uestion the country was
divided. Then amendments to the Constitution were proposed without
number here, elsewhere, and every-where. Amendments to the
Constitution seemed to be the order of the day. To what end, and for
what purpose? To increase the power in the hands of the few who
wielded the political power in those States, and who were demanding
it.

Referring to an argument presented by the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr.
Morrill remarked: "But yesterday we had an additional reason given why
this amendment should not be adopted; and that was that it was wholly
unnecessary, because, it was said, by the events which were
transpiring in the country in regard to the recent slave population,
there need be no apprehension of excess of representation based on the
whole 'numbers' instead of three-fifths, from the important fact that
they were passing away. If I gather the force of that argument, it is
this: we are to base no legislation and no action upon the idea that
this race, recently slave, now free, is part and parcel of the
American people, the object of our care, solicitude, and protection.
They are passing away--dying; let them be represented as slaves now,
and let them never enter into the basis hereafter of the
representative system. Sir, that is the old argument--an argument
worthy of another period than this. Our people have been an inexorable
people, in some respects, in regard to the races that have been within
their power. In the march of our civilization across the continent,
the iron heel of that civilization has rested upon the Indian, and he
is passing away. We seem to contemplate the probable extinction of the
Indians from our limits with composure. He is a nomad; he is a savage;
he is a barbarian; he is not within our morals or our code of law; he
is not within the pale of the Constitution, but flits upon the verge
of it, outside our protection, the subject of our caprices, and
sometimes, I think, of our avarice. And, now, if any consequence is to
be attached to the remark of the honorable Senator from Wisconsin [Mr.
Doolittle] yesterday, this 'inferior race' is not to be the subject of
our solicitude. They, too, are passing away; it is not worth while to
change your Constitution in regard to them. Let them be represented as
two-fifths slaves on the old basis until they shall have perished, and
then your Constitution will need no amendment. The laws of a fearful
antagonism of superior and inferior races a