March 15, 1962 (3)

All of us have many times been in polling booths to vote. We know that the words spoken by Mr. Wilson not only were true in 1787, but they are just as true today. Can Senators imagine the disorder, the confusion, and the uncertainty that would be thrown around the exercise of a right which is the most sacred right, perhaps, possessed by any American citizen-the right to the ballot-if there were one set of qualifications for electors for Members of Congress, President, and Vice President, and if there were another set of qualifications for electors of State legislatures and State officers?

Mr. President, while I do not believe that the very practical question raised by Mr. Wilson was the controlling one in the drafting of article I, section 2, those men, being men of commonsense, men with a keen, profound knowledge of human nature and the ways of people and of events, were undoubtedly persuaded by the consideration of how impractical it would be to have varying qualifications for the different electors. After Mr. Wilson made his statement, Gouverneur Morris, the author of the motion, rose. I read further from Madison's notes:

Such a hardship--

This is, being a freeholder or the owner of property, because that is what his motion provided as a qualificationwould be neither great nor novel. The people are accustomed to it, and not dissatisfied with it, in several of the States. In some, the qualifications are different for the choice of the Governor and of the Representatives; in others, for different houses of the legislature. Another objection against the clause as it stands is that it makes the qualifications of the National Legislature depend on the will of the States, which he thought not proper.

He was unwilling to recognize this right in the State. Mr. Morris was unwilling that this power should continue to be vested in the State. He wanted it in the Federal Government.

Then Mr. Ellsworth, of Massachusetts, rose and said that he thought the qualifications of electors stood on the most proper footing. Note this language:

The right of sovereignty was a tender point and strongly guarded by most of the State constitutions. The people will not readily subscribe to the National Constitution if it should subject them to be disfranchised.

He was arguing against Mr. Morris' motion to make the ownership of a freehold a qualification. Mr. Ellsworth added:

The States are the best judges of the circumstances and temper of their own people. Note that language. The States-the people back home, the people who gather in the State capitals, the people who go to the ballot boxes back in the hamlets, the communities, and the crossroads-"are the best judges of the circumstances and temper of their own people." would anyone dispute that today?

Mr. Butler, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, made this significant statement:

There is no right of which the people are more jealous than that of suffrage. Thus, emphasizing, fortifying, and reaffirming the idea that the determination of the qualifications of electors should remain in the hands of the people of the States.

After all, Madam President, it is only by means of the right of suffrage that the people are able to maintain their power, their authority, their sovereignty over their Government. If the people's right of suffrage were to be taken from them, no longer would there be government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Madam President, I shall read from the statement of Mr. Dickinson. He was a gentleman of very conservative views; but I think we should have his views, since we are studying this whole subject. Mr. Dickinson had a very different idea with regard to the tendency toward vesting the right of suffrage in the freeholders of the country. He considered them as the best guardians of liberty, and the restriction of the right to them "as a necessary defense against the dangerous influence of those multitudes, without property, and without principle, with which our country, like all others, will in time abound." He very strongly favored the writing in of a qualification that electors must be property owners. In reply to Mr. Dickinson, Mr. Ellsworth had this to say:

How shall the freehold be defined? Ought not every man who pays a tax vote for the representative who is to levy and dispose of his money? Shall the wealthy merchants and manufacturers who will bear full share of the public burden be not allowed a voice in the imposition of them? Taxation and representation ought to go together.

On the question as to whether a freehold or property ownership should be prescribed as a qualification, Mr. Madison, being a very wise and very practical man, expressed the view that that might well be determined upon the question as to how such a qualification would be received back in the States.

The men who sat in the Convention, who engaged in the debates in the Convention, who engaged in the actual drafting of the Constitution, knew best of all, knew far better than any who should come after them, what their intent and purposes were in writing the Constitution. We would never have had any Federal Constitution, we would never have had a Federal Government, if the view had not prevailed that the qualifications of the electors should be left to the several States; in other words, that section 1 of article 2 should be adopted and written into the Constitution just as it had been recommended by the committee and as it was adopted and written into the Constitution.

- Mr. President, in the 60th Federalist paper, Mr. Hamilton defended the Federal Constitution against the charge that it favored the rich. That charge had been made against the Constitution. His remarks on this subject are very pertinent to the issue before us. I now quote from Mr. Hamilton.

The truth is-

He wrotethat there is no method of securing to the rich the preference apprehended, but by prescribing qualifications of property either for those who may elect or be elected. Went on Mr. Hamiltonthis forms no part of the power to be conferred upon the national Government.

Mr. Hamilton added:

Its authority would be expressly restricted to the regulation of the times, the places, the manner of elections. The qualifications of the persons who may choose or be chosen, as has been remarked upon other occasions, are defined and fixed in the Constitution, and are unalterable by the legislature.

Alexander Hamilton's words will be clear to anyone who takes the time to read them. He said that the Federal Government cannot invade that right; that it is a right left exclusively to the several States.

What happened? The Committee on Detail, on August 6, 1787-and, as I have stated, the Committee on Detail was the special committee for the drafting of the Constitution-recommended that:

The qualifications of the electors shall be the same, from time to time, as those cf the electors of the several States, of the most numerous branch of their own legislatures. This, of course, is the provision of section 2, article I, of the Constitution.

What happened? When that committee made the recommendation, a motion was made to prescribe in the Constitution the qualification of possessing a freehold; and that motion was voted down. What was the vote on that motion? The motion was rejected by a vote of 7 to 1. Only one State voted for the motion, and that was the little State of · Delaware. Delaware voted "aye." New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina voted "no."

Madam President, the thinking of the men who wrote our Constitution is found not only in the debates held -in the Constitutional Convention, but also in the writings of those who participated in it. We know that Thomas Jefferson was not a member of the Constitutional Convention that wrote the Federal Constitution, because he was at that time our Minister to France; but although he was out of the country, he was in very close touch with the delegates to the Convention. We know that he had no closer ally or friend than James Madison, father of the Constitution.

We speak of Washington as the Father of our Country-which he was. I think we properly speak of James Madison as the father of the Constitution. I think we may well say that Thomas Jefferson was the great prophet of American democracy.

