uable in any sense. Against all objections and
arguments Mr. Wilson's Amendment was adopted by the Senate.

A proposition was now introduced and supported with equal zeal by Mr.
Morton of Indiana and Mr. Buckalew of Pennsylvania, proposing an
amendment to the pending resolution, which should in effect be a
sixteenth amendment to the Constitution. Its aim was to take from the
States the power now confided in them by the Constitution, to direct
the manner in which electors of President and Vice-President shall be
chosen. The declared motive for the change was to prevent the
possibility of the electors being chosen by the State Legislatures,
as had been done in some cases, and to guarantee the certainty of a
popular vote in their selection in every State of the Union. To
insure this result it was proposed in the amendment that the entire
power over the choice of electors should be transferred to Congress.
After a brief debate the amendment was agreed to,(1) and the two
proposed articles, included under one resolution, were adopted by
_ayes_ 39, _noes_ 16, and sent to the House for concurrence.

The House not being willing to accept the Senate's Amendments, refused
by formal vote to concur, and asked for a conference. The Senate took
the unusual step of declining a conference, promptly receded from its
own Amendments, and sent to the House the original proposition of that
body. The House, not to be outdone by the Senate in capricious change
of opinion, now refused to agree to the form of amendment it had before
adopted, and returned it to the Senate with the added requirement of
nativity, property, and creed, which the Senate had originally
proposed. The rule indeed seemed to be for each branch to desert its
own proposition as soon as there was a prospect that the other branch
would agree to it. The strange controversy was finally ended and the
subject brought into intelligible shape by a conference committee,
which reported the Fifteenth Amendment in the precise form in which it
became incorporated in the Constitution. It received the sanction of
the house by a vote far beyond the two-thirds required to adopt it, the
_ayes_ being 145, the _noes_ 44. In the Senate the _ayes_ were 39, the
_noes_ were 13. The action of Congress on the Amendment was completed
on the 26th of February, six days before General Grant was installed
in the Presidency.

The gradual progress of public opinion in the United States on
ques