CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



145 



at this time by insisting upon amendments to 

 it? Amendments can be proposed plausible 

 in their character, and amendments that I 

 would like to vote for ; but I have made up 

 my mind that if we are to do any thing, if we 

 are to relieve to any general extent the per- 

 sons who are debarred of the right to hold 

 office, we must take this bill as we have it. 

 If it goes over the holidays, and all these 

 amendments are to be proposed and discussed, 

 we postpone this act of grace for another 

 year." 



Mr. Alcorn, of Mississippi, said : " We have 

 had a recent election in Mississippi. It was 

 necessary for the civil service of that State 

 that men should come forward and present 

 themselves for office who were laboring under 

 disability. The friends of good order, the 

 friends, if you please, of the Republican party, 

 in some portions of the State advised and con- 

 sented to this. Men who belonged to each of 

 the political parties have been elected to office 

 in that State who were laboring under dis- 

 ability, and no man knows better than I do 

 the necessity for the removal of disabilities by 

 this Congress so far as it applies to that State. 

 In the constitution of the State of Mississippi 

 there is a provision that, if the person elected 

 to an office cannot qualify, then he who was 

 the next highest candidate upon the poll-list 

 shall be the officer qualified to discharge the 

 trust. 



" Then, sir, I submit to the honorable Sen- 

 ator from Massachusetts, if this be the case, 

 the people of that State will be brought face 

 to face with the fact that equality does not ex- 

 ist in the State of Mississippi, but an inequal- 

 ity clearly upon its face does there exist, and 

 is there maintained by the Congress of the 

 United States. I do trust that the honorable 

 Senator from Massachusetts will not permit 

 his zeal to lead him to hazard a measure which 

 it is competent for a majority of Congress to 

 pass, by attaching it to a bill that it requires 

 two-thirds of Congress to pass. I could not 

 go home to the colored people of the State of 

 Mississippi, and meet them with a declaration 

 that I had sought to discharge my duty here 

 faithfully and well to them, if I had so voted 

 as to imperil that cause which they hold so 

 dear to themselves, by attaching the Senator's 

 proposition to a bill the passage of which re- 

 quired two-thirds of Congress, when it was 

 competent for a mere majority of Congress to 

 pass it. And how can the honorable Senator 

 from Massachusetts make good his declara- 

 tions of friendship to the colored people of 

 this nation when he comes here and proposes 

 to place their rights in jeopardy, if you please, 

 by attaching the measure which is to secure 

 them to this two-thirds proposition ? 



"I come here indorsed by twenty-eight 

 thousand Republican majority in the State of 

 Mississippi at the recent election in that State. 

 In that State we have equality before the law. 

 We have free .and full transportation upon the 



VOL. XII. 10 A 



railroad-cars. We have just such a law as the 

 colored people of the State are content to 

 have. He has no complaint from that State. 

 And I say to him that, of all the Republicans 

 of the State of Mississippi, not one can be 

 found who is not anxious that Congress 

 should take action upon the bill now before 

 us, and that the Senate should be prompt to 

 do that which they deem so necessary to the 

 good order of their society." 



Mr. Scott, of Pennsylvania, said : " There 

 are two views of the operation of the disqual- 

 ifications of the fourteenth amendment, and 

 there is but one of them that is likely to attract 

 much of our attention in this body or in the 

 House of Representatives ; and that is, as it 

 bears upon national interests. Men are dis- 

 qualified for holding office in Congress, and we 

 direct our attention too much to the effect 

 which that exclusion has, and forget that the 

 disqualification extends also to State offices, 

 and that it has affected to a very large degree 

 the character and the capacity of the local 

 State governments. 



" Now, sir, looking at it in this light as a 

 question of political wisdom, and not as a 

 question of amnesty, as the chairman of the 

 committee himself styled it, the measure seems 

 to be looked upon as removing all disqualifica- 

 tions that exist in the Constitution as to hold- 

 ing office. This is not the case. I have taken 

 the trouble to look at the Constitution, and I 

 find that, in considering this question of politi- 

 cal wisdom, the framers of the Constitution 

 have disqualified many citizens from holding 

 office, and there will be many disqualifications 

 left after we have removed the disqualifications 

 which have grown out of the rebellion. For 

 instance, all voters under the age of twenty- 

 five years are disqualified from holding office 

 in the House of Representatives ; all voters 

 under thirty years from holding office in this 

 body. All naturalized citizens, for nine and 

 seven years respectively after they become 

 citizens, are disqualified from holding office in 

 this and in the other House ; and there is also 

 a disqualification which, if I recollect aright, 

 the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Schurz), in one 

 of his recent speeches, characterized as a hu- 

 mane or benevolent provision, which excludes 

 all naturalized citizens from the two highest 

 offices in the nation. We even go further : 

 officers who have been impeached, found guil- 

 ty, and sentenced, as a part of the punish- 

 ment, to disqualification for office, are held to 

 be so highly disqualified, that even the pardon- 

 ing power cannot render them eligible to office 

 again. And so I might go on. Senators and 

 Representatives are disqualified from holding 

 office in one sense, for they can never become 

 electors of President and Vice-President of the 

 United States, although they manage to get 

 around that now by becoming members of 

 national conventions, which amounts practi- 

 cally to the same thing. 



" These disqualifications were imposed, not 