In Mr. Jefferson's draft of a proposed constitution for Virginia, which was written in June 1776, while Mr. Jefferson was serving as a Member of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Jefferson suggested in his draft:

All male persons of full age and sane mind, having a freehold estate in (one-quarter of an acre) of land in any town or in (25) acres of land in the county, and all persons resident in the Colony who shall have paid scott and lot to Government the last (2 years) shall have right to give their vote for the election of their respective representatives.

He proposed this languag ~ for the Virginia constitution; but, on the other hand, when it came to the writing of the Federal Constitution, he opposed there being any provision of this sort prescribed in the Federal Constitution. He knew that the States should fix the qualifications for the voter.

I quoted a little while ago from Alexander Hamilton.

As we know, one of the greatest minds of that period, beginning with the War of the Revolution and coming on down through the Article.::; of Confederation, and the drafting of the Federal Constitution, and even in the administration of the Federal Government in the early days of George Washington, was the brilliant, profound, magni:'.icent mind of Alexander Hamilton. It will be recalled that Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury in President Washington's first Cabinet.

Perhaps this country has never known a more penetrating or more incisive mind than that of Alexander Hamilton. As we know, Hamilton was not a democrat, and I am using the word with a little "d." He did not believe in, he did not have faith in, the capacity of the people to govern themselves. He believed in a strong central government. He thought it was necessary to have central, arbitrary power concentrated in the government in Washington. He went so far that many speak of him as a monarchist. Certainly we know that in the plan which he submitted to the Constitutional Convention he provided for life tenure for the Chief Executive, the President of the United States. As I recall, he provided for certain hereditary rights--for many things that were to be found under the arbitrary, central power of the governments of the kings and the monarchies of the nations of Europe.

Mr. Hamilton in writing about the Constitution-and we must remember what his feelings and his views werehad this to say in chapter 52 of the Federalist:

I shall begin with the House of Representatives * * * The first view to be taken of this part of the Government, related to the qualifications of the electors and the elected. When he referred to "the qualifications of electors,” he went straight to the very question we are discussing here today, because he knew what the whole question involved, so far as determining what our Government was, and what it would be down through the years. He knew it went to the whole question of our dual system of government, the whole question of the structure of our Government, of a divided authority between the Federal Government and the State governments. The brilliant Hamilton knew what he was talking about. He went on to say:

Those of the former-

That is, of the House of Representatives-- are to be the same-

That is, the qualifications are to be thesamewith those of the electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of Republican government. It was incumbent on the Convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution.

In other words, the Constitution had to state what these qualifications were, and by whom they would be prescribed. Hamilton then continued:

The provision made by the ConventionThat is the provision now written into section 2 of article !- appears, therefore, to be the best that lay within their option. It must be satisfactory to every State, because it is conformable to the standard already established or which may be established by the State itself.

Thus the leading Federalist, the outstanding Nationalist, in the days of the beginning of our Government proclaimed in his writings in the Federalist that this method must be satisfactory to the States, because under the Constitution as written it was left to the States.

Again, in the 87th Federalist, the question was asked. And Hamilton replied to his own question:

Not the rich, more than the poor; nor the learned, more than the ignorant; or the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscurity and unpropitious fortune. The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States. They are to be the same who exercise the right in every State of electing the corresponding branch of the legislature of the State.

In the 59th Federalist we find this significant statement:

Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution empowering the United States to regu,late the election!! for the particular States, would any man have hesitated to condemn it, both as an unwarrantable transposition of power and as a premeditated engine for the destruction of State governments?

In the 60th Federalist, Alexander Hamilton expressed fear that elections might be manipulated in the interest of the "rich and the well born." The only way in which this might be done, he wrote, would be by prescribing property qualifications either for those who may elect or for those who may be elected. But, he added, this forms no part of the power to be conferred upon the National Government.

There were many different qualifications which the States in the exercise of their own sovereignty prescribed. There was not only this tremendous regard for the rights of the States and this excessive zeal and jealousy for the preservation of the sovereignty of the States in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia which brought forth the Constitution, but also, as we know, the Constitution to be effective, to come into being, had to be ratified by conventions in the several states.

If we turn to the conventions in the several States, we find that great battles raged in most of them over ratification of the Federal Constitution. What was the question? The question was whether the delegates in Philadelphia had given to the Federal Government too much power. The three most powerful States, the three most influential States at that time, were Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts. In their State conventions, because of the fear that the Federal Government might be given too much power, that the States might be lodging too much power in the Federal Government, only 53 percent of the votes in those conventions were cast for ratification. Since only 53 percent of the votes were cast for ratification, it will be realized that there was a rather close vote.

In the calling of the Virginia convention, in order to get as many delegates as possible, it was stated that all the members of the general assembly were eligible, and that delegates could be elected in addition to that number. Yet out of that group, which constituted nearly all of the political leaders of the State, the vote for ratification was only a majority of nine, and that was primarily due to the influence of George Washington.

Undoubtedly if it had not been for the tremendous confidence of the people of Virginia in General Washington, Virginia would not have ratified the Constitution. · Two of the greatest patriots of the Revolution-Patrick Henry, who sounded the tocsin of war and gave us the battle cry of the Revolution; and George Mason, who wrote the Virginia Bill of Rights--opposed ratification of the Constitution.

As Senators will recall, that great statesman of our time, Woodrow Wilson, said he would rather have been the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights than the author of . any document ever penned by the hand of man. That bill of rights is not only the Bill of Rights we find today in the Constitution of the United States, but it is the bill of rights we find in the constitutions of the States. It is the great guarantee of the rights of our people.

I have previously discus s ed the safeguards on which the delegates of the individual States insisted in order to protect their rights and to retain as much as possible of their State sovereignty. After the delegates representing the sovereign States had finished their work of writing the Constitution, putting in all the safeguards to insure the primary authority of the States, they closed the Constitution by writing into it the declaration that the Constitutional Convention acted " by the unanimous consent of the States" present. They wanted power. the people to know at that time, and wanted all succeeding generations to know, including the Senators sitting here in the year of our Lord 1962, some 175 years after the Constitution was drafted, that the sovereign States were the ones who had drafted and formulated the Constitution.

