The various propositions submitted to the House of Representatives for securing the right to vote to all the male adult citizens of the United States were referred to the Judiciary Committee of which I was a member. Among them was one submitted by myself. In the committee they were referred to a sub-committee consisting of myself, Mr. Churchill of New York, and Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin. Mr. Eldridge as a Democrat was opposed to the measure, and he took no interest in preparing the form of an amendment. Churchill and myself were fellow- boarders and we prepared and agreed to an amendment in substance that which was adopted finally and which in form was almost the same. When I reported the amendment to the committee not one word was said either in criticism or commendation, nor was there a call for a second reading. After a moment's delay Mr. Wilson, the chairman, said:—"If there is no objection Mr. Boutwell will report the amendment to the House." There was no objection and at the earliest opportunity I made the report—that is, I reported the resolution for amending the Constitution. Mr. Wilson made a speech which I have not since read, but which made an impression upon my mind that he was opposed to the measure, or at least had doubts about the wisdom of urging the amendment upon Congress and the country.

The resolution passed the House as it was reported by the committee. When it was taken up in the Senate Mr. Sumner, who was opposed to the resolution, assailed it with an amendment that would have been fatal if his lead had been followed by the two Houses. He proposed to insert after the words "to vote" the words "or hold office." At that time he was a recognized leader upon all matters relating to the negro race, and his standing with that race was such that the Republican senators from the slave States were obedient to his wishes. His amendment was adopted by the Senate. In presence of the fact that Mr. Sumner was opposed to any amendment of the Constitution upon the subject and he proposed to rely upon a statute, it is difficult to explain his conduct upon any other theory than that he intended to defeat the measure either in Congress or in the States. He had claimed when the Fourteenth Amendment was pending that a joint resolution would furnish an adequate remedy and protection. His proposition was in these words: "There shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste or monopoly invested with peculiar privileges and powers and there shall be no denial of rights, civil or political, on account of color or race anywhere within the limits of the United States or the jurisdiction thereof: but all persons therein shall be equal before the law, whether in the court room or at the ballot-box. And this statute made in pursuance of the Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State notwithstanding." This resolution is a sad impeachment of Mr. Sumner's quality as a lawyer and it is an equally sad impeachment of his sense or of his integrity as a man that he was willing to risk the rights of five million persons upon a statute whose language was rhetorical and indefinite, a statute which might be repealed and which was quite certain to be pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Upon the return of the resolution and amendment to the House, my own position was an embarrassing one. I was counted as a radical and in favor of securing to the negro race every right to which the white race was entitled. My opposition to the Senate amendment seemed to place me in a light inconsistent with my former professions. However, I met the difficulty by an argument in which I maintained that the right to vote carried with it the right to hold office. That in the United States there were only a few exceptions, and those were exceptions under the Constitution.

Finally, the House, by a reduced vote refused to concur with the amendment of the Senate. It was at this crisis that Wendell Phillips wrote an article in the Anti-Slavery Standard over his own name in which he said in substance and in words, that the House proposition was adequate and that it ought to be accepted by the Senate. His name and opinion settled the controversy. The Southern Republicans deserted Mr. Sumner feeling that the opinion of Phillips was a sufficient shield. A slight change of phraseology was made and the proposition of the House became the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

I wrote a letter of acknowledgment to Mr. Phillips in the opinion that he had saved the amendment. At that time the prejudice against negroes for office was very strong in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and in varying degrees the prejudice extended over the whole North.

The enjoyment of the right to vote has not been fully secured to the negro race, but no one has appeared to deny his right to hold office. Indeed, the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party has placed him in office, both by election and appointment. Thus has experience shown the folly of Mr. Sumner's amendment.

That Mr. Sumner should have been willing to risk the rights of the whole negro race upon a statute whose constitutionality would have been questioned upon good ground, and which might have been repealed, is a marvel which no one not acquainted with Mr. Sumner can comprehend. First of all, though he was learned, he was not a lawyer. He was impractical in the affairs of government to a degree that is incomprehensible even to those who knew him. He was in the Senate twenty-three years and the only mark that he left upon the statutes is an amendment to the law relating to naturalization by which Mongolians are excluded from citizenship. The object of his amendment was to save negroes from the exclusive features of the statute which was designed to apply only to the Chinese. His amendment made plain what the committee had designed to secure. He was a great figure in the war against slavery and as a great figure in that war he should ever remain.

The Fourteenth Amendment saved the country from a series of calamities that might have been more disastrous even than the Civil War. The South might, under the Fourteenth Amendment, grant to the negroes the right to vote but upon conditions wholly impracticable and thus have secured their full representation in Congress at the same time that the voting power was retained in the hands of the white race. Or they might have denied to the negro race the right to vote and submitted to a loss of representation. Such a policy would have given the whole country over to contention and possibly in the end, to civil war. The discontented and oppressed negroes, increasing in numbers and wealth, would have demanded their rights ultimately, even by the threat of force, or by the use of force they would have secured their rights. In the North there would have been a large body of the people, only less than the whole body, who would have sympathized with the negroes and who, in an exigency would have rendered them material aid. The Dorr War in Rhode Island and the struggles in Kansas, are instances of the danger of attempting to found society or to maintain social order upon an unjust or an unequal system for the distribution of political power. It is true that at this time (1901) the operation of the Fifteenth Amendment has been defeated and consequently the governments of States and the Government of the United States have become usurpations, in that they have been in the hands of a minority of men. Nevertheless the influence of the amendment is felt by all, and the time is not distant when it will be accepted by all. Thus our Government will be made to rest upon the wisest and safest foundation yet devised by man: The Equality of Men in the States, and the Equality of States in the Union.

Mr. Sumner opposed the amendment and he declined to vote upon the passage of the resolution. Wendell Phillips saved it in the Senate. General Grant, more than anyone else secured its ratification by the people. I append a copy of my letter to Mr. Phillips:

WASHINGTON, March 13, 1870.
MY DEAR SIR:—