he
Constitution, we have declared that all the black men in Maryland and
other States shall be citizens of the United States. Certain State
governments have for the present denied those people the right to vote,
and yet one of them is eligible to the Presidency of the United States
and another to the Vice-Presidency. Is there such an anomaly in our
Government? Are we prepared to admit its existence unless the
Constitution imperatively requires it?"

The speech of Mr. Boutwell was answered by Mr. Beck of Kentucky and Mr.
Eldridge of Wisconsin, their respective arguments resting mainly upon
the propriety of leaving the regulation of suffrage within the power
of the States, where it was originally left by the Constitution. After
several ineffectual attempts to amend the Constitutional Amendment as
reported from the Judiciary Committee, the House, on the 30th of
January (1869), passed it by _ayes_ 150, _noes_ 42, not voting 31.

When the House Amendment reached the Senate it was at once taken up for
consideration, and the Amendment which that body had been considering
was laid aside. This was done for the purpose of expediting an
agreement between the two branches. Numerous modifications and
additions were then proposed, including the one originally reported by
the Judiciary Committee. Every modification or substitute failed,
until Senator Wilson offered the following: "No discrimination shall
be made in any State among the citizens of the United States in the
exercise of the elective franchise, or in the right to hold office in
any State, on account of race, color, nativity, property, education,
or religious creed." Mr. Trumbull declared that the adoption of this
Amendment would abolish the constitutions of perhaps all, certainly of
half, the States of the Union. He then pointed out that the
constitution of almost every State prescribed a qualification of age
for the governor of the State, and of a certain length of residence,
many of them requiring a natural-born citizen; and that the effect
of Mr. Wilson's Amendment would be to level all the constitutions,
and radically reverse the deliberate judgment of the people of the
States who had ordained them. Serious objections were also made
against prohibiting an educational test, as would be the effect of Mr.
Wilson's Amendment. Mr. Wilson frankly avowed his hostility to an
educational test, and declared that the one existing in Massachusetts
had never proved val