As I stated a moment ago, two of the foremost patriots of the Revolution, Patrick Henry and George Mason, who had done so much to win our independence from the British Crown, to win our freedom, opposed ratification of the Constitution. They felt, as did many of their compatriots, that there might be too great a surrender of sovereignty on the part of the States, that there might be too much yielding of power to the Federal Government.

I emphasize these points because the history of the ratification of the Constitution shows clearly that if the sovereignty of the States and the rights of the States had not been positively recognized in the Constitution, if all the safeguards and protections of their sovereignty and their rights had not been put into the Constitution, the Constitution would never have been ratified, and we never would have had a Federal Government. We know, of course, that mankind has struggled through the centuries to break down arbitrary power. Sometimes it is difficult for us, living in free America, to realize the long struggle of mankind, century after century after century, to to say: break arbitrary power. The high water mark of the st r uggle to break down arbitrary power, to bring about the distribution of power, and place it in the hands of the people, was reached when our ancestors fought the American Revolution and broke the powers of the British Crown over the people of the then Original Thirteen Colonies or States. The framers of the Constitution knew that the States, with their State governments, county governments, city governments, and town governments, were the citadels of local self-government. They knew that their concept of government by the people required full and plenary recognition of the rights and the sovereignty of the States. . If the people were to hold and exercise the power of the government, there had to be recognition of the sovereignty and the rights of the States. ·

The people were :fighting against centralized, arbitrary power at the seat of government. They were fighting to keep the wellsprings of our system of government in the hands of the people-as I have said, in the local communities, the crossroads, the hamlets, and the towns. What would it have availed the people to break the tyranny of the British Crown, had they, themselves, set up here in Washington a government with central arbitrary power? They were determined, after all the sacrifices they had made, and all their bitter sufferings, to reserve the power in their own hands. I repeat that in order to do this, they knew they had to maintain the sovereignty of the States, because within the States-and within the States alone-are the citadels of governmental A few minutes ago we were speaking about the State conventions which met to ratify the Constitution. It is interesting to note that in those State conventions one of the first questions raised-and raised many times-was the very question we are discussing today, namely, the question as to section 2 of article I of the Constitution. In order to bring into being a Federal Union through the Constitution, the Constitution had to be ratified by at least nine of the States.

In the Massachusetts convention, there was a "doubting Thomas" by the name of Dr. John Taylor, from the town of Douglass, Mass. He wanted to be very sure about this new Constitution. He wanted to make certain. He was fearful that section 4 of article I, the section with reference to the times, places, and manner of holding elections-not the section with reference to qualifications-might give Congress the power to prescribe property qualification for voters in the sum, as he expressed it, of 100 pounds. He inquired of Rufus King-who, as we recall, was a member of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and was also a member of the Massachusetts State conventionwhether under section 4, Congress could in any way go into the question of qualifications.

Mr. King, one of the leading members of the Philadelphia convention, had this The idea of the honorable gentleman from Douglass transcends my understanding, for the power of control given by this sectionThat is, section 4- extends to the manner of election, not to the qualifications of the electors.

Mr. King made this answer because he knew that the qualifications were prescribed in section 2, and were the qualifications which the States themselves would make.

In the Pennsylvania State convention, Mr. James Wilson-who, as will be recalled, had been one of the outstanding men in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, in the writing of the Constitution-made this statement to the State convention:

In order to know who are qualified to be electors of the House of Representatives-

That is, the Federal House of Representatives— are to inquire who are qualified to be electors of the legislature of each State. If there be no legislature in the States there can be no electors of them. If there be no such electors, there is no criterion to know who are qualified to elect Members of the House of Representatives. By this short, plain deduction the existence of the State legislatures is proved to be essential to the existence of the general government.

In other words, there must be action by the State legislature in order to have a Representative in the Federal legislature.

As I read a few minutes ago, Mr. King, who had been in the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, at the writing of the Federal Constitution, had this to The idea of the honorable gentleman from Douglass transcends my understanding-for the power of control given by this section extends to the manner of election, not to the qualifications of the electors.

I have noted earlier that the question arose .in the Virginia convention; and Mr. Nicholas, one of the delegates, had something to say. As I recall, Mr. Nicholas was also a member of the Philadelphia Convention which wrote the Federal Constitution. Certainly he was a member of the State convention. This is what Mr. Nicholas said:

If, therefore, by the proposed plan, it is left uncertain in whom the right of suffrage is to rest, or if it has placed that right in improper hands, I shall admit that it has a radical effect. But in his plan-

That is, in the Federal Constitutionthere is a fixed rule for determining the qualification of electors, and that rule, the most judicious that could possibly have been devised, because it refers to a criterion which cannot be changed.

Mr . Nicholas went on to say:

. A qualification that gives a right to elect representatives for the State legislatures gives also, by this Constitution, a right to choo s e representatives for the General Government. The yardstick was prescribed. The yardstick which was fixed by the States should be the yardstick for the election of representatives from the particular States. It was contemplated, as I have stated again and again, that it would be fixed in that way, not only because they thought it was the wisest and best way to do it, and not only because they knew that if they did not do it in that way, the Constitution would never be ratified and come into being, tut also because they felt that, in doing it in that way, it would be fixed for all time to come, and could not, as Mr. Nicholas said, be changed.

I may add that in reading the notes of the convention, we see that Mr. Nicholas gave the members of the Richmond ratifying convention most positive assurance that the Federal Government could not and never would undertake to pass upon and fix the qualifications of voters.

In North Carolina, Mr. John Steele, who . was a member of the ratification convention, wished to make this matter absolutely clear, so there . could never be any question in anyone's mind about what North Carolina was doing when it ratified the Constitution. Here is what Mr. Steele said:

Who are to vote for them?

By that is meant, of course, who are to vote for Members of the House of Representatives and for President and for Vice President? He then said:

Every man who has a right to vote for a representative to our legislature will ever have a right to vote for a Representative to the General Government.

By "General Government" he meant what we now refer to as the Federal Government. Does it not expressly provide—

By the word "it" he means the Constitution, of coursethat the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for the most numerous branch of the State legislature? Mr. Steele went on to say:

The power over the manner of elections does not include that of saying who shall vote.

