June 6, 1866

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the joint resolution (II. It. No. 127) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the pending question being on the amendment proposed by Mr. Dooutti e as a substitute for the second section of the proposed article of constitutional amendment.

Mr. I10 VE resumed and concluded the speech commenced yesterday. His entire argument will be published in the Appendix.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. President, the Senate will bear witness, and I have no doubt my colleague will cheerfully accord the same, that, never upon any occasion has a word fallen from me calculated or intended to wound in the slightest, degree the good name or good fame of my colleague. I think no such word ever escaped me, and if I know my own heart no such word will ever fall from my lips. But the remark which my colleague made when lie concluded his sentence which had reference to me, that in my history I had, politically, been found where office or position brought the highest price is a remark which if not construed with more charitable feelings than most men are capable of exercising, might be supposed to contain some reflection upon the integrity of my purpose in my political action: Sir. 'I claim no infallibility; 1 am as liable to mistakes as other men; but what I do claim is that in what I have done in my political life I have intended to do right. I mayliave erred in not carrying those intentions fully into effect; but, sir, that I ever intended in the slightest degree to swerve in my political action for the sake of offices or the price of offices in the market, is to those who know me a statement wholly without foundation.

Mr. HOWE. My colleague does not mean to say that I have charged him with any such thing.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. My colleague does not assume to charge it, but assumes to say that it looks like it.

Mr. HOWE. No, sir.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. I understood my colleague to say that from my course it would seem that I was the most fortunate of all politicians to bo always where the offices could be obtained which commanded the highest price t in the market.

Mr. HOWE. No; not even that, though that is very different from what my colleague was replying to. After stating the situation of parties and political affairs at these periods, I did remark, expressly disclaiming any idea of charging him with being untrue to his convictions, that it was a most fortunate coincidence that lie had always happened to have the very convictions which at those different periods bore the highest price in the market.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. President, those words are equivocal. The inference to be drawn is substantially what I said, if not to cast an imputation, to raise a question as to the sincerity of the motives which have controlled me. Now, Mr. President, it is not pleasant for a man to speak of himself; it is not becoming on ordinary occasions that a man should speak of himself or for himself; but, sir, upon a point like this, I may be pardoned if I allude to other crises in my life in which I have been called upon to take important and decisive action in relation to my political course.

And first, sir, I refer to 1847. In the convention of the Democratic party of the State of New York, when we were in possession by force of arms of the territories of Mexico, and the question of their disposition was to bo determined, after Mr'. Polk, then President, had recommended the disposition of those territories in such a manner as to give to slavery a considerable portion of them—under these circumstances, and when the responsibility was upon the country, I, as a member of the dominant party of the country, (a party which had the Executive, which had both branches of Congress, which was in a large majority in almost all of the States,) had occasion upon my responsibility to take action upon the pending question raised by the situation of affairs; and that question was the same question which for twenty years has been the great issue, shall slavery be extended into the Territories of the United States or not? As a member of the convention of the dominant party in the State of New York I brought forward that resolution denominated the corner stone resolution," upon which wc separated ourselves from the majority and the dominant party in the State, and organized what was denominated the Freesoil party of the State of New York. That corncr stone resolution stood at the head of the leading newspapers of New York and New England and Ohio, and Wisconsin, too, as the corner stone upon which the Free soil organization was laid.

Sir, for no purpose but to carry out what I believed to be the duty resting upon me and carrying forward the true interests of the country, we deliberately went into a great minority, abandoned the majority and office and all chance for office, all place and all thought of place, abandoned all to give ourselves to the principle which was involved in the struggle. What followed? The Democratic party was overthrown; General Cass, its candidate, who was in favor of what was called the diffusion of the institution of slavery by way of absorbing it and blotting it out, was laid aside, and General Taylor was elected. What then intervened? One of those things which seem almost, as we look back upon it now, as the special providence of Almighty God. The discovery of the gold mines of California happening just at this time carried the people of the free States by hundreds and thousands into that new Territory just acquired from Mexico; and they organized a free State government with a free constitution, came to Congress and demanded admission, and Congress dared not refuse, for California was the golden Stale, and a rising State on the west side of the Rocky mountains, and she could not be held against her will. She demanded admission; and the Senate of the United States, pro slavery as it was, was compelled to yield to the demand, and California was admitted as a free State. That was the result of the organization of the Free soil party of 1847 and 1848. It was a victory for freedom by the admission of that free State which gave in this Senate a majority to the free States of the Union.

