guaranteed the financial integrity of the government, and thus satisfied those who feared some assertion of state rights that might legalize debts incurred in opposition to the national authority. These two provisions constituted the limitations upon the powers of the states that were generally recognized as unavoidable consequences of the war. The second section of the amendment dealt with matters upon which opinion in the dominant party was far from certain and harmonious. It embodied a very clumsy and artificial solution of the suffrage problem. The alternative presented to the states, of enfranchising the blacks or losing proportionally in representation, was a mere temporary compromise between two party factions. It was the most that the friends of negro suffrage could secure at this stage of the process; but there was no indication that they would be satisfied with this. The third section of the amendment was merely incidental to the conflict between Congress and President Johnson. The President's very free exercise of the pardoning power interfered with the progress of the legislature's policy, and no method of checking this interference seemed so feasible as a constitutional amendment. As a whole, the amendment was tentative. It betokened a longing for a definite settlement of the two great questions of the day, tempered by dread of an adverse public sentiment.

The "fundamental conditions" which afforded the only basis for Congressional maintenance of negro suffrage in the restored states were regarded by a large majority of constitutional lawyers in both parties as of doubtful validity. Under the circumstances a further amendment to the constitution was the only resort that could be depended upon for the end desired. Hence the Fifteenth Amendment was, after a long and ardent discussion of the whole field of political philosophy, sent to the state legislatures by resolution finally passed February 26, 1869.

... On March 30, 1870, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment had been proclaimed, and just two months later the first enforcement act became law. By the policy thus expressed the issue was definitely made up which ended in the undoing of the reconstruction. Seven unwholesome years were required to demonstrate that not even the government which

had quelled the greatest rebellion in history could maintain the freedmen in both security and comfort on the necks of their former masters. The demonstration was slow, but it was effective and permanent.

WILLIAM A. DUNNING, Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction. 93, 252, passim.

MCLAUGHLIN (1899)

It will be remembered that the Emancipation Proclamation declared free all slaves within those parts of the South then in

open rebellion. This was confessedly a war measure like any other confiscation of property, an act of war. It did not destroy slavery in the States not in rebellion. Moreover, some persons believed that the President had exceeded his authority in issuing such a proclamation. In the early part of 1864 a vote on the question of submitting a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery everywhere was taken into Congress. The necessary two-thirds vote could not be secured in the House, though the Senate passed the measure by a large majority. After the election, carried by the Republicans on a distinctly anti-slavery platform, abolition assumed new strength. The President in his annual message advocated the adoption of the amendment. A great debate in the House followed. The vote was one hundred and nineteen ayes to fifty-six noes seven more than the required two-thirds. In the homely, truthful phrase of Lincoln, the "great job" was ended. . . .

The principle of the ordinance of 1787 was, in almost the exact words of that document, made applicable to the whole Union; the great curse that had separated the American people into two bitterly hostile sections was to be cast aside forever. The hopes of the future were for reorganization, a re-establishment of sympathy and fellow-feeling between North and South, now that the cause of enmity and division was no more. As Lincoln pointed out, the amendment meant the "maintenance" of the Union.

...

It was next determined to put the Civil Rights Bill into the form of a constitutional amendment, where its principles would be permanent and safe from violation. The Fourteenth Amendment was therefore agreed upon and offered to the States (June,

1866), for adoption. or enforce any law abridging the "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," or deprive any person of "life, liberty or property without due process of law," or deny to any person the equal protection of the laws." The Republicans saw that by the freeing of the blacks they had actually increased the political strength of the Southern States, because the threefifths rule would no longer apply, but all the negroes would be counted in determining the representative population. Some were desirous of giving the negroes the suffrage immediately by National act. Others hesitated. All, however, desired to prevent the Southern States from reaping this political advantage from emancipation, unless they allowed the blacks to vote. It was therefore decided that if the negroes were not given the suffrage by a State voluntarily, they should not be counted in determining the basis of representation. For these rea

It declared that no State should make

sons the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment was added.

Such was the Fourteenth Amendment, by far the greatest change made in the Constitution, since its adoption. There was some difficulty, as we shall see, in securing its ratification, the Southern States refusing to accept it; two years passed before it was finally ratified (1868), but we may notice at this time how it modified the Constitution when once it became a part of the fundamental law. Before this amendment was passed the subject of suffrage was solely a State affair, as long as the State had a "republican form of government." So, too, the State had complete control over its citizens and could be as tyrannical as it saw fit, provided that it did not interfere with the relations between a person and the National Government or violate the few express prohibitions in the National Constitution. By this amendment the nation intervened to protect the citizens of the State against unjust legislation or action of a State. Thus it will be seen the situation had entirely altered from what it was in 1788-90.

Then it was thought necessary to shield the citizen from the possible tyranny of the National Government, and to this end the first ten amendments were adopted.

In 1869 the Fifteenth Amendment was submitted to the

States for adoption. It declared: "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, colour, or previous condition of servitude." Secretary Fish announced, March 30, 1870, that it had "become valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution of the United States."

The acceptance of the Fifteenth Amendment as part of the fundamental law of the nation did not do away with the troubles and distress that grew out of the rebellion. The corruption of the carpet-bag governments, built on negro suffrage, was proof enough that slavery had been a poor schoolmaster for freedom.

ANDREW C. MCLAUGHLIN, History of the American Nation. 463–483.

ᎻᎪᎡᎢ (1899)

So far as the existence of slavery went, the Thirteenth Amendment, declared to be in force in December, 1865, was a constitutional guarantee which superseded the revocable abolition acts of the States reconstructed during that year; and it took out of the list of conditions which might be imposed upon the States an acknowledgment of the freedom of the former slaves; it superseded also the special conditions of the amnesty proclamations of Lincoln and Johnson. There still remained a necessity for statutes or constitutional amendments to define the judicial and other civil rights of the negro. . .

During 1865 both the legal and the economic status of the negroes were confused and unsatisfactory.

As soon as it became evident that Johnson had no interest in negro suffrage, and was willing to reinstate by his pardoning power a large proportion of those who had been concerned in the rebellion, Chase [Salmon P. Chase] found himself separated from the President, who no longer invited an expression of his opinion. At the same time his friends in the South assured him that, without protection from the United States, the Union men would be completely overborne and the freedman in danger.

Chase's sympathy now began to turn towards the congressional plan... This was a legislative reversal of whatever was left of the Dred Scott decision. . .

The act was certain to arouse the opposition of the South, and was itself liable to repeal. It seemed therefore desirable to put its provisions into a constitutional amendment, which would forever protect the rights of the negroes and which at the same time would take out of the hands of the President the restoration of former rebels to their political status. . . .

The Southern States duly paid the price of their readmission by ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment, and from 1868 they were gradually allowed to reoccupy seats in Congress. As might have been expected, so soon as the Southern States were again admitted to seats in Congress there was a tendency in the South to put an end by violence to negro suffrage; hence Congress passed a statute, the so-called Civil Rights Bill, under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, to protect the negroes.

ALBERT BUSHNELL Hart, Salmon Portland Chase. 335, 381.