THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 201 



judgment upon the South will necessarily include judgment upon 

 the wisdom of the amendment. 



After extended debate, the resolution was adopted by the House 

 on January 31st, 1866, by a vote of 120 to 46. The crucial test 

 however was to come in the Senate which began its consideration of 

 the resolution on February 5th. As not infrequently happens in 

 questions where there is a great variance of opinion, there was vig- 

 orous opposition both from the extremely radical and coni^ervative 

 wings and between the two the resolution fared hardly. There was 

 one faction which would be satisfied with nothing less than uncondi- 

 tional granting of the suffrage. They were not inclined to com- 

 promise on anything less radical. In their estimation a vital princi- 

 ple was at stake. The corner-stone of our whole governmental 

 structure was based upon the principles of liberty and equality. 

 Anything which temporized, which failed to grant to the negro the 

 complete civil and political equality which the white possessed en- 

 dangered this corner-stone. The proposition that this was a white 

 man's government was violently repudiated as a miserable makeshift 

 for oppression. 



Sumner pleaded in opposition that " it is not enough that you 

 have given Liberty. By the same title that we claim Liberty do we 

 claim Equality also. One cannot be denied without the other. 

 * * * They are the two vital principles of a Republican gov- 

 ernment without which a government although Republican in name 

 cannot be Republican in fact." The pages of the Congressional 

 Globe are full of sentiments of a similar nature. This faction occu- 

 pied a great vantage ground. Of the loftiness of the sentiments ex- 

 pressed and of the sincerity of Sumner and his followers there could 

 be no doubt. The terrible dangers of the Civil War had left their 

 impress on these men and the noble ideas which proved the watch- 

 words to victory after the Emancipation Proclamation still permeated 

 the discussions in the congressional halls. Yet never was the fact 

 that tearing down social structures is vastly easier than building new 

 ones better demonstrated than in these very debates. It has become 

 a truism to say that liberty is too often interpreted by the ignorant 



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