CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



151 



I assert that we are one people and not thirty- 

 seven different peoples ; that we are one nation, 

 and as such we have provided for ourselves a 

 national Constitution, and that Constitution 

 has provided the way by which it may he 

 amended. 



" Now, sir, what shall he the extent of that 

 amendment ? Does the Constitution say how 

 far or to what extent you shall amend it? Not 

 a word of it ; hut it provides .for its amend- 

 ment, and that amendment may be as radical 

 and as far-going as any part of the original in- 

 strument. Can that be denied? The States 

 gave up, it is said, the right to coin money, 

 the right to make war, the right to regulate 

 commerce ; and if they gave up those powers, 

 they have a right to give up, according to the 

 mode prescribed by the Constitution, the power 

 to regulate suffrage. 



"It may be said that, under this form of 

 amendment, we would not have the right to 

 change the character of our Government from 

 a republic to a monarchy. That is an extreme 

 case. But, sir, we are not changing the char- 

 acter of our republican government. It is still 

 the same in form, though modified, when we 

 say that the States shall be limited in their 

 power to regulate the suffrage. 



" One word, sir, in regard to what has been 

 said about the sentiment of Republicans in ref- 

 erence to admitting colored men to the elective 

 franchise. There were doubts in the minds of 

 many of us about admitting six hundred thou- 

 sand men, fresh from slavery, to the exercise 

 of suffrage. There were many of us who 

 doubted the effect of that, and would have 

 avoided it if it could have been done, and 

 given these men a short time to prepare them- 

 selves for the exercise of that right. But, as 

 circumstances progressed, as history moved on, 

 we could not give them that time ; we were 

 compelled to try the experiment immediately ; 

 and thus far it has worked well. But, sir, the 

 great body of the men upon whom the right 

 of suffrage is to be conferred by this amend- 

 ment are men who have long been free, who 

 live in the Northern States not men just 

 emerged from slavery, but a comparatively 

 educated class living throughout the entire 

 North. The argument that might be made 

 against enfranchising men just emerging from 

 slavery cannot be made against the colored 

 men of Indiana, of New York, and of the en- 

 tire North." 



Mr. Doolittle, of Wisconsin, said : " Mr. 

 President, the Senator from Indiana seems to 

 think that no statesman can bear in mind two 

 ideas at the same time ; that there can be no 

 such thing as State rights maintained by any- 

 body under the Constitution unless that per- 

 son is a secessionist ; and that, on the other 

 hand, no man can maintain that there is any 

 such thing as rights in the Federal Government 

 under the Constitution without being in favor 

 of an absolute concentrated Government at 

 Washington. Sir, these two ideas must go 



together in our system of government, and the 

 time is coming when they must be discussed, 

 when the rights of the States under the Con- 

 stitution must be acknowledged. It is just 

 as much a war on the Constitution to deny 

 the States the rights which belong to them as 

 it is a war on the Constitution to maintain the 

 doctrine of secession." 



Mr. Morton: "I have never denied the doc- 

 trine of State rights never." 



Mr. Doolittle : " The honorable Senator then 

 admits that the States have rights under the 

 Constitution ? " 



Mr. Morton : " I have always denied State 

 sovereignty ; and I do now. I deny the doc- 

 trine that the States are separate and indepen- 

 dent nations. We are one people. But, sir, 

 the States have certain rights, rights that are 

 guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the 

 United States, just as we have rights secured 

 to us both by the Federal and State constitu- 

 tions. We have State rights, but have no State 

 sovereignty, and never had." 



Mr. Doolittle: "Mr. President, the honor- 

 able Senator says there is no State sovereignty. 

 I contend that by every decision of the Su- 

 preme Court of the United States, by every 

 declaration made by every 'writer upon our 

 system of government in the beginning, 

 whether a Federalist or a Republican, it was 

 always maintained that the States had an at- 

 tribute of sovereignty, not absolute, but under 

 the Constitution, because under the Constitu- 

 tion they have parted with their absolute sov- 

 ereignty ; nor has the United States Govern- 

 ment any sovereignty under the Constitution 

 which is absolute. All the power which the 

 United States Government has under the Con- 

 stitution is limited. Sovereignty is limited by 

 the Constitution. State sovereignty is limited 

 by the Constitution; the United States sov- 

 ereignty is limited by the Constitution ; and 

 the great difficulty of our times is that men 

 cannot think or will not think that the two 

 sovereignties exist at the same time under our 

 Government, the one limited by the other. 



" Why, Mr. President, from earliest child- 

 hood every man in this body has been taught 

 that we live in the solar system where the 

 planets that revolve around the sun are con- 

 trolled by two forces; one a force tending 

 toward the centre by the force of gravitation, 

 the centripetal force ; and the other is the 

 centrifugal force, by which they are driven in 

 their orbits around the centre. Mr. President, 

 if either one of these forces were taken away, 

 it would absolutely destroy the system. In 

 our solar system, if the centrifugal force were 

 taken away, and nothing but the centripetal 

 force left to act, every planet would be drawn 

 to the centre of the sun. On the other hand, 

 if the centripetal force were destroyed in our 

 solar system, and no force permitted to oper- 

 ate but the centrifugal force, all the planets 

 would be driven in a tangent away from our 

 system into illimitable space. Sir, it is the 



