ject in that
body are given in a preceding chapter. This bill, as Mr. Morrill
subsequently said in the Senate, was not an election bill, and
conferred no right of voting upon any person beyond what he had
before. It was a mere declaration of a right to vote. As such, the
bill was favorably received by the Senate Committee to whom it was
referred, and was by them reported back with favor, but was never put
upon its passage.

Meanwhile the Senate Committee had under consideration a bill of their
own, which they reported on the 10th of January. This bill provided
for restricted suffrage, requiring the qualification to read and
write. Mr. Yates, an original and uncompromising advocate of universal
suffrage was opposed to this restriction. He was a member of the
Committee on the District of Columbia, but had been prevented from
being present in its deliberations when it was resolved to report the
bill as then before the Senate. Fearing that the bill might pass the
Senate with the objectionable restrictions, Mr. Yates moved that it be
recommitted, which was done.

At a meeting of the committee called to reconsider the bill, Mr. Yates
argued at length and with earnestness against disfranchisement on the
ground of inability to read and write. The committee reversed their
former decision, and reported the bill substantially in the form in
which it subsequently became a law. The bill being before the Senate
on the 16th of January, 1866, Mr. Garrett Davis opposed it in a speech
of great length. He made use of every argument and referred to every
authority within his reach to prove the inferiority of the negro race.
After giving Cuvier's definition of the "negro," the Senator remarked:
"The great naturalist might have added as other distinctive
characteristics of the negro; first, that his skin exhales perpetually
a peculiar pungent and disagreeable odor; second, that 'the hollow of
his foot makes a hole in the ground.'" The Senator drew a fearful
picture of the schemes of Massachusetts to use the negro voters, whom
it was her policy to create in the South.

This subject did not again come up in the Senate until after the lapse
of several months. On the 27th of June it was "disentombed" from what
many supposed was its final resting place. Mr. Morrill proposed as an
amendment that the elective franchise should be restricted to persons
who could read and write. This was rejected; fifteen voting in the
affirmative, and nineteen in