milar to the first section of the Civil Eights Bill. Nothing could
be done in Georgia under "color of law," which would subject officers
to the penalties provided by the Civil Rights Bill. "It being so
easily avoided by being complied with, by doing a simple act of
justice, by carrying out the spirit of the constitutional amendment, I
can not give my consent to defeat a bill the purpose of which is good,
the operation of which is so innocent, and may be so easily avoided."

The Republican Senators were desirous of bringing the bill to a final
vote on this evening, but on account of the illness of Senator Wright,
of New Jersey, it was proposed by Democratic members to appoint some
hour on the following day when the vote should be taken in order that
they might have a full vote.

Mr. Wade, of Ohio, said: "If this was a question in the ordinary
course of legislation, I certainly would not object to the proposition
which the gentlemen on the other side make; but I view it as one of
the greatest and most fundamental questions that has ever come before
this body for settlement, and I look upon it as having bearings
altogether beyond the question on this bill. The bill is, undoubtedly,
a very good one. There is no constitutional objection to it; there has
been no objection to it raised that creates a doubt in the mind of any
mortal man; but, nevertheless, we are at issue with the President of
the United States upon a question peculiarly our own. The President of
the United States has no more power under the Constitution to
interpose his authority here, to prescribe the principle upon which
these States should be admitted to this Union, than any man of this
body has out of it. The Constitution makes him the executive of the
laws that we make, and there it leaves him; and what is our condition?
We who are to judge of the forms of government under which States
shall exist; we, who are the only power that is charged with this
great question, are to be somehow or other wheedled out of it by the
President by reason of the authority that he sets up.

"Sir, we can not abandon it unless we yield to a principle that will
unhinge and unsettle the balances of the Constitution itself. If the
President of the United States can interpose his authority upon a
question of this character, and can compel Congress to succumb to his
dictation, he is an emperor, a despot, and not a President of the
United States. Because I believe the great quest