Of course, all of us should understand that. Section 2 of article I deals with the "who" of the electors. Section 4 of article I deals with the "how" of the elections.

Mr. Steele went on to say:

The Constitution—

Speaking of the Federal Constitution, of courseexpressly says that the qualifications are those which entitle a man to vote for a State representative. It is , then, clearly and indubitably fixed and determined who shall be the electors; and the power over the manner only enables them to determine how these electors shall elect-whether by ballot, or by vote, or by any other way.

The view expressed by Delegate John Steele, in the North Carolina convention, was confirmed by Delegate William R. Davis, who also had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

The meaning of section 2 of article I was so clear that the question was not even raised in the conventions of Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, and Georgia; and, so far as the reports show, in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maryland no question was raised about the section. It was so clear that even a fourth grade school child on reading it would know what it meant.

Mr. President, with reference to the resolutions adopted by the several States in ratifying the Federal Constitution, we find that in none of those resolutions was any question raised about section 2 of article I. It was so clear that there was no question to be raised. It was ipse dixit; it spoke for itself.

However, it is interesting to note that, in referring to section 4 of article I, by which certain powers are given to the Congress with reference to the fixing of the times, places, and manner of holding elections, some of the ratifying resolutions did raise questions; and it is interesting to note that in each case where such questions were raised, those States in their resolutions ratifying the Constitution wished to make certain that Congress knew that they felt that Congress should never exercise the power given under section · 4 of article I unless the States had failed to function in prescribing the times, places, and manner of holding elections.

South Carolina, in its resolution of May 27, 1788, declared:

And whereas it ls essential to the preservation of the rights reserved to the several States and the freedom of the people under the operations of the General Government that the right of prescribing the manner, time, and places of holding elections to the Federal Legislature should be forever annexed to the sovereignty of the several States, this convention does declare that the same ought to remain, to all posterity, a perpetual and fundamental right in the local government, exclusive of the interference of the General GovernmentThat is, the Federal Government-­ except in cases where the legislatures of the States shall refuse or neglect to perform and fulfill the same, according to the tenor of the said Constitution.

All this shows how jealous the States were, how jealous the people were to preserve to the States and to the people their rights.

In 1865 a congressional joint committee was created to craft the 14th amendment. The chairman of the committee, which was composed of 15 members, was Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine. Since Senator Fessenden was in ill health, Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, the ranking member, frequently assumed the chairmanship.

Among members of the joint committee on the House side, were Roscoe Conkling, of New York; George M. Boutwell, of Massachusetts; Henry T. Blow, of Missouri; and John A. Bingham, of Ohio. Mr. Bingham, I believe, is credited with being the actual draftsman or author of the first section of the 14th amendment. Other members from the House were Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, and E. B. Washburne, of Illinois. I believe the record discloses that Kentucky had representation in the person of Representative Grider.

In the Senate the first section was discussed by Senator Howard. On May 23, 1865, he had this to say:

The first section of the proposed amendment does not give to either of these classes the privilege of voting. The right of suffrage is not ; - ln law, one of the privileges or immunities thus secured by the Constitution. It ls merely the creature of law. It has always been regarded in this country as a result of positive local law.

In other words, where the section speaks of guaranteeing certain privileges and immunities, Senator Howard made it clear that those privileges and immunities did not apply to, had no reference to, and did not in any way include any right of suffrage.

This indicates that in 1865, when the Senate was considering the 14th amendment to the Constitution, the men who were its authors, proponents and advocates held fast to the same proposition in the matter of qualifications of electors which had been expressed and had been so stoutly proclaimed in 1787 by the framers and authors of the Constitution of the United States.

As to section 2, Senator Howard saidand I am reading now from page 2766 of the Congressional Globe:

This section does not recognize the authority of the United States over the question of suffrage in the several States at all. It leaves the right to regulate the elective franchise still with the States and does not meddle with that right.

In closing the debate, on June 8, and just before the joint resolution was passed upon by the Senate, Senator Howard said, at page 3039 of the Congressional Globe:

We know very well that the States retain the power which they have always possessed of regulating the right of suffrage.

Remember, Mr. President, I am quoting the words of the man who, on this floor, was charged with the responsibility of piloting through the Senate the 14th amendment. In speaking, he was not only speaking for himself, but for the entire committee of 15 members who had worked with him and had jointly with him drafted the 14th amendment.

He proceeded to say:

We know very well that the States retain the power which they have always possessed of regulating the right of suffrage. It ls the theory of the Constitution,

Says Senator Howard, speaking for the committee:

That right-

That is, the right of suffragehas never been taken from them; no endeavor has ever been made to take it from them, and the theory of this whole amendment is to leave the power of regulating the suffrage with the people or legislatures of the States and not to assume to regulate it by any clause of the Constitution of the United States.

Could any language be stronger than these words I have quoted from Senator Howard, spoken some 77 years after our Government came into being?

On this committee of 15 there was one Democratic Senator who happened to be from the great State of Maryland, Senator Reverdy Johnson. He said:

I suppose that even the honorable Member from Massachusetts, Senator Sumner, will not deny that it was for Massachusetts to regulate her suffrage before 1789; and if it was, she has the power still unless she has agreed to part with it by devolving it upon the General Government. Is there a word in the Constitution that intimates such a purpose?

That is, the purpose of giving such a power to the Federal Government.

Who at that time, in 1787, denied that the State was clothed with the power of describing the qualifications for the most numerous branch of the State legislature? • • • The State and nobody else.

The right of choosing the allotted number in each State is to be exercised by such part of the inhabitants as the State itself may designate. Words could not have been adopted more obviously leading to the con- usion than in the opinion of the writers of the Federalist-

Here the Senator was quoting from the Federalist, as I should have saidthe States were to have the sole right of regulating the suffrage. There is nothing innate in the right of suffrage.

If we read the Federalist papers, that great document including papers written by James Madison, by Alexander Hamilton, by John Jay, we find that the Federalist papers confirmen all the statements which had been made. That document has this declaration:

The States were to have the sole right of regulating the suffrage. There is nothing innate in the right of suffrage.

