February 8, 1869 (2)

Mr. EDMUNDS. They have done so forty years ago.■.■

Mr. DRAKE. They have not done it forty years ago. They have not interfered with the administration of this Government. Whenever they do, then the question will ooDfie up whether the two Houses of Congress, in the exer cise of their high constitutional functions as. the embodiment of the sovereignty of this great nation, coming direcft from the people, are to lie at the mercy from day to day of a tribunal created by themselves.

Mr. PATTERSON, of New Hampshire, (at two o clock andeighteen minutes a. m.) Mr. President, w e are discussing a proposition to amend the fundamental law- of the land. It seems to me that the discussion of such a proposition should set aside all mere questions of party politics, because the question underlies party politics. Well now, sir, just compare the discussions here this evening with the discussions in the Constitutional Convention which framed our Constitution. They are upon the same subject, or should be; but we have discussed this evening—and I do not mean to reflect upon Senators at all—every power and every question in the Constitution; we have discussed politics; we, have discussed ethnology and astronomy and chemistry, and about all the sciences in the whole circle of knowledge. Now, it does seem to me that we are making no progress. It seems to me that we had better go home and vote upon this question when we have a full Senate. It is important for the present; it takes hold of the future as well as the past: and I. think we are making no progress, and we are doing ourselves no good and getting no honor before the country in discussing all sorts of questions upon an amendment to the Constitution. I therefore move that we adjourn.

Mr. DRAKE. I did not yield the floor, except to some remarks of the honorable Senator from Now Hampshire. I thought the Senator when he began his remarks was going to say something to me.

Mr, PATTERSON, of New Hampshire. I thought the gentleman was through.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair will say that when a Senator yields for a speech he yields the floor for good.

Mr. DRAKE. It was under a misapprehension. Am I recognized by the Chair, or does this motion to adjourn cut me off?

The PRESIDENT pro pro tempore. tempore. If there was a misapprehension of the rules on the part of the Senator the Chair will not regard the motion as pending.

Mr. DRAKE. I do not wish to continue my speech any more to night I merely wish to remark that I think it is not very good natured on the part of the honorable Senator from New Hampshire to go off in the early part of the night to enjoy himself at a party and then come back and try togetus all to adjourn. [Laughter. 1

Mr. NORTON. I ask my friend from New Hampshire to withdraw his motion to adjourn and I will renew it.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The motion to adjourn was made while another Senator had the floor, and consequently cannot be put.

Mr. DRAKE. I have given up the floor

Mr. NORTON. I understood the Senator from New Hampshire had the floor to make a motion to adjourn.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. There was a misapprehension about it. The Senator from Missouri had not yielded the floor.

Mr. NORTON. Well, then, I will make the motion to adjourn, having the floor. At the recess to day I had expected to address the Senate upon this subject this evening, but the discussion took such a wide range that I did not care to engage in it.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It is quite early. I hope we shall not adjourn now.

Mr. NORTON. Itis almost too early for me. The motion to adjourn was not agreed to.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on the amendment offered by the Senator from Oregon to the amendment of the committee.

Mr. HOWARD. What is the amendment? Let it be read.,..

The Chief Ci erk The amendment proposes to strike out all of. section one of the amendment reported by the Committee on the Judiciary, and to insert in lieu thereof; the following:

Congress shall have power to abolish or modify any restrictions upon the right to vote or hold office prescribed, by the constitution or laws of any State.

Mr.. DAVIS.., Mr. President, my honorable friend from Indiana [Mr. Mortok] referred to myself, in connection with other Senators, as having given some support to the doctrine of nullification. I choose, at this late hour of the evening, to disclaim that that is my position. My position is simply this: according to proper language, there is no sovereignty in the United States or in any of the States the sovereignty resta with the people. The people divided their sovereignty, and they delegated it to two Governments; that is, to two classes of Governments. They delegated a portion of it to the Government of the United States by the Constitution. The rest of the sovereignty of the people of the United States is in the people respectively of the States. My position is, that as to the sovereignty and powers delegated by the Constitution of tbe United States to the Government of the United States, the Government of the United States and the United States are a nationality. Within the scope and operation of all the sovereignty and of all the power delegated by the Constitution to the United States, the United States exercises the full and entire sovereignty delegated to it by the people in the Constitution.

My other position in relation to that subject is, that as to the sovereignty not delegated by the Constitution to the people but reserved to the States the States are sovereign; and the States are as much sovt reign within the scope of their reserved sovereignty and powers, as the Government of the United States; and the United States are sovereign within the sphere of the powers delegated to the United States and to the Government of the United States by the Constitution. I hope that my position is understood. That distinction has been taken repeatedly and sustained by the judgments of the Supreme Court. There is not a commentator upon the Constitution of the United States, from the Federalist and Hamilton and Madison down, that does not recognize the same partition of sovereignty and the same exclusive and paramount authority of the States as to all the sovereignty and power reserved by them, and so of the United States in relation to all the sovereignty and powers delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

Mr. HOWARD. If the honorable Senator from Kentucky will allow me to say a word, I am not entirely certain that I fully comprehend his idea of sovereignty. He speaks of sovereignty as resting in the people. Let me inquire of the honorable Senator what people he refers to—the whole people of the United States, constituting in and of themselves an imperial popular community? Are those the people in whom the ultimate supreme sovereignty rests, or is it in the people of the several States?

Mr. DAVIS. I will answer the question of the honorable Senator.

Mr. HOWARD. I should like to have a further explanation. I know the honorable Senator intended to make himself understood and it is very important to me that I should clearly understand him, because it strikes me he is advancing something new.

Mr. DAVIS. If the honorable Senator will allow me, I will endeavor to make myself explicit. My pesition is, that as to powers delegated to the United States and the Government oi the United States by the Constitution, that portion of the sovereignty belongs to ail the people of the United Slates; that itis a delegated sovereignty from all the people of the united States to that extent. So far a3 the sovereignty and powers of Government are not delegated by the Constitution to the United States and the Government formed by the Constitution,, that sovereignty belongs as exclusively to the people of the States as it did before the formation of the Constitution.

Mr. HOWARD. Then I will inquire whence the honorable Senator derives that doctrine? Is it from the history of the American nation, oris it from the Kentucky resolutions of 179 8

Mr. DAVIS. I will inform the honorable Senator. I derive it from the Constitution; I derive it from the treatises upon the Constitution by the men who made it; I derive it from Hamilton and Madison, from Kent and Story and Marshall, and every other great light and luminary of the Constitution. I will read a paragraph from Madison s letters on this subject:

"It has been too much the case in expounding the Constitution of the United States that its meaning has been sought not in its peculiar and unprecedented csodificatioa of power, but by viewing it some through the medium of asimple Government, others through that of a mere league of Governments. It is neither the one nor the other; but essentially different from both. It must consequently be its own interpreter. No other Government can furnish a key to its true character. Other Governments present an individual and indivisible sovereignty. TheConstitution of the United States divides the sovereignty; the portions surrendered by the States composing the Federal sovereignty over specific subjects; the portions retained forming the sovereignty of each over the residuary subjects within its sphere."

In the case of McCulloch vs. The State of Maryland, Chief Justice Marshall decides that all powers of government appertain to sovereignty. He decides explicitly that the charter of a bank of the United States is an exercise of sovereignty, and he says iu the most explicit language that all exercise of political power is an exercise of political sovereignty. Now, my position is simply this: that the portion of it yielded up by the people of all the States, as enumerated in the Constitution, is an emanation from the people of all the States, acting by States, to the United States and to the General Government; that so far as sovereignty is not delegated by that instrument to the United States and to the Government formed by the Constitution that sovereignty is retained by the States; and it is as distinctively, as peculiarly, and as exclusively their right now as it was before the formation of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court have so decided in repeated cases.

