History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

"As the elective franchise has been extended in this country, we have seen education become more universal. Look throughout all our Northern States at our schools and colleges, our academies of learning, our associations, the pulpit, the press, and the numerous agencies for the promotion of intelligence, all the inevitable offspring of our free institutions. Here is the high training which inspires the eloquence of the Senate, the wisdom of the cabinet, the address of the diplomatist, and which has developed and brought to light that intelligent and energetic mind which has elevated the character and contributed to the prosperity of the country. It is the ballot which is the stimulus to improvement, which fires the heart of youthful ambition, which stimulates honorable aspiration, which penetrates the thick shades of the forest, and takes the poor rail-splitter by the hand and points him to the shining height of human achievement, or which goes into the log hut of the tailor boy and opens to him the avenue of the presidential mansion."

Mr. Yates then declared his confidence in the triumph of the principle of universal suffrage: "It is my conscientious conviction that if every Senator on this floor, and every Representative in the other House, and the President of the United States, should, with united voices, attempt to oppose this grand consummation of universal equality, they will fail. It is too late for that. You may go to the head-waters of the Mississippi and turn off the little rivulets, but you can not go to the mouth, after it has collected its waters from a thousand rivers, and with accumulated volume is pouring its foaming waters into the Gulf, and say, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no further.'

"It is too late to change the tide of human progress. The enlightened convictions of the masses, wrought by the thorough discussions of thirty years, and consecrated by the baptism of precious blood, can not now be changed. The hand of a higher power than man's is in this revolution, and it will not move backward. It is of no use to fight against destiny. God, not man, created men equal. Deep laid in the solid foundations of God's eternal throne, the principle of equality is established, indestructible and immortal.

"Senators, sixty centuries of the past are looking down upon you. All the centuries of the future are calling upon you. Liberty, struggling amid the rise and wrecks of empires in the past, and yet to struggle for life in all the nations of the world, conjures you to seize this great opportunity which the providence of Almighty God has placed in your hands to bless the world and make your names immortal, to carry to full and triumphant consummation the great work begun by your fathers, and thus lay permanently, solidly, and immovably, the cap-stone upon the pyramid of human liberty."

On the 21st of February, the proposed amendment being again before the Senate, Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, delivered an elaborate speech in opposition to the measure. He had previously refrained from speech-making, supposing that "while the passions of the country were inflamed by the war, reason could not be heard." He regretted that questions pertaining to the war still occupied the attention of Congress to the exclusion of those connected with economy, revenue, finance, ordinary legislation, and the administration of justice—questions which require intelligence, investigation, labor, and the habits of the student. As an argument against changing the basis of representation as it existed, Mr. Buckalew gave statistical details, showing the various ratios of representation in the Senate, as possessed respectively by the East, West and South. He maintained that New England had too great a preponderance of power in the Senate, both, as to membership and the chairmanships of committees, "While," said he, "the population of the East is less than one-seventh of the population of the States represented in the Senate, she has the chairmanships of one-third of the committees. The chairmanship of a committee is a position of much influence and power. The several distinguished gentlemen holding that position have virtual control over the transaction of business, both in committee and in the Senate."

Mr. Buckalew thus presented the effect of restoration of representation to the Southern States upon the relative position of New England: "Twenty-two Senators from the Southern States and two from Colorado—being double the number of those from the East—would reduce the importance of the latter in the Senate and remit her back to the condition in which she stood in her relations to the Union before the war. True, she would even then possess much more than her proportion of weight in the Senate, regard being had to her population, but she would no longer dominate or control the Government of the United States."

Mr. Buckalew argued at some length that representation should continue to be based upon population. He thought that the two-fifths added to the representative population in the South by the abolition of slavery would be counterbalanced by the mortality of the slave population since the outbreak of the war. He then presented the following objections to "any propositions of amendments at this time by Congress:"

"1. Eleven States are unrepresented in the Senate and House. They are not heard in debate which may affect their interests and welfare in all future time.

"2. Any amendment made at this time will be a partisan amendment.

"3. The members of this Congress were not chosen with reference to the subject of constitutional amendment.