voting population and
another State shall not, I can not understand the principle of equity
and justice which governs you in that measure. Sir, if it does not
stand upon a principle, upon what does it rest? It rests upon a
political policy. A committee that had its birth in a party caucus
brings it before this body, and does not conceal the fact that it is
for party purposes. This measure, if you ever allow the Southern
States to be represented in the House of Representatives, will bring
them back shorn of fifteen or twenty Representatives; it will bring
them back so shorn in their representation that the Republican party
can control this country forever; and if you cut off from fifteen to
thirty votes for President of the United States in the States that
will not vote for a Republican candidate, it may be that you can elect
a Republican candidate in 1868."

Mr. Hendricks thought that "this proposition was designed to
accomplish three objects: first, to perpetuate the rule and power of a
political party; in the second place, it is a proposition the tendency
of which is to place agriculture under the control and power of
manufactures and commerce forever; and, in the third place, it is
intended, I believe, as a punishment upon the Southern States."

In reference to changing the basis of representation as a punishment
for the Southern States, Mr. Hendricks said: "Now that the war is
over; now that the Southern people have laid down their arms; now that
they have sought to come again fully and entirely into the Union; now
that they have pledged their honors and their fortunes to be true to
the Union and to the flag; now that they have done all that can be
done by a conquered people, is it right, after a war has been fought
out, for us to take from them their political equality in this Union
for the purpose of punishment? The Senator from Maine, the chairman of
the committee, says that the right to control the suffrage is with the
States, but if the States do not choose to do right in respect to it,
we propose to punish them. You do not punish New York for not letting
the foreigner vote until he resides there a certain period. You do not
punish Indiana because she will not allow a foreigner to vote until he
has been in the country a year. These States are not to be punished
because they regulate the elective franchise according to their
sovereign pleasures; but if any other States see fit to deny the right
of voting to a