What then occurred? There was got up what was called a grand compromise. All the great Whigs and all the great Democrats of the country in this body and in the other House got together and produced what was called the compromise of 1850, and then it was proclaimed by the great men of the country, "The slavery question is now forever ended; it shall never be agitated again; now the country shall be quieted; we shall hear no more upon that subject." The two parties went into the nomination of their candidates in 1852 upon precisely the same platform in that respect. The Whig party nominated General Scott, and they declared there should be no discussion of the slavery question at all countenanced or encouraged. The Democratic party nominated General Pierce, and they declared the same thing, so that upon this question in 1852—the time when my colleague charges upon me that I abandoned the cause which I liad espoused in 1848 because he says I gave my support to General Pierce in 1852—both the great parties of the country occupied the same ground. It is a fact to be noticed also that the great majority of the Free soil party with which I acted in 1848, in the State of New York, as well as in Ohio and Wisconsin, went into the support of General Pierce in 1852. There was only a little, small remnant of that party who voted for Hale, who was in 1852 the candidate of what was called the Liberty party. There were a few who did so. The honorable Senator who now occupies the chair [Mr. Pomeroy] was one who adhered to Mr. Hale, and I believe the honorable Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] also adhered to Mr. Hale in 1852; but there were very few of the Free soil organization either in Ohio or in New York or in Wisconsin who did.

Here was no abandonment of principle on my part. It is true I went upon the bench in 185 J having been elected in 1852, in the State of Wisconsin. From 1853 to 1856 I was constantly engaged in the arduous duties of judge of the first judicial district of Wisconsin, which at that time was the most populous and had the most business of any of the judicial districts of the State; and while I was on the bench I had sufficient regard to what I thought were (he proprieties of that position not to engage publicly in political affairs; but from the moment the Democratic party, which had elected General Pierce on the pledge that the slavery question should not be reopened, proposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, to every person who conversed with mo on the subject 1 freely, openly, frankly declared in opposition to the project, and said that it would be the dissolution and the destruction of the Democratic party.

My colleague refers to the fact that in 1856 I gave my open' adhesion and my public support to the election of Mr. Fremont, but says that I did not write a public letter or make a public speech until after the adjournment of Congress. You remember, sir—and I know you do, for you were a resident of Kansas at the time—that for long months here in Congress the very question pending was whether Congress would enforce the border ruffian slave code of Kansas, or would repeal it. If Congress had repealed it, Kansas would have been a free State. 1 did not desire to go into political life or to go into a struggle. I was engaged in my profession, a profession that brings more profit and much more ease than any place like those we occupy here. I had no desire to go into it; but when the Congress of the United States, under the influence of the Senate of that day, determined that the^ could enforce that bloody code upon the Territory of Kansas, I could not withhold my declaration. Sir, it was like fire in my bones and in my heart, it demanded and would have utterance: and when the utterance came it came red hot in the denunciation of the infernal outrage that was thus practiced upon the people of that Territory; and as my colleague says—it would not be becoming in me to say it—the people of Wisconsin perhaps did feel grateful for what I did in the canvass of 1853 in denouncing the Democratic party and overthrowing it and trampling the organization under our feet which would justify' and sustain an outrage like that. Mr. President, I never sought alliance with the Republican party because it had offices whose price was high in the market sir; never. My colleague refers to my course in Wisconsin, Sir, during the last six months, ay, more than six months past, in the State of Wisconsin no man has struggled harder than I have struggled to save the Union party, to save it to its platform, to save it to its principles, to save it in its supremacy. There is. hardly a man in Wisconsin this day who does not know that the success of the Union party there is due to those men who in the convention at Madison united with me and agreed with me in opinion there and in resisting what was there proposed, to wit, to declare by the resolutions of the Union convention that the States of the South should never have representatives in Congress until they extended universal suffrage to negroes. Because we resisted that in the State of Wisconsin we saved the Union party and elected its candidates by nine thousand majority when the very proposition presented to the people based upon negro suffrage was voted down by nine thousand. Had we, consulting the public newspapers, consulting the denunciations and the clamor of the hour, been false to our position and false to the crisis, had wo yielded to that clamor, the Union party would have been utterly overwhelmed in the State of Wisconsin at the last election.

Mr. President, it has been charged that it was through my instrumentality that that convention refused to adopt any such new creed or new platform which never had been incorporated as a part of the Union creed or the Union platform. I have been charged with the responsibility of that. If the responsibility of that rests upon me, then it is true that I had the honor of saving the Union party of Wisconsin in its struggle last fall. But has the course pursued by me there saved me from the denunciations of the public press? Not at all. For six months, from one end of Wisconsin to the other, ay, from Boston to St. Paul, by every one of a certain class of newspapers I have been denounced as a traitor to the Union party because I saved it from defeat. Sir, it is not the first time in the history of the world that men have turned in to crucify their^ saviour. So far as 1 am concerned, my political life may be ended; but the principles for which I have contended, the principles for which I have made the struggle, will live. Men may suppose that those principles are crucified: they may imagine that the doctrine of the right of the States to control their own institutions, so far, at least, as to be permitted to declare who shall exercise the right of suffrage wUlnu their limits, is crucified and buried in the tomb, with a stone rolled at the door; they may imagine that these principles are dead and buried and will never rise again. So far as individuals are concerned, it is of but little consequence. I, as an individual, may have met denunciation; perhaps I may be consigned to defeat; but what of all that? What care I, if the principles live? I tell you, Mr. President, and it is as certain as that the sun will rise to morrow that the great principles for which I have contended will live; their resurrectum is certain; and those who stand in opposition to them will find that they are living, vitalizing principles; that they will have recognition, and you cannot keep them buried out of sight.

