mendment as "a
grand panacea for all the ills that affect the nation." He would vote
for the law, "not as a finality, but as a partial step as one of a
series of necessary laws." Said he, "When we vote for this measure, it
must be because we think it right and necessary, not that it may
furnish us with an excuse for failing to do all other right and
necessary things expected of us by the people. We must take direct,
not sidelong measures. We must make laws, not arguments. We must
enforce, not induce.

"To pass this law and then hope that South Carolina, moved by the hope
of future power, would do justice to the negro, is absurd. She has
291,300 whites and 412,406 negroes. To pass such a law would be for
the governing power to divest itself of the government and hand it
over to a subject and despised caste, and that, too, for a faint hope
of some future advantage that might never be realized under the most
favorable circumstances, and certainly could never be realized by the
aspiring class abdicating and relinquishing power. The same is true,
more or less, of all the South. In Mississippi there are 353,901
whites, and 436,631 negroes; and in all the States the negro vote
would be large enough to turn the scale against the disloyal party."

Mr. Sloan, of Wisconsin, thus presented the practical workings of the
"Constitution as it is:" "Look at the practical operation of the
question we are discussing to-day. In the State I represent there are
eight hundred thousand free white people loyal to the Constitution,
who have done their whole duty in sustaining their Government during
this terrible war. The bones of our soldiers are moldering in the soil
of every rebel State. They have stood around our flag in the deadly
hail of every battle of the war. The State of Wisconsin has six
Representatives on this floor. South Carolina has three hundred
thousand white inhabitants, disloyal, who have done all in their power
to overthrow and destroy the Government, and yet, sir, under the
Constitution as it now stands, the three hundred thousand disloyal
white inhabitants of South Carolina will exercise as much political
power in the Government as the eight hundred thousand loyal people of
the State of Wisconsin."

Mr. Sloan called attention to a proposition which he had submitted to
the preceding Congress, providing that the right of representation
should be based upon the right of suffrage--upon the numbers allowed
the right to vote