Earlier today the distinguished Senator from Alabama [Mr. SPARKMAN] and his colleague the senior Senator from Alabama visited the office of the Vice President in the Capitol with a group of very fine young high school boys and girls. The Senator from Alabama told the story relating to the bust of the late former Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, who became Vice President of the United States during the second administration of President Ulysses S. Grant.

Vice President Wilson had this to say, speaking about the men who wrote the Constitution:

The men who framed the Constitution made those State constitutions; they well knew what the qualifications were.

He added:

Every State constitution provides for electors, prescribes the qualification for suffrage. The laws of the States provided for qualifications of electors. Every State, from the adoption of the State constitution to this hour, has claimed the authority and exercised it to settle the questions pertaining to suffrage. They never supposed that the Federal Government had the power to change it. They never gave that power, and they never intended to give that power.

The issue of voter qualification arose again in connection with the 17th amendment. It will be recalled that that amendment to the Constitution was .adopted in 1913. That was 126 years after the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. After 126 years, when the people of the United States saw fit to change their method of electing U.S. Senators, when they desired to have their Senators elected not by the legislatures, as provided in the original Constitution, but directly by the people themselves, what did they provide? They provided, in the 17th amendment, as follows:

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for 6 years; and each Senator shall have one vote.

Then there is this language:

The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

The people adopted the same identical language for the qualification of electors for the U.S. Senate which was adopted for electors for Members of the House of Representatives at the very beginning. In other words, they ratified and reaffirmed the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and of the original States in providing that the qualifications of the electors for Members of the Congress should be the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. I think it can be said here that had the 17th amendment made any change in the fixing or determination of those qualifications, it would never have been ratified by the people of the United States. The people were determined that these qualifications should remain, to be fixed by the States.

One of the great court decisions concerning this matter was written by a great Justice of the Supreme Court, at whose feet I was privileged to sit as a student when I was attending law school at Columbia University. I refer, of course, of then Justice and later Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, of the Supreme Court of the United States.

It is tragic indeed that Chief Justice Stone had to leave this world when he In 1941, Mr. Justice Stone wrote, as a part of the Supreme Court's opinion in the case of United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299:

Such right as is secured by the Constitution to qualified voters to choose Members of the House of Representatives ls thus to be exercised in conformity with the requirements of State law, subject to the restrictions prescribed by section 2 and the authority conferred in Congress by section 4 to regulate the times, places, and manner of holding elections of Representatives.

The Justice then went on to say what was the natural thing and what was the logical thing, because the suit involved a citizen of Louisiana and came up from Louisiana:

We look then to the statutes of Louisiana here involved to ascertain the nature of the right which under the constitutional mandate they define and confer on the voter.

The word "they" means the statutes of Louisiana.

Another case to which I invite attention is the case of Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, decided on March 21, 1875 . In that case the extent of the distinction between the rights of a citizen of the United States and the rights of a citizen of a State with regard to voting was laid down and explained.

Chief Justice Waite of the Supreme Court declared that the fact that the right to vote could not grow out of citizenship alone was clear when one considered who was a citizen of the United States. He said that everyone born here is a citizen of the United States; and therefore if voting depended on citizenship, every child, every pauper, every criminal, every person born here would have the right to vote.

The opinion in this case contained the summary statement:

When the Federal Constitution was adopted, all the States, with the exception of Rhode Island and Connecticut, had constitutions of their own. These two continued to act under their charters from the Crown. Upon an examination of these constitutions we find that in no State were all citizens permitted to vote. Each State determined for itself who should have that power.

Again, in 1915 in the case of Gwinn and Beal v. U.S., 238 U.S. 347, Chief Justice White made a statement about the effect of the 15th amendment on State power.

Incidentally, Chief Justice White served for many years in the Senate. He was a very distinguished Member of this body when he was appointed to the Supreme Court by Grover Cleveland, then President of the United States.

Mr. EASTLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. HILL. I yield to the distinguished Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. EASTLAND. Would the Senator say that the present Chief Justice could learn some law from former Chief Justice White?

Mr. HILL. I would commend to him the writings of Chief Justice White, and I would also commend to him the writings of my old professor, for whom I have such great admiration, former Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, and a number of other great Chief Justices of the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice White in his decision in the Gwinn and Beall against United States case said:

Beyond doubt, the amendment does not take away from the State governments in a general sense the power over suffrage which had belonged to those governments from the beginning, and without the possession of which power the whole fabric upon which the division of State and National authority under the Constitution and the organization of both governments rest would be without support and both the authority of the Nation and the State woUld fall to the ground. In fact, the very command of the amendment recognizes the possession of the general power by the State, since the amendment seeks to regulate its exercise as to the particular subject with which it deals.

The limitation on the powers of the Federal Government was defined with clarity by the Supreme Court in the case of Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, in which the Court said:

The general rule with regard to the respective powers of the National and State Governments under the Constitution is not in doubt. The States were before the Constitution; and, consequently, their legislative powers antedated the Constitution. Those who framed and those who adopted that instrument meant to carve from the general mass of legislative powers, then possessed by the States, only such portions as it was thought wise to confer upon the Federal Government; and in order that there should be no uncertainty in respect to what was taken and what was left the national powers of legislation were not aggregated but enumerated-

In other words, the powers were specifically enumerated so that there could be no claim of a grant of power by the Federal Government which the States themselves did not make to the Federal Government.

The Chief Justice added: with the result that what was not embraced by the enumeration remained vested in the States without change or impairment. Thus, "when it was found necessary to establish a national government for national purposes," this Court said in Munn v. Illinois (84 U.S. 113, 124), "a part of the powers of the States and the people of the States was granted to the United States and the people of the United States. This grant operated as a further limitation upon the powers of the States, so that now the governments of the States possess all the powers of the Parliament of England, except such a.s have been delegated to the United States or reserved by the people." While the States are not soverelgn in the true sense of that term, but only quasi-sovereign, yet in respect of all powers reserved to them they are supreme-"as independent of _ the General Government as that Government within its sphere is independent of the States." And, since every addition to the legislative power to some extent detracts from or invades the power of the States it is of vital moment that, in order to preserve the fixed balance intended by the Constitution, the powers of the General Government be not so extended as to embrace any not within the express terms of the several grants or the implications necessary to be drawn therefrom. . The Court went on to say:

It is no longer open to question that the General Government, unlike the States, possesses no inherent power in respect of the internal affairs of the States and emphatically not with regard to legislation. The question in respect of the inherent power of that Government as to the external affairs of the Nation and in the field of international law is a wholly different matter which it is not necessary now to discuss.