Now, Mr. President, while I am up I will add another word or two. I have taken the position in my argument that Congress has no power to propose an amendment to the Constitution that would revolutionize the essential nature and character of the Governmentformed .by the Constitution. My further position is, that the proposed amendment does revolutionize the distinctive and peculiar character of the Government; that the Government of the United States is not a single Government; that it is a mixed Government of the United States and the people of the States. The honsrable Senator from Michigan I presume comprehends me, if I have made myself distinet.

I then say that, as a part and parcel of our system of government, the government of the States is as essential as the Government of the United States; that it can no more be dispensed with without a revolution and an overthrow of our mixed system of State and of Federal Government than could the Government formed by the Constitution of the United States be overthrown without a revolution. I say here, and I maintain as a principle asserted by all the men who assisted in forming the Constitution and who have given any exposition on it, and by every able and accepted commentator on the Constitution, that the government of the States is as much a part of our complex and mixed system of government as the Government of the United States; and in conformity to that principle I assert, as a true proposition, that it would no more change or revolutionize our system of government to destroy the Government of the United States than it would to destroy the governments of the States,

Now, Mr. President, I advance another step in my argument. I say that a proposition made in Congress to amend the Constitution of the United States by abolishing the United States Government would not come within the scope of the power of Congress to propose amendments to that instrument. I say it would be revolutionary and destructive of our system; and that a power to propose amendments to our system does not involve and cannot carry a proposition to destroy the system. I therefore say that if this proposition was to propose an amendment to the Constitution of the United States by which the Government created by that Constitution should be abolished, such a proposition as that would wholly transcend the power of Congress to propose amendments to the Constitution. I assert, as the parallel of that position, that the governments of the States being as necessary, as constitutional, and as proper a portion of our system as the Government of the United States, a proposition to abolish, to destroy, to abrogate the governments of the States it is not competent for Congress to make under the guise of executing the power to propose amendments to the Constitution. That is my position. I say that if the proposition was to create a Presidency for life, with succession to his son, Congress has no power, under the article that is professed to be pursued now, to make such a proposition.

Mr. HOWARD. If the Senator will allow me, would it be revolutionary and destructive of the Constitution to extend the presidential term from four years to six, as the confederate government did, or to ten, fifteen, or twenty years, in ease the people should see fit to do so?

Mr. DAVIS. I will answer that question. If the honorable Senator will put his questions in fewer words I shall be very much obliged to him.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. There is too much noise in the Chamber. Senators are inattentive to the discussion of this new and important question of the sovereignty of the States.

Mr. DAVIS. I say the proposition to amend the Constitution by extending the presidential term would not be a revolution; it would not alter the essential nature of our Government; but I will tell the Senator what proposition would be of that character. If he was to propose now, as an amendment to the existing proposition, that Senators should hold their offices during their lives, and upon the death of each Senator his place should descend to his eldest son, such a proposition as that would be revolutionary, and it is not competent for Congress under its power to propose amendments to offer any such proposition as that.

It would be no less revolutionary to abolish the State governments than to take either of the steps that I have indicated. It would be a subversion, a revolution, an overthrow of the essential nature and character of our mixed Government, for Congress to destroy the State governments. Congress, therefore, has no power to make such a proposition in the form of an amendment. I object to this so called amendment, that it does substantially comprehend such a proposition as that. It is substantially a proposition to abolish the State governments. It carries a principle with it which Congress may at any time carry to that extent. If Congress has the power to regulate the whole subject of suffrage, and to regulate the matter of who shall be eligible to office, that is the substance of the aggregation of the State governments when applied to them; and Congress might as well, and with more propriety—it would be a great deal a less stride of power— proceed at once to abolish, absolutely and without qualification, the State governments. I say that Congress has no such power.

Chief Justice Marshall, in the opinion in the case of McCulloch vs. The State of Maryland, lays it down that what the people of a State have the power to organize and to institute they have the power to maintain. I ask the honorable Senator from Michigan what people have aright to form a State government for that State? What power is there upon this earth that has the rightful authority to form to change, to abolish, and to introduce another government instead of the present existing government of the State of Michigan?* No other power but the people of that State; and Chief Justice Marshall, in the ease that I have referred to, states several times the proposition that a power to organize, to create, on tfie part of a State, imparts and carries with it a power to preserve its own organization. Then every State having the exclusive power to organize its own State government, according to the positions taken by Chief Justice Marshall in that case, each State government has the power to preserve the State government which it has the right to make. I say that for Congress to interfere with the power of the States to make their governments is as much usurpation of power as it would be for a State to attempt to overthrow the Government of the United States.

There may be rebellion and treason against the States as well as against the United States. The Supreme Court decided thatprinciple in the case of Luther vs. Borden. Yea, sir, the President of the United States, the Congress of the United States, the high officers of the United States, when they transcend their constitutional functions and powers and array themselves with arms in their hands to resist the government and laws and authorities of a State commit treason against that State; and they are as much subject to be proceeded against in that State as traitors, and to be punished by its laws denouncing treason as a crime, as Jeff. Davis and his accomplices were subject to be indicted under the laws and Constitution of the United States for having committed treason against it. It is as much treason against a State to make unauthorized armed resistance to the execution of its laws as it is treason against the United States to make unauthorized armed resistance to the execution of the laws of the United States. The cases are parallel. If it is true in the one case it is true in the other; and I only regretted that there was not some State that had power enough, and whose government was so organized and filled by men of such will and ability and courage and determination as would have brought some of the highest officers of the Army to be tried for treason against their State governments and to be executed on the gallows. It would have been one of the most wholesome precedents that ever was set.

Now let me say a word on another point. The honorable Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Ferby] said the other day that he was gratified that neither myself nor any other Senator who had then participated in the debate took any ground against the fitness and the ability of the negro race to take part in our Government. Sir, there is not not a negro in America who understands the principles of our Government. There is not a negro living on the face of God s earth that can understand the principles of our Government, and that is competent to take an intelligent and a useful part in the administration of that Government. Gentlemen have grown eloquent and pathetic in their denunciation of the brutalizing influence of slavery, assuming that it was the demoralizing effects of slavery that rendered the negro incompetent to take part iu our free and complicated system of government. Sir, I have seen what we used to call in olden times the Guinea negro; I have seen a few slaves that were brought direct from Africa; and in appearance and intelligence they were but little above the baboon. All the intelligence, all the attainment, all the civilization of the present race of negroes in the United States, as has been truly said by the Senator from Indiana, [Mr. Hendricks,] they have received from the white man in the condition of slavery. They are indebted to slavery for all they know, all their intellectual and moral elevation from the condition of the most ignorant barbarism.

It has been my fortune to know the negroia three conditions, and I. think they are the only normal conditions that the negro, as a race, can ever occupy. I have known him as an ignorant lavage from Africa -with only the faintest lights of reason and intelligence; I have known him as a comparatively intelligent and contented slave, and I have known him as a political vagabond hovering under the shadow of the Freedmen s Bureau. Those are the three normal conditions of the negro race. He was originally in his own country a savage. When he -was brought to the United States he was partially civilized to something like the extent to •which his natural organization admitted Him. He' is inferior in physical condition, in mental "and moral endowment, to the white race or to the yellow race. Every ethnologist knows it. Every man who is acquainted with the negro practically and from experience knows it. There is but one ethnologist' that I have read <}f who maintains the equality of the races, and fie maintains it against all the truth of history. The honorable Senator from Indiana said truly that for two thousand years, yea, for four thousand years, ever since the interior of Africa, with its seventy millions of purely negro population, has been known to the white man there has been no civilization there. They have never invented an alphabet. They have no arts, no sciences, no regularly organized government. They never carried on a regularly organized war. The rudiments of civilization there are of the lowest degree. They are in a condition of brutalized, ferocious, and ignorant barbarism. That is the condition as proven by all history, and by the modern travelers in the interior of Africa, of those whom honorable Senators here have said have been so brutalized by slavery in the United States as to be unfit to take part in our Government.

