Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader

by John Ludwig Hülshof

1. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

2. "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

[1]The Articles of Confederation proved by experience inadequate to the wants of the people of the United States, and they were supplanted by the Constitution.

"The American Constitution, with its manifest defects, still remains one of the most abiding monuments of human wisdom, and it has received a tribute to its general excellence such as no other political system was ever honored with."—FREEMAN.

[2]This clause has been superseded by Amendment XIV., Sect. 2.

[3]This clause has been amended and superseded by the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution. By the provisions of the original clause the person in the electoral college having the greatest number of votes (provided he had a majority of the whole number of electors appointed) became President, and the person having the next greatest number of votes became Vice-president, thus giving the Presidency to one political party and the Vice-Presidency to another. In the year 1800 the Democratic Republicans determined to elect Thomas Jefferson President and Aaron Burr Vice-president. The result was that each secured an equal number of votes, and neither was elected. The Constitution then, as now, provided that in case the electoral college failed to elect a President, the House of Representatives, voting as States, should elect. The Federalists distrusted and disliked Jefferson; the Democratic Republicans and some of the Federalists distrusted and disliked Burr. The vote in the House on the thirty-sixth ballot gave the Presidency to Jefferson and the Vice-Presidency to Burr. In order to prevent a repetition of so dangerous a struggle, the Twelfth Amendment, by which the electoral votes are cast separately for the candidates for President and for Vice-President, was proposed by Congress Dec. 12, 1803, and declared in force Sept. 25, 1804.

[4]More than seven hundred amendments to the Constitution have been proposed since it was adopted. Several are usually proposed at each session of Congress.

The first twelve articles of amendment to the Federal Constitution were adopted so soon after the original organization of the Government under it in 1789 as to justify the statement that they were practically contemporaneous with the adoption of the original (JUSTICE MILLER, U. S. Supreme Court).

[5]In the case of Chisholm vs. The State of Georgia, the Supreme Court decided that under Article III., Section 2, of the Constitution a private citizen of a State might bring suit against a State other than the one of which he was a citizen. This decision, by which a State might be brought as defendant before the bar of a Federal court, was highly displeasing to the majority of the States in 1794. On the 5th of March of that year the Eleventh Amendment was passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, and declared in force January 8, 1798. Practically, the amendment has been the authority for the repudiation of debts by several States.