Mr. President, I have been betrayed, perhaps, into saying more than I would have said under other circumstances. I have no unkind words to my colleague, no questions upon the sincerity of his course, no imputations upon his motives. I only rose to say, in my own defense, that so far as my intentions are concerned, I intend to pursue the right, if I know where it leads; and, God helping me, I will pursue it to the end, be the consequences what they may.

Mr. I DAVIS. Mr. President, the pending question before the Senate is, I believe, the amendment proposed by the Senator from Wisconsin, [Mr. Doolittle.] If it be the pleasure of the Senate, I should like to have the vote taken on that proposition now, so that I may have the opportunity of offering two or three amendments myself.

The PRESIDING OFFICER, (Mr. Pomeroy in the chair.) The question before the Senate is on the amendment of the Senator from Wisconsin to the second section, upon which the yeas and nays have been ordered.

Several Senators. Let it bo read.

The Secretary. The amendment is to strike out the second section of the proposed article, and in lieu of it to insert the followAfter the census to bo taken in the year 1870, and each succeeding census, Representatives shall bo apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to the number in each State of male electors over twenty ono years of age qualified by the laws thereof to choose members of the most numerous branch of its Legislature; and direct, taxes shall be apportioned anions the sevoiat States according to (ho value of the real and personal taxable property situate m each State not belonging to the State or to the United States.

.Mr. 11 IfMliUIjL I would inquire if we did not vote on that direct proposition once before,

Mr. DOOLITTLE. No, sir.

Mr. CLARK. It was submitted, but not voted upon.

The PRESIDING OFFICER The vote has not been taken. The yeas and nays have been ordered.

Mr. HOWARD, I hope the vote will be taken.

Tito finesl ion licinsj taken by yeas and nays, resulted—yeas 7, nays :S1; as follows ,Cowan, Davis, Doolittle, Guthrie, llomlne lt ,1 Johnson, and Kiddle—7.

NAYS— •Alrw rs Anthony, Chandler, Clark, ('oniie s Cragin, Edmunds, Fos emlon Foster, (intnes. Mill 11.-, Ilmv ud Howe, Kirkwood, Lane ol Indiana, IUor« ui .\lomll, \orfon, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, Itains T Sheniiim, Sprague, Stewart, Sunmcr, i rum hull. Van Winkle, Wade, Williams, Wilson, and Y at CM- 111.

AllSKN l Messrs. Brown, Uuckalew, Creswell, Dixon, Henderson, Lane of Kansas, MeDougall, Nesimth Saulsbury, Willey, and Wright—l).

So the amendment, was rejected.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. ]iy the courtesy of the Senator from Kentucky I desire to offer another iiinemlment. It is not the same as the last; it differs in this respect, that it bases representation upon male citizens who are voters, and not. on male electors simply. I do not suppose it will give rise to any discussion. 1 merely oiler the amendment, and ask for the sense of 1 lie Senate by yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

The Secretary read the proposed amendment, which was to strike out section two and in lieu thereof insert the following:

Koprc cntatives shall bo apportioned among the several States which may bo included within this Union, according to the number in each State of nialo citizens oi the United States over twenty ono years of ago qualified by the laws of such State to choose members of the most numerous branch of its ■Legislature, and. including such citizens as are disqualified by participating in rebellion. X irecttaxes shall be apportioned among the several States according to the value of the real and personal taxable property situate in each State not belonging to the State or to the United States.

Mr. HENDRICKS. I voted for the amendment proposed by the Senator from Wisconsin, not that I believe that representation in this country ought to be based upon the voting population, but I voted for it as I thought it better than the proposition that is before the Senate from the committee. I think representation ought to be based upon population, and that taxation ought to rest upon the property of the country ad valorem; and now that this question has been raised in this country, T believe it will yet come to that before the question is finally settled.