Mr. PATTERSON, of New Hampshire. I should like to ask tny distinguished friend a question. I should like to ask him if what he has said of the negro race in its original condition is not equally true of the Saxon race in its original condition?

Mr. DAVIS. No, sir.

Mr. PATTERSON, of Now Hampshire. I wish to know if the Saxon, while wandering in skins in the forests of old Germany, was not as truly a savage as the inhabitant of Ethiopia?

Mr. DAVIS. 1 say he was

Mr. PATTERSON, of New Hampshire. Now the gentleman acknowledges

Mr. DAVIS. Will the honorable Senator put one question at a time, and allow me to answer it?

Mr. PATTERSON, of Now Hampshire. Very well.

Mr. DAVIS. I say that the white race and the black race and the yellow race and the red race in the earliest dawn of their history were alike savages, and that the inhabitant of the forests of Germany was at one time and in one condition of his existence as much a savage as the negro, except that he was endowed by nature with superior faculties, with a power of emerging from his condition of ignorance and barbarism, and the other was not.

Mr. PATTERSON, of New Hampshire, i should like to ask another question at this point. The gentleman has acknowledged that lie has seen the African in three conditions: first, that of an original savage; and second, a somewhat enlightened slave. Now I want to know if that enlightenment does not prove the capacity of the negro for civilization and improvement?

Mr. DAVIS. I will answer the honorable •senator that question. The civilization of the negro is always imparted by the white man, and that civilization cannot be continued and preserved except in contact with the white man. I bo negro has no power to civilize himself, The white man for four thousand years has been to a greater or less extent engaged in the civilization ot the negro, and that negro and his posterity have invariably lost that civilizatioii. lost it because he could not maintain it. He is not endowed by nature With the faculties and qualities that will enable him to preserve the civilization imparted to him by the white man, much less to originate one for himself.

I will give the honorable Senator an example. In 1793 the Island of San Domingo consisted of seven or eight hundred' thousand people, about one third of whom were mu,- lattoes, the sons of French planters. A great lilaTiy of them were educated, and educated to the highest degree almost of which they were susceptible.' The insurrection in San Domingo commenced under Og6, a mulatto. It was carried forward by the mulattoes. -Og6 and Dessaline were mulattoes. Petion was a mulatto. They threw off the government of France. They became an independent Power of the world. They setup a Government with the aid of the Abbe Gregoire and the other friends of the negroes who were then agitating Paris and the world; and they had the example of the previous Government of that island, which had been organized and established by the French and Spanish races.

Now, sir, what has been the career of that island? What has been its history? The negroes of that island soon after their independence demonstrated their utter unfitness to maintain a regular and organized Government, and they have never had one to this day. In all their civilization they have been degenerating. They are more ignorant, more brutal, have less of civilization in the arts, in the sciences, and in all the walks and fields of civilization than they had before. At this time there is Salnave, there was lately Soulouque, and there is Jeffrard and others who have set up authority as the heads of bands of negro savages convulsing the island, overthrowing what little political organization and government they had. The revolutions and changes of party and of power of the people in San Domingo have been perpetual, incessant rapid from the days of their first revolt against the French Government until the present time; and their degeneracy into savage brutality and ignorance would be accelerated greatly if it were not for the residence of a great many white people among them, and the example and influence of the white men who visit them. Sir, there has been a theater where the boasted experiment of the African race in selfgovernment has been tried. There he had it in one of the finest islands of the seas, with a climate of great salubrity, and whose productions are equal to sustain the life of its inhabitants. When Columbus discovered that island there were from two to three million Indians upon it. Now, with all the boasted civilization of the Africans, and all their capacity to take care of themselves, to promote their happiness and increase their numbers, they o nly number at this day about seven hundred thousand, and the productions of the island in all of its exports have been reduced three or four times. The experiment has been tried there, and it has failed. The race is not capable of self government The great problem of this day is whether the white race is capable of self government The present Radical party is not capable of governing this country. It has proved that fact; it confesses that fact; and it seeks to bring in four millions of ignorant, half savage negroes to aid it in this great work. Gentlemen will receive no aid from this source.

Senators treat the right to vote as if it was the end of all government. The right to vote is not a natural right. It is an artificial right. The political power in every country ought to be vested in that portion of the people who will give it the wisest and justest laws and the most faithful administration of them. AH civilized society admits that principle. You exclude Indians from political rights. Why? Because of their incompetency to exercise them. You exclude lunatics from the exercise of political powers and rights because of their incompetency to exercise them; and yet many lunatics, laboring under monomania and partial lunacy, are incomparably better qualified for the exercise of all political power—the right io vote and the right to hold office under our form of government—than any of your negroes.'

Butyon exclude these persons in classes; and why? Because you cannot discriminate between individuals in classes. I admit that there may be a few negroes endowed beyond their race. You cannot admit them and exclude the whole residue of the race; and if you admit the whole race, you admit a great, incompetent, disturbing power of political government. Therefore, the negroes ought to be excluded as a class. They are not competent to the performance of the duties to which you would assign them. They have proven their incompetency in every condition that they have ever occupied. Why, then, will you force them upon the 'White people of America? Sir, if I was satisfied that every negro would vote with and for the Democratic party, their policy and their candidates, or for the old Whig party and its glorious principles, I would oppose the bestowal of suffrage Upon them as relentlessly as I now do, because my conviction of their utter incompetency to come to the great responsibilities of taking part in the Government and the administration of our Government remains fixed and immutable. There is no state of things, no temporary advantage, no success of power, no continuance of party in power that would bringme to consent to extend the right of suffrage to the negro race.

Now, Mr. President, I have stated some reasons why I am opposed to extending the right of suffrage to the negro race. I will conclude with an anecdote. I knew a Guinea negro in the State of Kentucky who had learned something of our language. They put him to work. He was from one of the docile tribes, and he made a very good hand. He heard of another Guinea negro who had recently been brought "into the country from Africa, as he was told. It happened that this second Guinea negro who had been brought from Africa was a baboon. The older Guinea negro was of the name of Job; they called him Thompson s Job." Some of his friends made themselves merry and amused themselves with him by asking him to go and see his countryman who had just arrived from the "fatherland." He went there and commenced a conversation with him. He was very seducing and held out every motive to the new comer to talk with him, but he could not succeed. Said he," Golly, disis de smartest nigger I ever seed. You hold on to dat; don t you talk, for if evferyou talk white man will set you to work, sartin." [Laughter.]

Now, I think that the silence of the negro ■who was addressed by the old comer was somewhat the force of power. I have read in the transcendental orator of Boston that silence was the voice of God. I never have known but one character who exceeded the present President elect of the United States in silence, except that new arrival from Africa which the old African could not induce to talk. [Laughter.] In both cases silence has proved itself a power.

I do not doubt that General Grant is a man of good intellect, but he is the most prudent man in his conversations that I have ever heard of, except that Guinea negro to whom I have adverted. [Laughter.] I do not know how much of his force and strength he has made by his silence, but certainly he has made a good deal of it in that way. There is no mi take about that. When he talks I hope he will talk like a patriot and a statesman. I hope he will form and fashion himself and his administration upon the model of Washington. All the justice and moderation and patriotism and success of Washington I desire to be received and to be derived by the incoming President.