But the Court emphasized that it is the internal affair of the States. The powers are all within the States, except as they might have been specifically granted to the Federal Government for some very definite and specific purpose. Mr. President, I should now like to call the attention of the Senate to a few words to be found in Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, 8th edition, Carrington, volume 2.

As I have said before in this discussion, I do not think anyone in our history has been accepted as a greater authority on the Constitution of the United States than has Judge Cooley. I now quote from Judge Cooley:

Among the absolute, unqualified rights of the States is that of regulating the elective franchise; it is the foundation of State authority; the most important political function exercised by the people in their sovereign capacity. Whilst "the right of the people to participate in the legislature is the best security of liberty and foundation of all free government," yet it is subordinate to the higher power of regulating the qualifications of the electors and the elected. The original power of the people in their aggregate political capacity, is delegated in the form of suffrage to such persons as they deem proper for the safety of the commonwealth: Brightly Election cases (Anderson v. Baker (32, 33, 34, 23 Md. 531)).

Every constitution of government in these United States has assumed, as a fundamental principle, the right of the people of the State to alter, abolish, and modify the form of its own government according to the sovereign pleasure of the people. In fact, the people of each State have gone much further and settled a far more critical question by deciding who shall be the voters entitled to approve and reject the constitution framed by a delegated body under their direction said. (1 Story, Constitution, ch. 9, sec. 581).

Mr. EASTLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. HILL. I yield.

Mr. EASTLAND. Is not the very basis of a State's sovereignty the right and power to decide who shall exercise the franchise?

Mr. HILL. That is indeed the very basis of the right; and, as Judge Cooley said, it is the foundation of a State's sovereignty and authority. It is the foundation of the State itself.

Mr. EASTLAND. Of course, the Senator realizes that federalizing every function of government concentrates power m a vast national government. It is eating up and destroying the liberties of the people of this country. The joint resolution is a tremendous step in the federalization and centralization of the governmental structure of the United States and is the destruction of the liberties of the people of this country.

Mr. HILL. Yes; and the destruction of the most fundamental right of the State which, as the Senator has said, and which Judge Cooley has emphasized, is the very foundation of the State itself. To quote further from Judge Cooley:

From this it will be seen how little, even in the most free of republican governments, any abstract right of suffrage, or any original and indefeasible privilege, has been recognized in practice (ibid.). In no two of these State constitutions will it be found that the qualifications of the voters are settled upon the same uniform basis, so that we have the most abundant proofs that among a free and enlightened people convened for the purpose of establishing their own forms of government and the rights of their own voters the question as to the due regulation of the qualifications has been deemed a matter of mere State policy, and varied to meet the wants, to suit the prejudices, and to foster the interests of the majority.

The exclusive right of the several States to regulate the exercise of the elective franchise and to prescribe the qualifications of voters was never questioned.

Mr. President, Judge Cooley continues: The right to vote is not of necessity connected with citizenship. The rights of the citizens are rights, such as liberty of person and of conscience, the right to acquire and possess property, all of which are distinguishable from the political privilege of suffrage. Senators will notice that Judge Cooley there departs from the use of the word right and uses the word privilege; not even conceding that there is any right to suffrage; that it is a privilege conferred by government, and under our federal system conferred by the States. The history of the country shows that there is no foundation in fact for the view that the right of suffrage is one of the privileges or immunities of citizens. Judge Cooley makes that very definite and very clear. As I have said before, in opposing the anti-poll-tax measure, we who oppose it are fighting for the protection of the rights of the States, for the protection of the foundation stones of the States, for the protection of the very basis upon which the States stand, as the Senator from Mississippi has so well We are also fighting to save, as was indicated by the decision of the courts and the statement of Judge Cooley, to preserve our dual form of government, and to preserve the American Republic.

Mr. EASTLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

l.\fy. HILL. I yield.

Mr. EASTLAND. I am sure the Sena- tor realizes that when Hitler took over Germany, before he could clamp his iron hand of dictatorship upon that country he had to destroy the federal system of Germany.

Mr. HILL. That is the first thing he did. He destroyed the federal system.

Mr. EASTLAND. That federal system was the protector of the liberties of the people of Germany, and it is the protector of the liberties of the people of this country.

Mr. HILL. Yes.

Mr. EASTLAND. The Senator realizes that what is proposed would be one more step down that road from which there is no return, to destroy the liberties of the people of this country; that is what is at issue. It is an attempt to destroy the rights of the people in their own community to determine their own affairs, which is the very basis of American liberty.

Mr. HILL. Once we destroy the federal system in this country, as Hitler destroyed the federal system in Germany, the next step, as lawyers say, a fortiori, is the destruction of the rights and liberties of the people.

Mr. EASTLAND. I am sure the Senator realizes that what we are asked to adopt here is a Hitler-type measure.

Mr. HILL. It is certainly a measure looking toward the destruction of our federal system. With the destruction of that system there would inevitably come the destruction of the rights and the liberties of the people of the United States.

In the very beginning, article 1, section 2, vested in the State governments the power over suffrage. Without the possession of this power in the States, the whole structure upon which the division of State and National authority under the Constitution and the organization of both governments rests would be without support, and the authority of both State and Nation would fall to the ground. Surely, after more than 170 years of the tried and proven wisdom, of the tried and proven effectiveness of this section, it is most unfortunate that now this question, which strikes at the very foundation stones of our dual system of government and which would tear down the very structure of our Government, should be injected into the Senate of the United States. The matter should be laid aside and no further consideration given to such a fundamental proposal striking at the very base of the temple of American rights and American freedom.

The poll tax is rapidly losing favor throughout the United States. Today only five States have such a tax.

