 

 the Senate of the United States, after the cul- 

 mination of a war that cost this nation six hun- 

 dred thousand lives, that we were not a na- 

 tion. He gave us to understand that we were 

 as many separate nationalities as we have 

 States; that one State is different from an- 

 other as one nation in Europe is different from 

 another. He denied expressly that we were a 

 nation. He gave us to understand that he be- 

 longed to the tribe of the Delawares, an inde- 

 pendent and sovereign tribe living on a reser- 

 vation up here near the city of Philadelphia, 

 but he denied his American nationality. The 

 whole argument from first to last has pro- 

 ceeded upon that idea, that this is a mere con- 

 federacy of States ; to use the language of the 

 Senator to-day, a partnership of States. What 

 is the deduction ? If that is true, there was the 

 right of secession ; the South was right, and we 

 were wrong. He did not draw that deduction, 

 but it is one that springs inevitably from his 

 premises. 



" Sir, the heresy of secession is not dead ; it 

 lives. It lives after this war, although it ought 

 to have been settled by the war. It exists even 

 as snow sometimes exists in the lap of summer, 

 when- it is concealed behind the cliffs and the 

 hedges and in the clefts of the rocks. It has 

 come forth during this debate. We have heard 

 the very premises, the very arguments, the very 

 historical references upon which the right of 

 secession was urged for thirty years. The 

 whole fallacy lies in denying our nationality. 