I was more opposed to Johnson when he was inaugurated as President than I am now to General Grant, because I believed him then to be further from my principles and my views of ,a constitutional and wise ruler. I was greatly disappointed in Johnson. I believe he has given us one of the wisest, one of the most constitutional, one of the most conservative and able administrations that our Executive has ever had. I honor him in the ending of his days; his sun is setting gloriously, notwithstanding the slight clouds that gentlemen try to throw over it to obscure it; it yet shines in undiminished luster, and he will be the great central historical character of this day of our country s trouble. Let other people worship the rising sun, but I turn my eyes in gratitude and in admiration to the glorious setting sun that is so soon to sink beneath the western horizon, and I pray that his successor may have as much merit and as much proper claim upon the gratitude and confidence of his countrymen as the outgoing President.

Mr. SAWYER. Mr. President, I did not intend to speak upon this question at all. It has been so ably and so long discussed that I can hope to add little, if anything, to what has been said, and especially can I have little expectation of being able to interest the Senate at this time of the morning, [three o clock and fifteen minutes, a. m.] But when I hear Senators on the other side of the House rise here and advocate opinions which do not exist, to my knowledge, in any part of the country that has been exposed to the influences of slavery and reconstruction, I feel that as representing one of the reconstructed States I ought to raise my voice against those opinions and those doctrines.

X wish the honorable Senator from Kentucky had belonged to a reconstructed State. I wish that he had had a personal opportunity to observe the negro in his present condition in the States which have been subjected to the reconstruction measures of Congress. I wish he had had there an opportunity to modify the opinion which he has gained from contact with the negroes of his own States. I think there is every reason to believe, in spite of the prejudices of a life spent in contact with the institution of slavery there, that he might make up his mind that the negro, although not, in his opinion, the political equal of the white man, although not the intellectual equal of the Anglo Saxon race, yet has in him that germ of development of character which in due process of time and with the genial sun of American institutions may make him a good citizen and an equal before the law with any other citizen. We have, thank God, in South Carolina, we have in Alabama, we have in North Carolina, no class of men, not even that class of men who have been in former times allied in political sentiments with the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky, we have, I say, there no class of men who propose at this time to deprive the negro of the right of suffrage, or to deny that he has a claim to it.

Mr. DAVIS. Will the Senator permit me to ask him a question? Suppose that the white men of the South had a full and perfect liberty to accept or to reject the granting of suffrage to the negro, what would be their action?

Mr. SAWYER. I say in answer to the Senator from Kentucky that I can only judge of men s purposes by their acts; and I assert that during the late political campaign, when the late rebels of the southern States expected the election of the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President, they did not go before their people with a proposition to take away from the negro the right of suffrage. On the contrary, some of the most distinguished advocates of the platform of the Democratic party as laid down in the national convention expressed their entire willingness to grant suffrage to the negro.

Mr. DAVIS. Will the honorable Senator permit me tti make a single remark? There wasjustarace between the parties which should secure the negro suffrage that had been forced upon the country.

Mr. SAWYER. ThenI understand the doctrine of the Senator to be that if the negro can be made to vote the Democratic ticket he is an intelligent man and entitled to become acitizen. Mr DAVIS. Not at all, if the honorable Senator will permit me. I declared a few minutes ago in the most explicit terms, that I would be opposed to his right of. suffrage if he cast it for the Democratic party, because of my utter disbelief in his competency to take any part in the Government. It is only because the suffrage of the negro has been enforced by power and by fraud and violence, and at the cannon s mouth, upon the people of the southern States thatany considerable portion of them consent to accept it.

Mr. SAWYER. Mr. President, I understood the position of the Senator himself, and I said therefore that I regretted that he had not been in a reconstructed State, and had an opportunity to observe the conduct and character of the negroes in those States in his new relations, as a citizen. I said that those who had been in contact with the negro in those relations, who had had opportunity of observing his character and conduct there, had formed a different opinion; and I hold it to be a fact which cannot be disputed that to day were the question put to the white men of the lately reconstructed States whether the ballot should be taken out of the hands of the negro the answer would be an almost universal negative; and if the Government of the United States had not, as he says, at the point of the bayonet and by; violent assumption of unconstitutional authority put that ballot into the hands of the negro, there would to day yes, there would two years ago, have been a strong negro suffrage party in every one of those States. More, I believe that in his own State of Kentucky, while the honorable Senator himself, maintaining his peculiar views, might hesitate to put the ballot in the hands of the negro, the majority of his party would not hesitate one moment to do it if they believed he would throw his ballot in favor of the doctrines of the Democratic party.

Mr. President, it is a peculiar thing that in all the advances which the friends of human liberty propose to make, wo are met on every side by the assertion that they are all in violation of the Constitution; but wherever the doctrines of the Constitution canbeapplied against human rights, against the rights of man, against human liberty, there they are sticklers for the Constitution. Wherever the doctrines of the Constitution tell for man, for his rights, for his liberty, they are against the application of those doctrines. This is no new thing.

We have heard here on this floor to day all sorts of discussions about the ethnological character of the negro, about his intellectual inferiority, about his capacity to engage in the business of government, but we have heard on this floor no assertion that he was not a man. There is no Senator here that dared to rise in this Hall and say that the negro had not the powers of development. Nay, it has been distinctly asserted by several Senators that the negro in contact with the white race has gained a great degree of civilization since he was brought from his native barbarism in Africa. If he has shown himself competent to a certain degree of development, if in the process of time he has come to that condition whereby he can be rendered a freeman with safety to the State, I ask if that does not lead logically and naturally to the inference that his development may be still further carried on, and that he may be capable of making a good citizen, carrying intelligently a ballot? I ask if that citizen who has been able to carry a bayonet in defense of his Government is not likely to be competent to carry a ballot to protect the liberties which his rifle has helped to win?

The doctrine that the proposition of this amendment is in violation of the provisions of the Constitution seems to me a most strange one. The power to amend the Constitution is put distinctly into the Constitution, the manner of proposing such amendments is put distinctly into the Constitution.

Mr. DAVIS. Will the honorable Senator permit me to ask him a question? Are" amendment" and" change" synonyms? Whatdoes amendment mean?

Mr. SAWYER. "To amend" means .to alter for the better; and there lies in that' instrument the power given to the Congress of the United States to propose alterations for the better; and this we claim is an alteration for the better; and the idea that you can amend the Constitution without in some respect changing the relations of the States to the national Government and of the national Goverflnxj nt to the States seems to me to be; a proposition which cannot be maintained. It has been said* that you have a right to amend the Constitution, but not to change the form of government. I ask you what amendment is possible which does not in some degree, in some relation, in some way change the form of the government as regards the connection of its several parts with the whole?

Mr. DAVIS. I think the honorable Senator has raised a position himself where he might knock it down. I have not heard any gentleman assume that a change in the mere form of the government would be unauthorized under the exercise of the power to amend. What I have heard assumed is that the essential nature and the essential form and character of the i government cannot be changed under the guise of the exercise of the power to amend.

Mr. SAWYER. I submit that I am right in saying that the essential form, the form in some essential particular, the naturein some essential particular, the character in some essential particular, must from the nature of the case be changed by any amendment of the Constitution; and the question of where that power to amend, where that power to change, where that power to modify ends is a question which is only in the province of three fourths of the States themselves todecide afteraproposition shall have been submitted to them in the constitutional form. There is the distinct power laid down in the Constitution for the Congress of the United States to propose, asT say, alterations for the better—amendments—to submit them to the people and to the States, and if three fourths of the States adopt and approve the proposition it becomes the law of the land, and binds not merely three fourths of the States but every one of the States, because every one of the States has entered into the' compact under that Constitution knowing its terms, and knowing that it was liable to such amendment at any time when Congress did so propose and when three fourths of the States did so adopt the proposition.