I do not see any reason why Alabama or the other remaining States which have a poll tax should abolish it before the people of the States have come to the conclusion, without pressure or harassment, that the tax is undesirable or impractical. Meanwhile, I should like to remind my colleagues of the Senate that the poll tax has a long and quite respectable history, that it was supported by England's greatest liberal, John Stuart Mill, and that Judge Thomas M. Cooley, in his work on constitutional law, said: Many of the states admit no one to the privilege of suffrage unless he Is a taxpayer. To require the payment of a capitation (poll) tax is no denial of suffrage; it is demanding only the preliminary performance of public duty, and may be classed, as may also presence at the polls, with registration, or the observance of any other preliminary to insure fairness and protect against fraud.

In fact, but for the fact that the poll tax provides some revenue for our schools, a revenue which is greatly needed today, the poll tax can really be regarded as academic. Whether we have it or do not have it cannot materially affect the economic situation of any State of the Union.

I suggest, Mr. President, that making this academic issue the subject of a measure constitutes yet another step in the headlong and heedless rush, as the Senator from Mississippi has said, to further diminish the sovereignty of the States.

In this connection let me recall to the Senate what Andrew Jackson, that indomitable character, that great tribune, said in his farewell address:

My experience in public concerns and the observations of a life somewhat advanced confirm opinions long since imbibed by me, that the destruction of our State governments or the annihilation of their control over the local concerns of the people would lead directly to revolution and anarchy and finally to despotism and military domination.

In discussing the necessity for the unity of the United States-and surely if there ever was a time in the history of our country when we needed unity, when we needed our people to be unified, it is today-Andrew Jackson had this to say:

But the Constitution cannot be maintained, nor the Union preserved, in opposition to public feeling, by the mere exertion of the coercive powers confided to the General Government. The foundations must be laid in the fraternal attachments which the citizens of the several States bear to one another, as members of one political family, mutually contributing to promote the happiness of each other.

Hence the citizens of every State should studiously avoid everything calculated to wound the sensibility or offend the just pride of the people of the other States. And they should frown upon any proceedings Within their own borders likely to disturb the tranquillity of their political brethren in other portions of the Union. In a country so extensive as the United States, and With pursuits so varied, the internal regulations of the several States must frequently differ from one another in important particulars; and this difference is unavoidably increased by the varying principles upon which the American Colonies were originally planted; principles which had taken deep root in their social relations before the Revolution, and, therefore, of necessity, influencing their policy since they became free and independent States. But each State has the unquestionable right to regulate its own internal concerns according to its own pleasure; and while it does not interfere With the rights of the people of other States, or the rights of the Union, every State must be the sole judge of the measures proper to secure the safety of its citizens and promote their happiness and all efforts on the part of the people of other States to cast odium upon their institutions, and all measures calculated to disturb their rights of property, or put in jeopardy their peace and internal tranquillity, are in direct opposition to the spirit in which the Union was formed and must endanger its safety.

Motives of philanthropy may be assigned for this unwarrantable interference; and weak men may persuade themselves for a moment that they are laboring in the cause of humanity; and asserting the rights of the human race; but everyone, upon sober reflections, will see that nothing but mischief can come from these improper assaults upon the feelings and rights of others.

Rest assured that the men found busy in this work of discord are not worthy of your confidence and deserve your strongest reprobation.

It is well known that there have been those among us who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government and experience would seem to indicate that there is a tendency on the part of this Government to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution. Its legitimate authority is abundantly sufficient for all the purposes for which it was created, and its purposes and powers being expressly enumerated, there can be no justification for claiming anything beyond them.

Every attempt to exercise power beyond these limits should be promptly and firmly opposed. For one evil example Will lead to other measures still more mischievous; and if the principle of constructive powers, or supposed advantage, or temporary circumstances shall ever be permitted to justify the assumption of a power not given by the Constitution, the General Government will before long absorb all the powers of legislation, and you will have in effect, but one consolidated Government.

From the extent of our country, its diversified interests, different pursuits and different habits, it is too obvious for argument that a single consolidated government would be wholly inadequate to watch over and protect its interests; and every friend of our free institutions should be always prepared to maintain unimpaired and in full vigor the rights and sovereignty of the States, and to confine the action of the General Government strictly to the sphere of its appropriate duties.

Mr. President, at this time let me point out to the Senate that a later President, a great scholar and teacher of our system of government, also expressed thoughts that we can ignore only at our peril. Woodrow Wilson said:

It is difficult to discuss so critical and fundamental a question calmly and without party heat or bias when it has come once more, as it has now, to an acute stage. Just because it lies at the heart of our constitutional system, to decide it wrongly ls to alter the whole structure of our Government, for good or for evil, and one would wish never to see the passion of party touch it to distort it. A sobering sense of responsibility should fall upon everyone who handles it. No man should argue it this way or that for party advantage. Desire to bring the impartial truth to light must, in such a case, be the first dictate alike of true statesmanship and of true patriotism. Every man should seek to think of it and to speak of it in the true spirit of the founders of the Government and of all those who have spent their lives in the effort to confirm its just principles both in counsel and in action. The principle of the division of powers between State and Federal Governments is a very simple one when stated in the most general terms. It is that the legislatures of the States shall have control of all the general subject matter of law, of private rights of every kind, of local interests, and of everything that directly concerns their people as communities--free choice wtih regard to all matters of local regulation and development.

Woodrow Wilson said we tend to think of our American political system as distinguished 'by its central structure-its President and Congress and courts set up by the Constitution-but "as a matter of fact, it is distinguished by its local structure, by the extreme vitality of its parts. It would be an impossibility without its division of powers."

He also said:

From the first America has been a nation in the making. It has come to maturity by the stimulation of no central force or guidance, but by the aboundingly helf-helplng, self-sufficient energy in its parts, which severally brought themselves into existence and added themselves to the Union, pleasing .first of all themselves in the framing of their laws and constitutions, not asking leave to exist and constitute themselves, but existing first and asking leave afterward, self-originated, self-constituted, self-confident, selfsustaining veritable communities, demanding only recognition. Communities develop not by external but by internal forces. Else they do not live at all. Our Commonwealths have not come into existence by invitation, like plants in a tended garden; they have sprung up of themselves, irrepressible, a sturdy, spontaneous product of the nature of men nurtured in a free air.

