The requirement that
the ratification of the
proposed Amendment
should be the condition
of the admission of
the Senators- and
Representatives-elect
to seats in Congress.
No matter how it might have been stated, it was an absurdity. The true theory on this point was that held by Mr. Stevens, viz., to consider
The absurdity of
the condition.
The amended Constitution would then have the same power over them as if the Amendment had been ratified by them. In fact, their petition for admission or recognition as "States" of the Union with the amended Constitution would imply their assent to the Amendment as well as to every other part of the Constitution. The more moderate Republicans feared that the Southern communities would not feel obligated by a Constitution amended in this way. It is difficult to see why they should not. The Southern statesmen knew that Congress had no power under the Constitution to require of new "States" obedience to anything as a condition of their admission to the Union, but the Constitution as it was at the moment of their admission. Looked at from the point of view of the present, it would certainly appear that the exaction of such an unlawful promise, imposing such a degrading discrimination, would have been far more exasperating than anything else which could have been invented or imagined.
Enough of them saw this to prevent Congress from enacting the bill proposed by the Reconstruction Committee into a law, and when the proposed Amendment went to the legislatures of the "States," there was no requirement attending it which appeared to deprive any legislature, or body claiming to be a legislature, of its discretion in dealing with the subject.
As a matter of fact, however, the legislature of Tennessee ratified the proposed Amendment within about a month after receiving the Article
The precedent set
by Tennessee.
These proceedings made it certain that, while Congress had failed to pass any formal act making the acceptance of the proposed Fourteenth