, and
passed another bill on the 16th of December (1869), declaring "that
the exclusion of persons from the Legislature upon the ground of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude, would be illegal and
revolutionary, and is hereby prohibited." In order to make the
prohibition effective, Georgia was required, before her senators and
representatives could be seated, to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to
the Constitution. The Legislature of Georgia was accordingly
re-assembled, the colored members resumed their seats, and the
Fifteenth Amendment was duly ratified on the 2d of February (1870).
The conditions were considered by some prominent Republicans to be an
assumption of power on the part of Congress, and were therefore
opposed actively by Mr. Carpenter in the Senate and Mr. Bingham in the
House; but the great body of the party insisted upon them, and the
movement had the full sympathy of the President. The course pursued
by Georgia made her the last State to be reconstructed. The final Act
for her re-admission to the right of representation in Congress was
passed on the 15th of July, 1870.

The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment had become in the minds of
thinking men an essential link in the chain of reconstruction. The
action of Georgia in expelling colored men from the Legislature after
her reconstruction was supposed to be complete, roused the country to
the knowledge of what was intended by the leading men of the South; and
the positive action of Congress roused the leading men of the South to
a knowledge of what was intended by Congress. On the 30th of March
Secretary Fish issued a proclamation making known to the people of the
United States that the Fifteenth Amendment had been ratified by the
Legislatures of thirty States and was therefore a part of the
Constitution of the United States. New York, which had given her
ratification when the Legislature was Republican, attempted at the
succeeding session, with the Democratic party in power, to withdraw its
recorded assent; but as in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment, action
on the subject was held to be completed when the State officially
announced it, and New York was numbered among the States which had
ratified the Amendment. The only States opposing it were New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, and Oregon. At
the time the Amendment was submitted, the Legislatures of these States
were under the absolute control of