It is this spontaneity and variety, this independent and irrepressible life of its communities, that has given our system its extraordinary elasticity, which has preserved it from the paralysis which has sooner or later fallen upon every people who have looked to their Central Government to patronize and nurture them.

Let us also pay very close attention, Mr. President, to the following words of the late President Wilson:

The remedy for ill-considered legislation by the States, the remedy alike for neglect and mistake on the part of their several governments, lies not outside the States, but within them. The mistakes which they themselves correct will sink deeper into the consciousness of their people than the mistakes which Congress may rush in to correct for them, thrusting upon them what they have not learned to desire . . They will either themselves learn their mistakes, by such intimate and domestic processes as will penetrate very deep and abide with them in convincing force, or else they will prove that what might have been a mistake for other States or regions of the country was no mistake for them, and the country will have been saved its wholesome variety. In no case will their failure to correct their own measures prove that the Federal Government might have forced wisdom upon them. Wilson concluded his statement with this assertion:

We are certified by all political history of the fact that centralization is not vitalization. Moralization is by life, not by statute, by the interior impulse and experience of communities, not by fostering legislation which is merely the abstraction of an experience which may belong to a nation as a whole or to many parts of it without having yet touched the thought of the rest anywhere to the quick. The object of our federal system is to bring the understandings of constitutional government home to the people of every part of the Nation, to make them part of their consciousness as they go about their tasks. If we cannot successfully effect its adjustments by the nice local adaptations of our older practice, we have failed as constitutional statesmen.

Mr. EASTLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. HILL. I yield to the Senator from Mississippi. ·

· Mr. EASTLAND. I congratulate the distinguished Senator from Alabama. I have been in the Senate for nearly 20 years. Every year or two a po.ll tax question has been under debate m the Senate. I have heard many speeches on the subject, and I think the distinguished Senator from Alabama has made the most logical, most profound, and most statesmanlike speech that I have ever heard on this question. He has gone to the very vitals of the issue, and I will say that he has made the best argument on this question that has ever been delivered on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. HILL. Mr. President, I wish to express my deep appreciation and heartfelt thanks to the Senator from Mississippi. Surely, if there is any one man who has given of himself, his time, his thoughts, and his efforts to protect our States on such measures as is now proposed against us, to protect the rights of our States, and to preserve the liberties of our people, it is the distinguished Senator from Mississippi. Surely no man could speak from greater devotion or with greater authority than does the Senator from Mississippi in the protection of our States in their rights and the protection of our people in their liberties.

Mr. EASTLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator yield further?

Mr. HILL. I yield to the Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. EASTLAND. I thank the distinguished Senator from Alabama. I am very sincere in what I · say about the Senator's speech. I think all Americans including all the people of the South, are indebted for the very fine and able speech which the distinguished Senator from Alabama has made today.

Mr. HILL. Mr. President, may I again express my heartfelt appreciation to the Senator from Mississippi and tell him how grateful I am to him for his words. I have been quoting from Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson. · Still closer to our time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, while Governor of New York, had the following to say on the proper relationship between the States and the Federal Government:

Fortunately for the stability of our Nation it was already apparent (when the Constitution was adopted) that the vastness of our territory presented wide geographical and climatic differences which gave to the States wide differences in the nature of their industry, their agriculture, and their commerce. • * * Thus, already, it was clear to the framers of our Constitution that the greatest possible liberty of self-government must be given to each State, and that any national administration attempting to make all laws for the whole Nation, such as was wholly practical in Great Britain, would inevitably result at some future time in a dissolution of the Union itself.

The preservation of this home rule by the States is not a cry of jealous Commonwealths seeking their own aggrandizement at the expense of sister States. It is a fundamental necessity if we are to remain a truly united country.

The whole success of our democracy has not been that it is a democracy wherein the will of a bare majority of the total inhabitants is imposed upon the minority, but because it has been a democracy where through a division of government into units called States the rights and interests of the minorities have been respected and have been given a voice in the control of our affairs.

To bring about government by oligarchy masquerading as democracy it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our National Government. The individual sovereignty of our States must be destroyed, except in mere minor matters of legislation. We are safe from the danger of any such departure from the principles on which this country was founded just so long as the individual home rule of the States is scrupulously preserved and fought for whenever they seem in danger.

I have been quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt. After outlining the rights granted by the Constitution to the Federal Government, he said:

As the individual is protected from possible oppression by his neighbors, so the smallest political unit-the town is in theory at least, allowed to manage its own affairs, secure from undue interference by the larger unit of the country, which in turn is protected from mischievous meddling by the State. The whole spirit and intent of the Constitution is to carry this great principle into the relations between the National Government and the governments of the States. Let us remember that from the very beginning, differences in climate, soil, conditions, habits and mode of living in States separated by thousands of miles rendered it necessary to give the fullest individual latitude to the individual States. Remembering that the mining States of the Rockies, the fertile savannas of the South, the prairies of the West, and the rocky soil of the New England States created many problems, introduced many factors in each locality, which have no existence in others, it is obvious that almost every new or old problem of government must be solved, if it is to be solved to the satisfaction of the people of the whole country, by each State in its own way.

As I have said, when the Founding Fathers gave up a portion of the sovereignty of the States to the Federal Government, they did so with a great deal of trepidation, and they did so only with the firm conviction that it was unity alone--unity of purpose, unity of resolve, and unity in their mutual dedication to human liberty, that unity about which Andrew Jackson spoke in his farewell address-that could enable the people of our country to long endure and abound in the joy of the priceless legacy which a heroic young Nation had won at the cost of much sacrifice and loss of life.

At this momentous hour in the history of America and of the world, the objective for which we must strive with all of our fervor and determination is unity. Let us be done, Senators, with this measure before us, which can only distract and misguide our people, which separates and divides us, and which opens the way for the destruction of fundamental rights of the States and the fundamental rights of the people of all the United States.

Let us stand united, strong, and res­ lished. olute in our unity; let us support squarely the rights of the people of the United States and the rights of the States of the United States, that our Government may be preserved. Let us stand squarely upon the Constitution · of the United States-rock of freedom, ageless and enduring foundation of our rights, our hopes, and our democratic faith.