I hold, therefore, that while the doctrine which was laid down by the Republican party last summer in its platform, that the right ot control of suffrage properly belonged to the people of the loyal States, was entirely true at that time and was very properly expressed ia that form, it nevertheless did not estop the Congress of the United States from making propositions for constitutional amendments in the usual constitutional form. It was eminently true, then, that according to the usage of the Government the right of regulation of the matters pertaining to suffrage did properly rest with the States; but because it was so as the Constitution and laws of the nation then stood does it follow that the people of the United States have agreed that it shall forever after remain so? The same argument would have prevented the passage of the thirteenth amendment, for I ask what more violent change can be made in the form of the government of the State of Kentucky than to say that an institution upon which her whole social fabric rested should be swept away with a stroke of the pen? What more violent disruption of the various relations which existed between the classes of people who inhabited the State of Kentucky could occur than was made to occur by the passage of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution? And are we to be told that because last summer the Republican party said that the control of suffrage belonged properly to the people of the loyal States, the people of the United States are forever to be estopped from altering that Constitution when they go to work in a constitutional manner, make the proposition in a constitutional manner, and three fourths of the States, the number constitutionally required, indorse and approve that proposition? It seems to me an absurdity on the face of it. I can understand that if the proposition of the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts had been adopted, that Congress should pass a law to regulate a matter of this Kind, pass a political rights bill as Congress passed the civil rights bill, then objections of that, description might occur in the minds of men; but where the' proposition is for an amendment of the Constitution, to be passed upon in the constitutional way and to be approved by the required number of States, I can see no force in an objection of that kind.

Much has been said here in reference to the incapacity of the negro for participation in government. Enough has been said, and much better said than I can say it, in reference to this matter; but experience and observation in my own State have justified me in saying that there is a large class of negro voters in my Stale who are not only by education and natural capacity the equals of another large class of white men, but that they have this additional claim to exercise of the right of suffrage, that it has been exercised by them for the rights of man and in, behalf of loyalty to the Government.

Mr. DAVIS. "Will the Senator permit me to ask him a question? Does he believe that there could be found iu the State of South Carolina enough capable negroes to take charge of the government of that State and of its polity, and all of its interests and of all the city and town governments and all of the corporations in the State, and manage them with any skill, judgment, or success?

Mr. SAWYER, I will answer the question of the honorable Senator by asking another. I will ask him if he believes that if the white race of South Carolina had for two centuries been the slaves of the black race, had been by statute and by usage deprived of every means of cultivation and self development if they had been shut out of all the relations of the citizen, if they had been the hewers of wood and .the drawers of water for two centuries, there could bo found upon a sudden emancipation of that white race probably men enough to assume and perform all the duties which belong to civilized society in the highest and most statesmanlike manner?

Mr. DAVIS. I will answer the question of the honorable Senator. His answer I regard as equivalent to an answer iu the negative. He puts to me a question that involves an impossibility that the white race should have been subjected for two centuries to the negro race. The negro race has been the slave of the white race, of the red race, and of the yellow race, and it never enslaved any other race itself. It has been in all of its conditions and phases of existence incapable of acquiring a mastery over the other races, much less maintaining a mastery.

Mr. PATTERSON, of New Hampshire. If the Senator from South Carolina will allow me, I should like to ask a question of the Senator from Kentucky. If the negro is so incapable of self government as the Senator represents, I want to knowhow he explains the fact that for one hundred years in the colony of Virginia free negroes were allowed to vote by those distinguished fathers of the Republic whom the gentleman has so eulogized this evening?

Mr. DAVIS. I will answer. Simply upon this reason: that there was not one negro with ten thousand white men who did vote; the number of the negroes was so inconsiderable that it could not and did not amount to any serious obstruction of the capacity and power of the white man to govern himself and the negro too. .Now, I will put to my honorable friend from New Hampshire a Question —PRESIDING OFFICER 21r Thayer I iie Senator from South Carolina is entitled to the floor.

Mr. SAWYER. Mr. President

Mr. DAVIS. Only a word.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield the floor?

Mr. SAWYER. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS. There is nopointorforciinthe question or in the illustration that my honorable friend from New Hampshire Would deduce from his question. In the northern. States negro suffrage amounts to nothing, because there are no negroes there to vote; but in the southern States, where the negro voters would amount in numbers to more than the white voters, it then becomes a most material and' mischievous matter. Now, a half a drop of arsenic would not kill my honorable friend from South Carolina, but if he was to take half an ounce of it it would kill him as sure as falling off a log; and so of negro suffrage. To take negro suffrage where there is but one negro in ten thousand white voters is innoxious and can produce no mischief; but when the negroes preponderate, or are about equal, it then becomes the destruction and the ultimate overthrow of government to admit negroes in that proportion to take part in its administration.

Mr. SAWYER. The Senator has given us an argument for the proposition of this constitutional amendment, or something like it, for in the States where the negroes are in the largest proportion to the whites negro suffrage is a fixed fact, of which the people of those States do not complain. We desire that the negroes in the northern States who form an insignificant proportion of the whole people should have the, same privilege there; and especially have we a right to ask that they should have it when the fact of their having their rights as men is, as the honorable Senator from Kentucky says, of no sort of consequence. If it is of no sort of consequence that the negroes in Pennsylvania vote, if it does 110 sort of harm, why is there so much opposition to this amendment? If it is of no sort of consequence that a few negroes vote in Connecticut, why make such opposition to an amendment which proposes to put them on the same ground with other citizens? It is as my friend would tell you, not on account of Connecticut, or Pennsylvania, or Maine, or Massachusetts, but it is on account of Maryland, Kentucky, and Delaware, those States which were unfortunate enough (to judge by the language which is used by many of their citizens) not to be in the rebellion—unfortunate for themselves in consequence of their opinions on the great question of secession, and perhaps unfortunate for the country, because if they had been in the rebellion they would now be reconstructed States, and we should not have had this anomaly in their existence.

Mr. President, the danger of admitting the negro vote because a portion of the negroes are ignorant, the danger of admitting the votes of any class of men because some of that class of men are ignorant, is a danger which is incident to the possession of the ballot by all men. I suppose it will not be claimed by any Senator that one half of the white men in any country exercise the vote on all occasions intelligently; but on that account, because a man happens to be weaker in intellect than his neighbor; because he happens not to have the capacity for administration, the capacity for filling the offices of the counties and towns and of the State, does anybody propose to deprive him of the ballot? No; but when we get to a man whose skin is a little darker than ours, whom we can mark out as belonging to a class, we can assume that his color is a badge of inferiority, notwithstanding the numerous exceptions which we see even under the adverse circumstances under which these people labor. Then when we can establish that mark of color as the mark of a class men wish to discriminate against them and deprive them of the rights of other citizens.

Now, Mr. President, the war has made all the slaves citizens. When the war opened the great majority of the black men in the country were slaves. The rebellion came on, and in the process of the rebellion, as a consequence of the rebellion, under the Providence of God they became freemen. By the sense of justice of the American people they were made citizens of the United States. They are citizens of the United States wherever they are found to day Now, whatever class of men we makg citizens of the United States, it is, in my spinion, a public danger to keep from participation in the active powers of government.

Mr. DAVIS. Are not women citizens?