Mr. SHERMAN. I shall detain the Senate but for a moment to explain the reasons for the vote I shall give in opposition to what is my own deliberate judgment on the question now pending. The more I think of this question the more I am convinced that the true basis of representation in the present condition of affairs is the number of male citizens who under the laws of the States are allowed to vote. This proposition, it seems to me, is a simple one, plain and obvious, which puts a citizen in one State on a footing of precise equality with a citizen in every oilier State, which equalizes the political power of all citizens, and which will destroy all sectional animosity. If this amendment be adopted, a citizen of the State of Ohio has precisely the same political power with a citizen of the State of Massachusetts or of South Carolina, no more and no less. The same number would be required in each State to elect a member of Congress. The number of citizens could be easily ascertained by the census, and the census rolls could be attested very readily at each annual election. This proposition is simple, plain, and obvious; and yet under the necessity in which we are now placed I shall feel called upon to vote against it. My reason for this I will briefly state. In my judgment some change ought to be made in the basis of representation. The condition of the negro population in the southern States, now deprived of all political power, is such that to give to the white people of those States the right to vote for the negro population and represent them is to give them an undue advantage, one which we could not justify even if they had not been in rebellion.

There is 110 reason why the white citizens of South Carolina should vote the political power of a class of people whom they say are entirely unfit to vote for themselves. If there is any portion of the people of this country who are unfit to vote for themselves, their neighbors ought not, to vote for them. The plain and obvionsprinciple of representation is that every voter should vote for himself, and for no one else; those who have not the right to vote should be represented by the majority of the voting population, and not by their immediate neighbors. There is no reason, for instance, why because the State of Massachusetts has a preponderance of women a voter in Massachusetts should count more than a voter somewhere else. There is no reason why, because in the city of New York there is a very large element of unnaturalized foreigners, a voter in the city of New York should have more political power than a voter anywhere else. There is no reason why, because a white man lives in the South, where they have a large mass of negro population, a white man in the South should have more political power than a white man in Ohio. There is no reason why, because in Ohio we have a greater proportion of voters to our population than they have in other States, we should be deprived of political power. The truth is that every man who has the right to vote should be counted one, and the aggregate of votes should then be divided by the proper number of Representatives in the political body—the House of Representatives order to arrive at a true and correct apportionment. That is a plain and obvious principle, and if that principle was adopted the southern States would feel no local jealousy. They could not feel any. No State and 110 community would have the right to complain. The laws of. the United States would fix the naturalization of the foreigner; birth would fix the citizenship of the native; there could be no controversy. Then every citizen would stand equal before the law, with precisely the same political power, no more and no less. I say, therefore, that this is the only amendment to the propositions now submitted to us that 1 desire to make; but I feel bound by the action of my political friends to vote against this amendment. I place my vote distinctly on this ground: here are propositions upon the details of which men would naturally differ, and it was therefore necessary for those who intended to support the mass of the propositions to confer together and agree upon those which they could support. There must be at some point of every controversy of this kind some surrender of individual opinion. Although my opinion is as clear as it can be upon any subject that this amendment is right in itself, both branches of it, yet as we were compelled to unite on some measure—and we must all yield some of our opinions upon various questions involved—there are five sections in this proposed article feel bound to vote against this amendment offered by the Senator from Wisconsin, though in my judgment it would do more than any other to heal the difficulties by which we are surrounded. A majority of those who will support the propositions on which we are to stand believe that the measure in the shape in which it is before us is the 5 wisest, and I am bound on that question to defer my own opinion to that majority who differ from me in order to secure the passage of this resolution. I am the more reconciled to this course because next to the proposition now submitted I think the present is the best that has over been offered. Next to the simple, plain proposition of basing representation upon vo crs the section before us is the best. It does recognize the equity of the rule I have mentioned. It bases representation upon population, and it excludes representation for a class of people that have no political power; but it stops short of the logical sequence of the principle. It endeavors to save representation for certain portions of our country where they have a population whom they deprive of the right to vote; but it deprives the South of representation for a population which has no right to vote. It is therefore to some extent unjust, and yet it is more just than any other proposition which has been submitted to us. For instance, the proposition which I voted for some two or three months ago, reported b£ the committee on reconstruction, proposed that if the South excluded any portion of the negro population from voting the effect should be to exclude the whole mass of that population from representation. This proposition is better than that. It is indeed better than any other except the simple, logical proposition of basing representation upon voters.

While I do not and cannot surrender my individual opinion on this subject, I shall vote against the amendment of the Senator from Wisconsin simply because it is necessary to have an end to this controversy, and those who are expected to carry these propositions before the people must agree upon some platform, and I choose to stand by that which has been agreed upon by those who are expected to vote for some amendments to the Constitution. All those who believe that amendments ought to be adopted must confer among themselves and get the best proposition upon which they can agree, and then they must abide by it and. stand by it. Although my friend from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks] may say that that is the result of a caucus, let me tell him that he has submitted to such a result a hundred times, and would do it again. I would always rather submit to the deliberate judgment of a majority of those with whom I act than to seek the aid of my political opponents, uniting with a minority of ray friends to make a platform that nobody would be satisfied with.

