History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

"ARTICLE—.

"SEC. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

"SEC. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of such male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

"SEC. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

"SEC. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.

"SEC. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

The President was requested to send the Amendment to the several
States for ratification.

On the 22d of June, President Johnson sent a message to Congress informing them that the Secretary of State had transmitted to the Governors of the several States certified copies of the proposed amendment. "These steps," said the President, "are to be considered as purely ministerial, and in no sense whatever committing the Executive to an approval of the recommendation of the amendment." It seemed to the President a serious objection to the proposition "that the joint resolution was not submitted by the two houses for the approval of the President, and that of the thirty-six States which constitute the Union, eleven are excluded from representation."

The President having no power under the Constitution to veto a joint resolution submitting a constitutional amendment to the people, this voluntary expression of opinion could not have been designed to have an influence upon the action of Congress. The document could have been designed by its author only as an argument with the State Legislatures against the ratification of the Constitutional Amendment, and as a notice to the Southern people that they were badly treated.

The President's message was received by Congress without comment, and referred to the Committee on Reconstruction.