ere and make laws
to apply to Northern people, with no constituencies behind them. I
think it has been seen long enough that a large number of persons
called property, made property by the laws of the States, shall give
to the oligarchs of those particular districts of country the right to
outvote the independent men of the North, of the free States, where
some approximation has been made to securing God-given rights to all
inhabitants. I think that it is wrong that the further a State recedes
from common right and common justice the more power the oligarchy
which controls it shall grasp in their hands; and I desire that this
amendment shall be made so that it shall bear down upon that abuse
with the crushing power of three-fourths of the legislatures of the
Union."

After the House had heard so many objectors to the basis of
representation, as proposed by the committee, Mr. Cook, of Illinois,
took the floor in favor of the measure. He said: "We have now, as I
believe, the golden opportunity to remedy this evil which will never
come again to the men of this generation. The system of slavery has
fallen. The States whose representation was increased by it have, with
two or three exceptions, destroyed their loyal and legal State
governments, and now seek reconstruction. The adoption of this
amendment by the States lately in rebellion should be one of the
guarantees to be insisted upon as a condition precedent to their
taking equal authority and rank in the Union with the loyal States."

To the proposition that the basis of representation should be voters
only, Mr. Cook presented the following objections:

"1. It is difficult to enumerate voters accurately; their
qualifications are fixed by State laws. We can not send Federal
officers into every State to adjudicate, in disputed cases, the rights
of those claiming to be voters under the State laws, as we should have
to do.

"2. It would not be just; the voters of the country are unequally
distributed. The old States have fewer, the new States more, voters
according to the white population. In other words, there is a greater
proportion of women and children in the old States. These should be
and are represented. They are represented, in the true sense of that
word, by their fathers and brothers. The man who represents them does
so really and practically, and not by legal fiction, like the man who
represents 'three-fifths of all other persons.'

"3. It takes from the ba