In this view I found myself supported by two illustrious names in our history. Mr. Jefferson, shortly after the victory at Yorktown had rescued Virginia from invasion and secured national independence, prepared the draught of a Constitution for his native State, which expressly provided that “the number of delegates which each county may send shall be in proportion to the number of its qualified electors, and the whole number of delegates for the State shall be proportioned to the whole number of qualified electors in it.”[254] This proposition, which is substantially the Rule of Three applied to voters, was not adopted, but it remains a record of opinion. Some time afterward, in the debates in the Convention which framed the National Constitution, Mr. Madison gave his authority to the same conclusion.
“It had been very properly observed that representation was an expedient by which the meeting of the people themselves was rendered unnecessary, and that the representatives ought, therefore, to bear a proportion to the voters which their constituents, if convened, would respectively have.”[255]
Thus representation founded on voters seems commended by authority and principle. Its adoption would at least give symmetry to our national system, and make the representative more precisely the embodied presence of his constituents, while at the same time it would tend to enlarge the suffrage, and to harmonize sectional pretensions with the national will, when exerted for human rights. If representation were founded on voters, the States would care little, if Congress should annul all inequality in the elective franchise on account of color. The way would be open to Congress.
There are other propositions to my mind more satisfactory, because they reach the special necessity of the hour, and provide the only effectual remedy. Speaking in the name of national justice and for the national safety, they cannot be put aside with indifference; nor is it wise to say that any measure of justice is not practical. I refer, of course, to the propositions, in different forms, to secure that great guaranty, equality in political rights, by Constitutional Amendment, or by Act of Congress, or by both.
A Constitutional Amendment placing equality of political rights under the safeguard of a specific text may be superfluous, but it is not unconstitutional or immoral. It will be supplementary to provisions already in the Constitution, and in the nature of a declaratory statute removing all doubts and cavils. It will be like an additional force in mechanics, or like a reinforcement in the field. It will be reduplication in a new form. On such an occasion, where such a cause is in issue, I welcome every alliance; and such I regard the proposition of the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Henderson].
The other proposition, looking to the direct action of Congress under the National Constitution and existing Amendments, is obviously the simplest and most practical, inasmuch as it deals with the exigency promptly, frankly, and according to the necessities of the hour. It does not undertake to act by indirection; nor does it postpone to an indefinite future what cannot be postponed without detriment to the Republic. Refusing to procrastinate, it saves all. Such a proposition is commended by every argument of reason, humanity, and patriotism. To say that it is not constitutional is to say that the Constitution itself is not constitutional; for it is derived from the very heart of the Constitution, and is filled with all its best life-blood.
Something has been said of the form in which the proposition is presented. There is the bill of the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Yates], which he has maintained in a speech of singular originality and power, that has not been answered, and I do not hesitate to say cannot be answered. By this bill it is provided that all citizens in any State or Territory shall be protected in the full and equal enjoyment and exercise of civil and political rights, including the right of suffrage. This is founded on the consideration that by the abolition of Slavery the slave became at once a citizen, subject only to such disabilities as are common to other citizens, and that by the second clause of the Constitutional Amendment Congress is empowered to enforce the abolition of Slavery by appropriate legislation. On this foundation the Senator places his bill, assuming, that, to complete the abolition of Slavery, all restrictions, penalties, or deprivations of right, resulting from Slavery in any State or Territory, must be made to cease. The proposition that I have had the honor of presenting is a joint resolution, which, after declaring the duty of Congress to guaranty a republican form of government in States where the governments have lapsed, and also the duty to complete the abolition of Slavery by the removal of all relics of this wrong, proceeds to provide that there shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, or monopoly, nor any denial of rights, civil or political, on account of race or color, but all persons shall be equal before the law, whether in the court-room or at the ballot-box.[256] Not doubting the power of Congress to carry out this principle everywhere within the jurisdiction of the United States, I content myself for the present by asserting it only in the lapsed States lately in rebellion, where the twofold duty to guaranty a republican government and to enforce the abolition of Slavery is beyond question. To that extent I now urge it.