Mr. WILSON. After the remarks made by the Senator from Ohio I desire to say simply that I regard this amendment as a proposition to. strike from the basis of representation two million one hundred thousand unnaturalized foreigners in the old free States, for whom we are now entitled to seventeen Representatives in the other House, and it weakens that part of the country that much. That is all there is in it. It is simply a blow which strikes the two million one hundred thousand unnaturalized foreigners who are now counted in the basis of representation from that basis, and takes the Representatives for that population from the loyal portion of the country for the benefit of the other end of the country that has been disloyal. That is the proposition, and I shall vote against it.

Mr. SHERMAN. I think that a remark only is necessary in reply to that. The two million of unnaturalized foreign population alluded to by the Senator is somewhat an overestimate. But take it at two millions; how long are they excluded? Only during a short period of probation—live years; and in most of the States the great body of them are promptly admitted to citizenship.

Mr. President, I ask you whether it is not just that those people who are denied political power should be excluded from the basis of representation. If it is right to exclude four million blacks in the southern States who are denied representation, is it not also right to exclude all other classes in every other State who are denied political power? We cannot go before the people of the United States and argue the question as it affects this State or that State, this community or that community. The amendment to the Constitution which we propose we must settle upon some fundamental principle judge by the way it will operate upon this community or that community, but as it operates on the whole mass of the community at large.

Now, I say that it is not unjust to exclude the communities in which two million foreigners in the process of naturalization live from exercising political power for them. As soon as our laws allow them to exercise political power for themselves they will become citizens, and they will vote; but the very same reason which excludes the four million colored population in the southern States who are denied by their laws all political power would exclude temporarily, during the short period of probation, the foreign population who are unnaturalized. But it must be remembered by my friend from Massachusetts that the great body of unnaturalized foreigners are women and children. Nearly all the men who come to this country are naturalized in five years. The exceptions are very rare. In an agricultural community like the West all foreigners are naturalized in a short period of time, except in some States where the policy of their laws is to prevent them from being naturalized by allowing them to vote without being naturalized. The most of the unnaturalized people in this country are women and children. Nearly all the men who have lived here five years have votes. The objection the Senator now makes, that two million foreigners would be unrepresented, disappears in 1870, because by that time all who have been in this country during the' requisite period would undoubtedly be naturalized, and they would then be counted.

Mr. GRIMES. Others take their places.

Mr. SHERMAN. They are coming in. But ought they to be counted until we .intrust them with political power? The Senator from Massachusetts has no more right to vote for a foreigner whom the laws of the United States declare to be unfit to vote for himself than I have, merely because he lives in Massachusetts. It seems to me that is not a fair argument.

Another argument has been often drawn into this discussion. 1 do not know that it is worth while for me to continue the discussion, because as I feel bound by the action of my friends 1 shall vote against this amendment. But there is another argument. It is said that the young and active men of all the eastern States, including Ohio, which now sends more abroad than it receives, emigrate westward, leaving their families behind them, and that it is unjust to deprive those families of political representation. So it would be taking a superficial view, but you must remember that these young men who go West themselves represent their families, and that they bring the principles in which they were taijght back into this body and into the other House. They exercise political power for their families when they go to the West. The West gives these emigrants office, honor, position. Should not the West count for that? When a young man goes from Massachusetts to Minnesota, ought not Minnesota to have the benefit of his political power in her count of representation, when she gives him office and honor and power and patronage? Undoubtedly. Wherever the man votes there he ought to be counted; and if he leaves behind those who do not vote they ought not to be counted. He ought to be counted where he exercises his political power, so that a man in one State may be the same in every State, having the same political power. But I will not discuss this matter further.

Mr. COWAN. Mr. President, I have a word to say. I am not exactly in the category of my honorable friend from Ohio. I do not wear the harness of caucus on this occasion, or indeed upon any other. I am opposed to any alteration of the Constitution in this point, because to me that is vital. But 1 am going to vote for the proposition of the Senator from Wisconsin because I think it better than the original proposition and not worse.

It does seem to me there are most, extraordinary notions of political power here, what constitutes it, where it is vested, and how it is wielded. What conceivable difference can it make to a citizen of Pennsylvania as to how Ohio distributes her political power? What conceivable interest, has the honorable Senator from Ohio, or a Senator from any other State, to say to us whom we shall allow to vote and whom we shall not allow? They do not pretend that they have a right to say to us whom we shall elect and whom we shall not elect; and is not the elector just as much the choice of the community as an officer is the choice of it, except that the electors are chosen by a class and described by a general designation, whereas the officer is chosen by name to perform certain functions?

