Meanwhile the House of Representatives undertook to meet the Suffrage question indirectly, and by a proposition for an Amendment of the Constitution, reported by Hon. Thaddeus Stevens from the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Proceeding originally from Hon. James G. Blaine, a Representative from Maine, afterwards Speaker, it was known familiarly as “the Blaine Amendment.” After elaborate discussion, the joint resolution containing the Amendment was adopted by the House, January 31st,—Yeas 120, Nays 46,—in the following terms:—
“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed: Provided, That, whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons therein of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation.”
Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, who was the Senate Chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, promptly gave notice that he should call for its consideration in the Senate February 5th. This opened the whole subject in all its branches, and Mr. Sumner seized the earliest opportunity to discuss it, beginning the important debate. His speech, after asserting the equal rights of all, vindicated the plenary powers of Congress, especially under the clause requiring the United States to guaranty a republican form of government. Though made on the Constitutional Amendment, it was equally applicable to Mr. Trumbull’s Civil Rights Bill, then pending, as also to the Bill for Enfranchisement in the District of Columbia, and to all measures of Reconstruction.
SPEECH.
MR. PRESIDENT,—I begin by expressing my acknowledgments to the Senator from Maine, who yields the floor to-day, and also my sincere regret that anything should interfere with the opening of this debate by him. It is his right, and I enter upon it now only by his indulgence.
I am not insensible to the responsibility assumed in setting myself against a proposition already adopted in the other House, and having the recommendation of a Committee to which the country looks with such just expectation, and to which, let me say, I look with so much trust. But, after careful reflection, I do not feel that I can do otherwise. Knowing, as I do, the eminent character of the Committee, its intelligence, its patriotism, and the moral instincts by which it is moved, I am at a loss to understand the origin of an attempt which seems to me nothing else than another compromise of Human Rights, as if the country had not already paid enough in costly treasure and more costly blood for such compromises in the past. I had hoped the day of compromise with wrong had gone forever. Ample experience shows that it is the least practical mode of settling questions involving moral principle. A moral principle cannot be compromised.
Here are important words of the Amendment:—