Mr. SAWYER. Women are represented through their husbands or brothers.

Mr. DAVIS. Are not our negroes; represented?".

Mr. SAWYER. Through their masters. I know that the theory is that the negroes should be represented by those who have so long represented them in providing for their animal wants and taking the proceeds of the labor of their muscle. I know that it is a favorite theory of the Senator that the negro should be represented in that way; but I claim that we have a right to exact from the male negro- citizen his duties toward his country, that we have a right to call upon him to perform his part of the labors and burdens of the citizen. We tax him; the clothes that he wears pay a revenue to the Government; the food that he eats is in many cases taxed for the aid of the Government; almost everything that he consumes is taxed. He pays a tax to the Government; he is liable to be called into the service "of the Government. They have, in immense numbers, volunteered to aid the Government in its time of trial. Demanding of the negro citizen the performance of these duties, claiming from him these taxes, I assume that it is our duty to see that he has the same rights that any other man who pays the same taxes enjoys.

I do not propose to continue these remarks. I should not have said anything on this question but for the strangeness of the doctrines which havebeon announced here. Those doctrines, it seems to me, are precisely the doctrines which led to the rebellion itself. They are an exaggerated statement of the State rights doetrine, of the doctrine of the resolutions of 1798, and following those doctrines out to their logical consequence you will not only make the States sovereign, but indorse and approve the doctrines of secession. More than that, it will, in my opinion, produce another revolution. It is generally conceded that the war has settled something in regard to that doctrine. We had supposed that the doctrine of State rights in this extreme application which is sought to be put upon it here had been put to sleep by the war; but it seems to have awakened from what we supposed was its tomb, and to show its head in every discussion; and there is a much more pronounced statement of it here by gentlemen representing northern States than can be found at the present time among gentlemen representing southern States. I believe that the vast majority of the people of the State which I have the honor to represent would dissent entirely from the views which have been stated by the distinguished Senators from Kentucky and Indiana.

Mr. DAVIS. A single remark. The Senator from South Carolina charges myself and the Senators who occupy my position with discriminating against the negro from prejudiee. I retort the charge upon the honorable Senator and his friends and his supporters in this Chamber and elsewhere.' I ask the honorable Senator to tell me if he or a single one of them has ever taken a sable Dinah to his bosom as a wife; and I ask if that is not a discrimination as distinct and quite as comprehensible as the distinction we take that the negro is incapable of self government

Mr. DRAKE. That is only a matter of taste.

Mr. DAVIS. I do not censure the honorable Senator for his taste; certainly the honorable Senator from Missouri has exhibited a most proper taste in the selection which he has made. Now, I admit that if he and the Senator from South Carolina had made different selections they would have proven then by their own personal example that the negro was equal with them and capable of sharing all the responsibilities of government with them.

Mr. SAWYER. Mr. President, I will answer in a word. I did not mean to cast any reflection upon the gentleman in speaking of' his prejudice. I know, my own observation has justified me in believing, that it is almost an impossibility or next to an 'impossibility for a man to have been born and brought iii contact with the institution Of African slavery and look at the question with a fair, unbiased judgment. I have lived for ten years in a State where the system of slavery existed. I hiive seen the negro as a slave; I have seen him as a freeman; I have sfeen him as a voter. I have not seen the native Guinea negro, as the honorable Senator characterized it; but I have seen the negroes in all the relations in which they at present appear in my State. I have never had the taste to select any colored Dinah, to quote his language, as the companion of my social hours. 1 leave that to those who are "to the manner born," [laughter;] and I have the satisfaction of knowing that even that has become disreputable in reconstructed communities, and that it is only those people who, though they do not bear in the popular acceptation down there the name of scalawags, deserve eminently to have it.-

Mr. DAVIS. I am told that our northern brethren that go to the "manner" where people are "born" go for the sable Dinah ten times as much as those who are to" the manner born."

Mr. BUCKALEW. Mr. President, it appears to me that it will be well to understand what is to be done in reference to further action on this matter.

Several Senators. We are going to vote.

Mr. BUCKALEW. I have carefully avoided entering into the debate on this subject, although I supposed I should have been expected to do so, at least so far as the consumption of time was concerned; but I have anxiously awaited the time when the Senate would conclude that it was proper to adjourn. I do not intend now to speak on this resolution or to enter into this general debate. I believe the intention is to exhaust debate on the general •proposition before we adjourn. Having sat here so long, perhaps that is a wise determination. I submit that when debate is exhausted -on the general question, when we understand that ho member intends to speak on the general question of the proposed amendment to the Constitution, we had then better adjourn to twelve o clock the usual hour of meeting, with the understanding that our further consideration of this subject be confined to the various amendments to the original proposition. They must undergo some consideration, and we must have gentlemen who are not now present in the Senate here to vote upon them, 1 suppose. I make this suggestion, then, that it be understood that we have an opportunity to consider the amendments, and that when we meet at the ordinary time to day any further remarks shall be confined to them. We may as well come to that conclusion at once as sit here and spend several hours more to no purpose.

Mr. NORTON. Mr. President, I had purposed to submit some remarks to the Senate on this subject and desired to get the floor at the adjournment or recess in the afternoon with a view to submit what I had to say upon the general proposition early this evening, or I should rather say last evening, but in that I was disappointed. I supposed afterward, when I came to the Senate, that it would be more agreeable to the body, as it certainly would be to myself at so late an hour, to let the amendments be voted upon, reserving my remarks for the main proposition in the form which it might assume after all the amendments were disposed of. 1 did not until a few moments since abandon the hope that the question might go over until to morrow with an understanding or arrangement that a vote should be taken at a certain hour, say three or four o clopk but it seems now that whatever any one may desire to say must be said to night or rather at this session.

Mr. SUMNER. If the Senator will give way I will more an adjournment.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from Minnesota give way?

Mr. NORTON. I will say that my preference would be that the Senate now adjourn.

Mr. SUMNER. Very well, I will make the motion.

Mr. NORTON. I will give way for the motion.

Mr. SUMNER, (at six minutes before four o clock a. m.) I move that the Senate do now adjourn.

The motion was not agreed to: there being on a division—ayes 12, noes '23.

Mr. NORTON proceeded to address the Senate at length. [His speech will be published in the Appendix.]

Mr. WILSON addressed the Senate in a speech which will be published in the Appen-

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on the amendment of the Senator from Oregon [Mr. Williams] to the amendment offered by the Senator from Nevada, [Mr. Stewart.]

Mr. HOWARD. Let it be read.

The Chief Clerk. The amendment is to strike out the following words of the original amendment:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote and hold office shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

And in lieu thereof to insert:

Congress shall have power to abolish or modify any restrictions upon the right to vote or hold office prescribed by the constitution or laws of any State.

Mr. HOWARD. I ask whether it is in order to offer a substitute for the amendment of the honorable Senator from Oregon?

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. It is not in order to amend this proposition, because it is an amendment to an amendment.

Mr. TRUMBULL. In voting on this amendment I think we had better have a division or a call of the yeas and nays, that Senators may come in.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on the amendment of the Senator from Oregon to the amendment of the Senator from Nevada.

The amendment to the amendment was rejected; there being on a division—ayes 6, noes 38.

Mr. DRAKE. I move an amendment to the amendment, to strike out all of section one of the proposed article and insert:

No citizen of the United States shall, on account of his race, color, or previous condition of servitude, be by the United States or any State donied the right to vote or to hold office.