Mr. President, to touch, to venture upon that ground is to revolutionize the whole frame and texture of the system of our Government; to turn it over: to violate our own canons. What is the guarantee of the United States to the several States? It is that they shall have a republican form of government. Now we are told that a republican form of government is this, that, and the other. One man says it is" universal suffrage;" another man says it is "universal manhood suffrage," so as to throw out the ladies; another says it is "universal white suffrage," and so on. Who can agree as to what a republican form of government is? If gentlemen had read the original text and the approved commentaries thereon they would have found that, the guarantee was such a form of government, as the State itself should make. The State is the judge of the republican form of government, and not the citizens of the other States.

Then, if a State has the right to form its own government, and that is the republican form, by what right can one of the other States, or two of them, or ten of them, or three fourths of them, if you please, venture to introduce into the State a power from without in order to control its distribution of political power? If the effect of any such extra action upon a State would be to deprive it of a portion of its I weight, in the Union, that is a violation of the original compact; it. is a violation of the very instrument upon which the Union was formed; it is putting the torch to the very fabric you wish to preserve: it is putting a mine under the very building you wish to secure. Are you to preserve these States if you are to regulate the weight hereafter that they are to have in the Union? Can half a dozen or a dozen or two dozen of these States undertake to shear of their political power the other States? Can you violate your own guarantee? When you say that nobody else shall deprive these States of the right of making their own government and distributing their own power as theyplease, can you do it? Can the guarantor himself with impunity violate his own guarantee?

Mr. President. I had intended to make some more extended remarks on this topic; and as I am on the floor now I may just as well say at this time what I have to say on the general subject. It is perfectly clear, I should think, to all wise people that the basis of representation, or the measure of political power and that which adjusts it among the States, should be something fixed, certain, determined. You cannot make a flexible standard. You cannot make a standard that is thirty three inches to day and thirty six to morrow and the .next day forty. You cannot allow a State to open and shut her valves and admit power or expel it at. will. You propose to say that if she does not do certain things she shall not have but a certain amount of power. Suppose she wants power. She is made the arbiter of the power she shall have in the Union. Suppose she chooses to exclude it again, what then? Here we have a constantly shifting panorama upon which I do not see how it is possible that an apportionmentbill can be framed. Population, however, is certain, fixed, determinate, a thing to be counted every ten years, and a thing to be encouraged, because if you make population the basis of representation then you encourage population; but if yon make voting the basis, or if you make that the measure, then you encourage the degradation of the franchise. I am willing, on the part of my own State, that she shall be the guardian of the franchise within her limits. The people of our State are to be the judges of the persons in our society who are fit and proper to cast our ballots; and we are perfectly willing that all other States shall enjoy that privilege, because wo believe t hatit is an inherent and essential privilege in every State.

But what will be the result upon us of the proposition before the Senate? We have in Pennsylvania about one hundred thousand negroes, and we have a Representative in Congress based upon them. What is to be the operation of this amendment? Just this: your whip is held over Pennsylvania, and you say to her that she must either allow her negroes to vote or have one member of Congress less. That is it: and it comes with very bad grace from a parcel of people who have no negroes among them: and that I think is the worst feature in all this business from one end of it to the other. Here are a parcel of States who have no negro population, and they are exceedingly anxious that the people who have them should let them vote. What is that their business? We have never known that they invited them that they might get. votes. The negro is now as free to go to Massachusetts or to any State where he is allowed to vote as ho is to stay in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. If he insists upon this privilege, he lias the same right to go after it that I have, or any other man has, and he can go and get it. If I do not like the laws of Pennsylvania and they do not suit me, and I have not power and influence enough in the State to mold them to suit my particular desire. I can go to another State and anotheruntil I suit myself. But why people who are not interested in this thing, who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by it. can expect to maintain the Union by insisting upon propositions of this kind I confess is more than I can see.

This is not common justice in a common, ordinary transaction; and I do not know whether it would be considered fair even in a horse trade. The advantage is all on one side. It is like the Indian and the white man dividing the possum and the turkey. The white man said to the Indian,'■ Nowvou take the possum and I take the turkey, or if you do not like that. I will take the turkey and you take the possum." [Laughter.]" Why," said the Indian, "you have not said turkey to me once and that is the way with this constitutional amendment. The States that have no negroes are to shear the States that have negroes of the political power they have according to the fundamental law, according to the ancient bargain made, and according to which the Union exists, and which is in factitself the Union; that bargain which is bathed in the blood of two hundred thousand American soldiers, for which we have sacrificed six or eight thousand .million dollars j that bargain now is to be amended in its essentials, and to be amended for the benefit of one section of the Union who have everything to gain by it and nothing to lose, and to the prejudice of the residue.

