those who
had been elected as Republicans were free silver men. On that question
they were in harmony with a majority of the Democrats, and out of
harmony with the great majority of Republicans. The Free Silver
Republicans, therefore, were not inclined to support a measure that was
particularly offensive to their friends and allies on the silver
question. After a careful canvass of the Senate it was developed that
the Republican leaders could not safely count on the support of any one
of the Free Silver Republicans in their efforts to pass the bill, and,
since they had the balance of power, any further effort to pass it was
abandoned. It was then made plain to the friends and supporters of that
measure that no further attempt would be made in that direction for a
long time, if ever.

I wrote and had published in the Washington _Post_ a letter in which I
took strong grounds in favor of having the representation in
Congress,--from States where the colored men had been practically
disfranchised through an evasion of the Fifteenth Amendment,--reduced
in the manner prescribed by the Fourteenth Amendment. In that letter I
made an effort to answer every argument that had been made in opposition
to such a proposition. It had been argued by some fairly good lawyers,
for instance, that the subsequent ratification of the Fifteenth
Amendment had so modified the Fourteenth as to take away from Congress
this optional and discretionary power which had been previously
conferred upon it by the Fourteenth Amendment. I tried in that
letter,--and I think I succeeded,--to answer the argument on that point.
It was also said that if Congress were to take such a step it would
thereby give its sanction to the disfranchisement of the colored men in
the States where that had been done. This I think I succeeded in proving
was untrue and without foundation. The truth is that the only material
difference between the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments on this
particular point is that, subsequent to the ratification of the
Fourteenth and prior to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, a
State could legally disfranchise white or colored men on account of race
or color, but, since the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, this
cannot be legally done. If, then, Congress had the constitutional right
under the Fourteenth Amendment to punish a State in the manner therein
prescribed, for doing what the State then had a legal and
constitutional ri