Mr. President,, I have endeavored very earnestly to express in the briefest possible compass the idea intended to be conveyed by this constitutional amendment. I would ask the attention of the Senate to this form, which I have drawn after repeated attempts, believing that it expressed the whole proposition in less words and in a better collocation of words than any amendment that I have yet seen. Of course, if the Senate should be of opinion that there is some other amendment which expresses it more succinctly than this I shall cheerfully agree to whatever their judgment is.

Mr. EDMUNDS. I should like to inquire of the Senator from Missouri what the difference is between his amendment and the one reported by the committee. It is not obvious to my comprehension at this moment, and I should be glad to have him explain it seriously.

Mr. DRAKE. I think that there is a difference, if not any otherwise, in the arrangement of the different parts of the sentence.

Mr. EDMUNDS. Yes; I see there is a mechanical difference.

Mr. DRAKE. There is, I think, more than a mechanical difference. The right to vote or to hold office appearing in the beginning of the amendment proposed by the committee seems to carry with it the idea that there is a right to vote or hold office independent and irrespective of a constitutional or legal grant to that effect. By placing it in the other end of the sentence in the connection in which I h dve placed it, it seems to me not to convey that idea, but that the sole idea conveyed in it is that the denial of the thing shall not take place pursuant to the antecedent circumstances mentioned in the amendment.

It may be, Mr. President, that I am not exactly perspicuous in the statement of it; it may be that there is a line of difference and a shade of distinction, but I beg leave to suggest to the honorable Senator from Vermont that if, even in the mechanical construction of the sentence, the one has an advantage over the other, even in so small a matter as that in a constitutional provision, attention should be given to it. I think that upon hearing the two read together the probability is—I say it with all respect and deference—that hearing the two read together the consciousness of the Senator would probably recognize in that collocation of the different branches of the sentence which I have made, one which is apparently more fit for the subject than that which has been presented by the committee.

Mr. HOWARD. Mr. President, I think the proposition of the Senator from Missouri is open to the same objection which lies against the amendment of the Committee on the Judiciary. If I understand it rightly there arises from it the same implication which is derived from the language of the committee, namely, that although the United States, that is, Congress, may not deny or abridge the right to vote and hold office on account of race or color or previous condition of slavery, Congress may establish some other test upon the ground that it is fairly implied. Now, sir, I cannot vote myself for any such thing. I will not vote directly or by implication authority to prescribe any such test as that of religious creed, education, property, or anything else, and I should far prefer the amendment which I propose to offer myself at the proper time instead of either of these propositions, for I think the one which I shall offer steers clear of these difficulties entirely.

Mr. DRAKE. I would inquire of the honorable Senator from Michigan if he conceives it to be within the range of possibility in constitutional construction that the express denial to the United States or to any State of the right to do one particular named thing could by implication be held to be an affirmation of its right to do another thing?

Mr. HOWARD. The question is entirely too general in its terms and does not admit of any definite and exact answer. The clause submitted by the Committee on the Judiciary is this:

The rights of citizens of the United States to vote and hold officeshall notbedeniedor abridged by the United States or any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

As I understand it, the proposition of the Senator from Missouri is tantamount to this. Now, it appears to me very evident that if this clause shall be adopted, there is granted to the United States by a plain, manifest indication the power to deny or abridge these rights for some other and any other cause. I cannot give it any other interpretation. I am not perfectly sure, however, that the proposition of the Senator from Missouri is liable to the same objection, because this is the first time I have heard it.

Mr. DRAKE. It is not, I think.

Mr. HOWARD. I hope, then, that it will be read again.

The Chief Clerk again read the proposed amendment.

Mr. STEWART. I desire to inquire if he might not be deprived of that right by reason of somebody else s offenses. In the House a portion of the section was put in the form it is in consequence of the attempt to avoid a difficulty that might arise from a man being deprived of the right to vote by reason of his ancestors having been slaves. I think if the Senator from Missouri will look at the amendment of our committee he will see that the language is notso likely to be misunderstood: The right of citizens of the United States to vote and holaoffioe shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or fey any State On account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

This, probably, would not only include the citizen himself, but the class to which he belonged. The amendment of th e Senator from Missouri is an attempt to get up the same idea in' different language; but I do not. think the language is as safe as that in the amendment of the committee. The proposition, however, is new to me, and it is somewhat difficult to pass upon language of this kind readily. I think the amendment proposed by the committee is safer.

Mr. DRAKE. The right to vote is an individual right; it does not belong to masses of people, but it belongs to each individual. When you frame a constitutional provision which is to bear upon the right of the individual and not upon the right of communities, then I take it that almost every gentleman in the Senate will at oiHje recognize the propriety of making the provision apply to the individual directly, and not to masses. Every man who goes to the polls goes upon his own individual right to vote, and his right to vote cannot be affected one way or the other by the right of any mass of people of whom he may be one. Therefore it is that I object so strongly to the language of the House resolution, the putting of these words at the end of the amendment, -'or class of citizens of the United States," asifmyright to vote could by any possibility be affected by the right of any other class of citizens of the United States. It is a great deal better to make it as strictly personal and individual in its bearings as it can be made. I believe that if the Senator will so far considertlie matter as to scan closely the language of my amendment he will see that it does cover every conceivable case, and is not liable to the objection to the other form of amendment, bringing the words "the rights of citizens" in the foreground of the amendment, and thereby assume that they have aright to vote or hold office without any grand principle of sovereign power as a mere natural right-

Mr. STEWART. I think that amendment is just as well as a declaration. I do not see any point in that. The only point is whether we have made an affirmative proposition sufficiently clear that it cannot be evaded. The House of Representatives put in the latter portion of their proposition the words," class of citizens," for the reason that a person might be deprived of his right to vote on account of the servitude of his ancestors or on account of the servitude of his class, although he might not have been himself in actual servitude. Consequently they thought it sufficient to put on the last clause, so as to say that the rights of citizens of the United States shall not be denied or abridged on account of their race, their color, or their previous condition, meaning the class to which they belong. This is the bread expression of the proposition. The amendment of the Senator from Missouri is a particular proposition, and I think it narrows the amendment and does not improve the measure.

Mr. EDMUNDS. If I could persuade myself that the amendment reported by the committee does imply, as the Senator from Missouri supposes, that there exists now any citizen of the United States—which is a subject to which the sentence relates—without the right to exercise political privileges, then most certainly I should think that it was a great deal better than any amendment which did not imply such an existing right, because I am one ot those, and I may as well say it now as ever, who believe that the fourteenth amendment which we have already adopted has undertaken to secure to citizens of the United States all the privileges and immunities that belong to citizens as such, including, of course, and comprehending all belonging to the class. There is no qualification or limitation, but words the most comprehensive possible in a statute or in a constitution are used. I believe that every citizen o f the United States in respect to whom political rights can be asserted at all is entitled now to exercise political privileges; and therefore if there is any man in the United States who was before that amendment entitled to exercise political privileges, that amendment extended to all the citizens similarly situated, without arbitrary and mere fanciful distinctions, such as color, nativity, education, or of religion, an equal right; because if there is any vitality at all in that article, which was so much studied here, and which at last has commanded the assent of three fourths of the States, it is that it gave the great and comprehensive word "privileges" to all citizens alike, and that it made secure to them privileges that belonged to the highest class of community.