Mr. President, will the man who knows the value of this Union to these States, the man who loves it, who reveres it, and who believes that it will make his country the greatest republic on earth— will he be guilty of unfairness? And, sir, what is worse about it all, those States which are to suffer most, and the States within which it is to operate most hardly, are not heard they are not allowed to come upon this floor and argue their case although this is a free country with a representative form of government, and, as I supposed, a republican form.

Mr. President, I consider t his attempt as dangerous to the peace of the Union as the original doctrine of secession. Do gentlemen suppose that the people of the States affected will submit to this? Let me remind gentlemen of another thing. The Republican party existed over half the Union. It existed as a party north of Mason and Dixon s line. It was a• minority party. When Mr. Lincoln was elected in 18G0 there was a majority on the popular vote of more than nine hundred and thirty thousand agaii t him. lie was elected under tin" forms of the Constitution, and was really and lawfully the President of the United States; but under the workings of the Constitution it did so happen that there was that majority against him. In tlio States north of Mason and Dixon s ,line the majority for Mr. Lincoln, at the last presidential election, was about four hundred thousand, 1 believe. At any rate, nobody can deny but that very nearly one half of the people of the North belong to the Democratic party. There, too, I suppose, you may consider that the people of the South now belong, because your destinies are in their hands. They will inevitably sit in judgment upon you here in this Chamber. They will mole out to you, if you are not careful, the same measure you try to mete out. to them. Now, 1 warn my fellow Senators that we cannot afford this with this form of government of ours. Hail we not better stand upon the Constitution as it is, where our fathers put it, that Constitution which we enforced at such cost? Think of partners after a difficulty, one partner trying to compel, and to compel under threats, the insertion of a new clause into the original articles of partnership. But can we compel it and if wo cannot compel it, what then? You know what it cost us to compel obedience to the Constitution as it is. You cannot compel obedience to the Constitution as it is not. You could compel obedience to a Constitution that was the law of the land, but you cannot compel obedience to a Constitution that is not the law of the land.

Mr. President, 1 am for dealing fairly. In the first, place, as 1 have said before on this floor, 1 trust the American people everywhere. Why? I trust them because they are the foundation upon which this structure is built; and to say that, they are to be punished into the proper shape or driven into the proper shape is to say that the whole rests upon a quicksand, rests upon a foundation which is distrusted, which begins to show cracks in the walls already if these things be true. I trust the people. I trust the people North. I trust the people South. I trust the people of all parties. Why not 1 Vv Why is it that the South will sustain the Union now? Because it is her interest to sustain it. Why is it that, wo sustain it? Is it because we arrogate to ourselves superior virtue? Has the grace of God been more liberally bestowed upon us than on our brethren? Is that the pretense? We may be wiser, but surely I think nobody can say of the people or any part of the people that we are more honest.

Trusting the people, then, the people must be trusted everywhere, and what we do especially must be fair. It is a characteristic of our race, and one which has marked it for long ages, that there must be fair play. No man of our race will interfere even in his brother s quarrel in a fair contest. We must play fair. What have we been playing for? Wo have been playing for the Union and for the Constitution. What is the attempt now after we have won? It is to say that we will have neither except upon terms. Terms with whom? Terms with the very men we have been struggling with for years in order to compel them to assent to our terms—the Constitution and the Union.

I say again that we must be fair; we must allow to the States the rights which they reserved to themselves when they made this compact, and especially must we allow to them the essential rights, the rights that underlie the whole fabric, that are the basis of the whole structure, the first of which is the right to regulate their own domestic concerns. Have wo forgotten our own platform? Let gentlemen who talk about party fidelity recur to the platform of Chicago in 18G0; recur, if you please, to your Baltimore platform of 18G4; and then you will see who are faithful to the original doctrines of the party and who are not. Shall we undertake now to say that we will regulate the ballot all over the United States, remodel the whole affair, redistribute the political power, and we do this right ill the face of our own law? Who passed the act of the 4th of March, 18G2? Who voted for it in this Chamberand in the other? Nobody gainsaid it; nobody thought of gainsaying it. And yet that law in ftTree to day is violated, trampled under foot and disregarded. By whom? By us. Wo who fought for the Constitution and for the law; we who proclaimed ourselves those who would see it, enforced at all hazards violate it; we, in the face of our own law, to day refuse to hear the people we are legislating for upon our floors. That law gives to the southern States, eleven of them, I believe fiftyeight members, and they have not one, and you have not the poor apology that is stuck into this amendment to the Constitution here, that these members engaged in rebellion, because the fact, is that, a great many of them did not; a great many of them engaged to suppress it; some of them shed their blood in that attempt, and some of them struggled through all manner of difficulties to be true and faithful, and yet, they are excluded; they are not allowed to say a word here for their fellowcitizens. And this is fair! This is the way to deal with a partner! This the way to deal with men with whom you expect to live in peace and unity coming centuries! What is it all about? Where is the difficulty about it? Are they stronger than you? Are you afraid in the other House, with one hundred andeighty three members now, that you cannot manage fiftyeight? Are we afraid licre with fifty Senators that we cannot manage twenty two

