History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

"In my opinion," said Mr. Hill, "when the framers of the Constitution placed in that instrument the declaration or the provision that the Government of the United States would guarantee to each State a republican form of government, they spoke with reference to such governments as then existed, and such as those same framers recognized for a long time afterward as republican governments."

"Well, that is a very good answer," said Mr. Higby. "It is an answer from a stand-point seventy-five years ago. I speak from the stand-point of the present time."

Mr. Higby desired that the joint resolution should go back to the committee. He said: "I do not wish it disposed of here, to be voted down. I want, if it is possible, that it shall be so framed that it shall receive the full constitutional majority required, and be a proposition that shall operate with full force in all those States that now have a great population excluded from the rights of citizenship."

"If the gentleman proposes," said Mr. Stevens, "to send it back to the committee without instructions, I would ask him what we are to do. There are not quite as many views upon this floor as there are members; but the number lacks very little of it. And how are we to gather up all those views spread through all this discussion, and accommodate all, when each view would now probably receive from one to three votes in its favor?"

"I have only this to say," replied Mr. Higby: "with my views of the Constitution, I never can vote for this proposition with this proviso in its present language. I say that it gives a power to the States to make governments that are not republican in form."

"I say to my friend," said Mr. Stevens, "that if I thought, that by any fair construction of language, such an interpretation could be given as he gives, I would vote against it myself; but I do not believe there is any thing in that objection."

Mr. Bingham took the floor in favor of the proposed joint resolution. In "giving this and other amendments to the Constitution my support," said he, "I do not subject myself to the gratuitous imputation of a want of reverence either for the Constitution or its illustrious founders. I beg leave, at all events, to say, with all possible respect for that gentleman, that I do not recognize the right of any man upon this floor, who was a representative of that party which denied the right to defend the Constitution of his country by arms against armed rebellion, to become my accuser.

"In seeking to amend, not to mar, the Constitution of the United States, we ought to have regard to every express or implied limitation upon our power imposed by that great instrument. When gentlemen object to amending the Constitution, when they talk sneeringly about tinkering with the Constitution, they do not remember that it is one of the express provisions of that instrument that Congress shall have power to propose amendments to the Legislatures of the several States. Do gentlemen mean, by the logic to which we have listened for the past five days on this subject of our right to amend, that we are not to add any thing to the Constitution, and that we are to take nothing from it? I prefer to follow, in this supreme hour of the nation's trial, the lead of a wiser and nobler spirit, who, by common consent, was called, while he lived, 'the Father of his Country,' and, now that he is dead, is still reverenced as 'the Father of his Country,' and to be hailed, I trust, by the millions of the future who are to people this land of ours as 'the Father of his Country.' In his Farewell Address, his last official utterance, Washington used these significant words, which I repeat to-day for the consideration of gentlemen: "The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.' We propose, sir, simply to act in accordance with this suggestion of Washington. We propose, in presenting these amendments, to alter, in so far as the changed condition of the country requires, the fundamental law, in order to secure the safety of the republic and furnish better guarantees in the future for the rights of each and all.

"The question that underlies this controversy is this: whether we will stand by the Constitution in its original intent and spirit, or, like cravens, abandon it. I assert it here to-day, without fear of contradiction, that the amendment pending before this House is an amendment conforming exactly to the spirit of the Constitution, and according to the declared intent of its framers.

"My friend from California [Mr. Higby] has informed us that there are one hundred thousand more free colored citizens of the United States in the State of Mississippi to-day than there are of white citizens; that there are one hundred thousand more free colored citizens of the United States in South Carolina than there are of white citizens; and then we are gravely told that we must not press this amendment, because we are abandoning the Constitution and the intent of our fathers. That is a new discovery, one for which the Democracy ought to take out letters patent, that it was ever intended that a minority of free citizens should disfranchise the majority of free male citizens, of full age, in any State of the Union! For myself, I will never consent to it."