This is worth thinking of while we are discussing even these amendments, because now we are coming to the real consideration of this question, having finished for the morning at least the orations which have been delivered, splendid and instructive and delightful, but after all lacking the precise considerations which belong to law or constitution making Now, where shall we find ourselves if we cut loose from this anchor which now holds us to an orbit of liberty, and go sailing away after the assent of three fourths of the States to something else upon the assumption, up on the admission, as our enemies will claim, that there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States, as it now stands, which preserves to any citizen the right to exercise political privileges? How long will it be before no citizen under the Constitution of the United States will be secure in the exercise of political privileges if he is not now? Who is able to say where the twenty eight or twenty nine independent States are to be found who will agree t o any further addition to that instrument? And what is to become of your privileges and mine, as secured under the Constition of the United States, during this uncertain and doubtful future which lies before us, no man can tell. It is true, sir, undoubtedly, that wheresoever that party which we call the Republican party holds sway in the States they will as a rule gladly accede to it if it shall be thought that it adds anything either in principle or in form to the security of the great rights which belong to human nature and civilization.

Mr. STEWART. Allow mo call the attention of my friend from Vermont to a provision of the Constitution which prevents this from being so regarded:

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not bo construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Mr. SUMNER. Is there any word of human conception broader than" privilege?" When that was given, did it not give everything?

Mr. STEWART. I merely say that if you pass this there is an express constitutional provision that it shall not be a presumption that it excludes any privilege already belonging to the citizen.

Mr EDMUNDS My friend cannot have understood the jraint of the argument I was suggesting, by bringing forward such a reason as an answer to it. What I am calling the attention ot the Senate to is the argument, if I may so speak, of a judge or a lawyer of a construction. Now, if having last year passed one statute this year you pass another on the same subject, do you not by a certain implication, at least in the moral sense, raise and put forth the idea that the old statute did not answer the purpose that you are now seeking for? What my friend has said in relation to the inherent and inalienable rights of human nature are not to be prejudiced by anything in the Constitution. My point is, th t by putting something in the Constitution, which we now propose to do, we shall have raised the intellectual question, not the human, one, whether we are not conclu ded by now attempting to make in this amendment that the amendment we made before did not reach the same end. I do not say that that is a sound argument. We may go on making amendment after amendment that have the same legal scope and -effect, it is true: but it so happens in the course of human affairs that the world will not accept that idea. The country will believe—and the■ country in_ a large degree influences judicial as well as political proceedings—that we are satisfied in both Houses of Congress that the Constitution of the United States as it now stands does not contain any security of political privileges to any man. I do not wish to make that concession.

Mr, DRAKE.- Will the honorable Senator from Vermont allow me to inquire whether I understand the scope of his argument?

Mr. EDMUNDS. I do not know that you do.

Mr. DRAKE. That is exactly what I do not know myself, and I wish to ascertain. The question with me is, on .which I wish to get information from the honorable Senator, whether he considers that the first section of the fourteenth article of amendment to the Constitution does now confer upon citizens of the United States the right to vote in the States in which they reside?

Mr. EDMUNDS. Decidedly, Mr. President. I congratulate my friend from Missouri, after this long, sleepless night, on his having understood my proposition perfectly.

Mr. DRAKE. Then I must be permitted to say, Mr. President, that I do not think the proposition is a sound one.

Mr. EDMUNDS. That, sir, is a question of opinion about which my friend from Missouri will permit me to differ from him, I have no doubt. This fourteenth article, if he will allow me to call his attention to it, was certainly intended to do something. I may make use of the same argument that I was suggesting a moment ago against the wisdom of passing this one. It was intended to make it a subject in addition, was it not, touching the political privileges and rights of citizens of the united States. We have already in the Constitution an express declaration that the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the several States should be guarantied to them in whatever State they might take up their residence. I am not using the language but the substance .of the section with which my friend is well acquainted. We had that already. We had the article abolishing slavery. What, then, did we lack? What was the fourteenth article designed to secure? What w as there left in the range of the rights of citizenship under the Constitution as it stood before the fourteenth article, except exactly that which is covered and comprehended in the broadest of language contained in the fourteenth article, that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States shall not be either abridged or denied by the United States or by any State; defining also, what it was possible was open to some question after the Dred Scott decision, who were citizens of the United States.'

Mr. HOWE. Will my friend allow me to ask him if that language secures the right to vote to men does it not also to women and children?

Mr. EDMUNDS. Not necessarily.

Mr. HOWE. Why not?

Mr. EDMUNDS. For a reason that my friend will find better stated, in a legal point of view than I can state it, in a decision of the supreme court of the State of Kentucky, pronounced about twenty five or thirty years ago, when Kentucky was in the pride of her judicial renown, as she was in her political, and when her courts could not be accused—as I do not know that they now can be—of any special leaning toward liberty and the rights of citizenship. He win find it there decided that in order to be a citizen, in the general and comprehensive sense of the term, such as thefourteenth article defines it to be, a person must have of necessity, as an essential and indispensable ingredient in citizenship, the highest political privileges that belong to any class in society. Tlien the court proceeded to say that although that is true, the highest privileges belonging to any class in society are not extended to females, and therefore the qualification as to females is made in this general right upon the same legal principle that it is made as to idiots and insane persons, not that a female is necessarily like either, but I am speaking in a mere legal sense, as a court would construe it. So, therefore, without at this hour in the day taxing the patience of those who listen to me by going into the legal and logical argument that can be made and that is made by the courts to deny the right to vote to females, while they assert and maintain that it is an essential and indispensable constituent of the right of manhood citizenship, I refer my friend to those judicial decisions to show that there is comprehended in the very name of citizen in this country, truly and rightly considered and adjudicated, the same great and all embracing powers that in ancient times applied to a Roman citizen.

Mr. HOWE. But I wish, if my friend will allow me, to ask him if the decision of the supreme court of Kentucky, to which he refers, pronounced twenty five years ago, is not reversed by this very clause of the Constitution, which says that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the States in which they reside.

Mr. EDMUNDS. Not reversed at all; forthat is exactly what the decision holds. It holds that everybody, subject to the qualification I have named, is a citizen of the country for that purpose; that there belongs to everybody who, as a part of the highest class in community, may exercise political privileges, equal political rights; and therefore, as the case was in Kentucky, a male person cannot be a citizen unless, being a citizen, he has breathed into him at the same moment with the fact that he is a citizen the right to vote. That is perhaps a sufficient definition of citizenship in the narrow sense we are now speaking of, as distinguishing between the rights of citizens, rather than defining what they are. A citizen is a person in community who, other things being equal, is invested with all the privileges that belong to the highest class in community, by whatever name you may call them.

1 admit that this method of argument to show that a citizen must necessarily possess the privileges that belong to the highest class, and that that is the true definition of the term, and at the same time to hold that that does not comprehend an adult female, is a somewhat artificial and, philosophically speaking, a somewhat unsound argument; but I say that judicial decisions have determined that these are the qualities that inhere in the very nature and definition of citizenship as applied to the political subjects which relate to any citizenship at all, and that this qualification, as I call it, is equally well settled.

We may, therefore, set aside, for the purpose of considering what I am speaking of, the question whether by a true and philosophical construction of the definition of the term "citizen," a female would be entitled to vote or not. That is not the question now before us. I should not cry very much if we could extend the true and philosophic idea of citizenship to giving females the right to vote. I think they would vote quite as well as we do if they would only go and do it. The great difficulty that I have on that question—but I am not going into a dissertation on it—is that I am very much afraid when it is extended to them all the bad women will vote and the good women will stay at home. It is somewhat so with men. The non voting class in a community, as you and I well know, sir, who are entitled to vote, as a rule are those who, when they would go and vote, would exercise the most salutary and beneficial influence upon society; and they commit crime, in a certain sense, against society if they do not do it. You never see a bad man or a wicked man or a man who is a tool in the hands of somebody else absent from the polls on election day. He is there and counts to the last vote, It is not so with the other class of the community. That is a defect in the men who compose and should rule and control our institutions. But that is apart from my present purpose.