Mr. President, the disguise which covers this proposition is too transparent. As I said before, the Republican part}' was a minority party. 1 Its policy immediately upon attaining to power was to make itself a national party; was to throw out its lines and set its stakes in every quarter of the Union. Let it penetrate every hamlet from Maine to Georgia, from North Carolina to California. Let, a network of both parties ramify everywhere, spread over the country, and then you may have a Union: and I may remark that the binding efficacy,' the cement of the two parties interwoven like a network over the whole country, will contribute a hundred times more to keep it. together than any other dcvice, or even the Constitution itself. When this was violated, what was the consequence? When there ceased to be two parties all over the country, all over the length and breadth of it, what had you then? Rebellion; and rebellion will follow it inevitably, not only now, but in all time to come. Strike a line north of Pennsylvania and elect a President against the will of everybody north of the north line of Pennsylvania; or, in other words, go into an election and beat every man north of that line, and a rebellion is inevitable. You have the same difficulty then that we encountered in 18G0. The election of Mr. Lincoln beat every man south of Mason and Dixon s line, or very nearly so. All parties and all factions were opposed to him. All had pledged themselves against him, and after the campaign waxed' hot and the blood boiled, they had pledged themselves to resist; they were bound before the crisis came, and how could they prevent it? Thousands no doubt regretted it, but their lips were sealed. Thousands were unwilling to act, but still, under the influence of this mortification, they did act. It is a mortification, you observe, that reaches everybody; it reaches men, women, and children; it goes •everywhere, and however trifling it may appear to a wise man and a cool man, yet it affects the people, and affects them in a most tender and vital point, and they resent it. They did resent it. I say again, that if under the same circumstances a candidate was to be elected who would beat all NewEngland and New -York, they would not submit, in my judgment.

Then I say it was the business of the Republican party to extend itself upon some common platform, not the platform of fairness exactly in the distribution of political power, because the Constitution was not based upon fairness in that respect. There was nothing fair in the provision that Rhode Island and Delaware should each have two Senators, and Pennsylvania and New York each only two. It was not built upon the principle of equality originally. Still wo ought to stand upon it and maintain it; and in order to do that there should have been no going away from the original doctrine. We should have stood upon it and strictly and literally enforced it, and we should have had a right to enforce it, and could have enforced it in the face of the civilized world and had the civilized world with us. But that opportunity was neglected; the Republican party did not do that; and then it was driven to the miserable shift of either taking, to itself as allies the negroes of the South, or what? Depriving the South of the political power which she enjoyed by virtue of the negroes. Do you think the world does not understand this? Do you think the people do not understand why this is? Do you think you can delude the people with the idea that this is lipncst on our part; that it is fair on our part, and that that is what we really mean? I tell gentlemen that if they think so they are mistaken. The people understand this exactly. Do you believe the people want, the mass of the Republican party want, such allies as those in the South? Do you believe they want to rely upon the aid they can get from negro suffrage in the South to hold the balance of power in this Republic? Go to Pennsylvania, go to Illinois, and ask them. When Pennsylvania, with her hundred thousand negroes, refuses them suffrage, why is it? And if she refuses to allow you to intermeddle with it, why is it? Do you pretend that you are' improving the suffrage, do you pretend that you are making the institutions of the country more secure when you insist upon this? Who does so in the face of the civilized world? Are you bringing into the councils of the country more wisdom, more independence, more virtue? Nobody pretends it. Do you allow negroes to vote yourselves? You allow it partially in New York kind of emasculated suffrage there; you allow it partially in Massachusetts; absolutely nowhere; and yet you stand here and crack your whip over the head of the southern States who have millions of negroes in them, and you say they must lot theirs vote when you will not let yours.

is m. THE

Mr. WILSON. They have the right of voting, absolutely, in Massachusetts.

Mr. COWAN. "Absolutely" if they can read the Constitution.

Mr. WILSON. The same as white men.

Mr. COWAN. Then it is not absolute even for a white man. That is the liberality of the reformers of the present age. After all this talk of political power and how it ought to be divided among men, how every man great and small, wise and foolish, should have his share of it, a poor devil who cannot write has none at all in Massachusetts. The honorable Senator from Ohio ought to have been reminded of that.

Mr. ANTHONY. Colored men vote in our State on the same terms with white people.

Mr. COWAN. Exactly. You put your restraints not only upon negroes but upon whites; but where is the restraint to be put on the people down South? You do not put any limitation there. You do not say to them, If you lot the literary negroes vote you may have all represented."

Mr. MORRILL. Suffrage is absolute in my State—unlimited I may say.