el the
States, on pain of being deprived of a portion of their
representation, to allow all the negroes within their limits to vote,
without regard to qualification or any thing else, while under the
same provision the State may, by its organic law, impose
qualifications and conditions upon the exercise of the right of
suffrage by the white population. The proposed amendment to the
Constitution undertakes to consolidate the power in the Federal
Government. It throws out a menace to the States, and the inevitable
result of the passage would be to induce every State in the Union to
adopt unqualified negro suffrage, so as not to deprive them of the
great and inestimable right of representation for that class of
population in the halls of the legislation of the United States."

Mr. Conkling, also a member of the Reconstruction Committee, made an
argument in favor, of the proposed amendment: "Emancipation vitalizes
only natural rights, not political rights. Enfranchisement alone
carries with it political rights, and these emancipated millions are
no more enfranchised now than when they were slaves. They never had
political power. Their masters had a fraction of power as masters. But
there are no masters now. There are no slaves now. The whole
relationship in which the power originated and existed is gone. Does
this fraction of power still survive? If it does, what shall become of
it? Where is it to go?

"We are told the blacks are unfit to wield even a fraction of power,
and must not have it. That answers the whole question. If the answer
be true, it is the end of controversy. There is no place, logically,
for this power to go, save to the blacks; if they are unfit to have
it, the power would not exist. It is a power astray, without a
rightful owner. It should be resumed by the whole nation at once. It
should not exist; it does not exist. This fractional power is
extinct.

"A moral earthquake has turned fractions into units, and units into
ciphers. If a black man counts at all now, he counts five-fifths of a
man, not three-fifths. Revolutions have no such fractions in their
arithmetic; war and humanity join hands to blot them out. Four
millions, therefore, and not three-fifths of four millions, are to be
reckoned in here now, and all these four millions are, and are to be,
we are told, unfit for political existence.

"Did the framers of the Constitution ever dream of this? Never, very
clearly. Our fathers trusted to gr