eed.

The first question on the subject of Reconstruction which engaged the
attention of Congress, was the re-adjustment of the basis of
representation; and for a time it absorbed all others. The first
proposition to amend the Constitution in this respect had been made
by Mr. Stevens on the 5th of December, providing "that representatives
shall be apportioned among the States which may be within the Union
according to their respective legal voters, and for this purpose none
shall be named as legal voters who are not either natural born citizens
of the United States or naturalized foreigners." During the month of
December the question of representation was discussed, partly in public
debate, but more in conference among members; and the plan of placing
the basis upon legal voters, at first warmly urged, was quickly
abandoned as its probable results were scrutinized. When Congress
convened after the holidays, on Friday the 5th of January, Mr. Spalding
of Ohio, in a speech already referred to, proposed an amendment to the
Constitution in regard to representation in Congress, directing that
"people of color shall not be counted with the population in making up
the ratio of representation, except it be in States where they are
permitted to exercise the elective franchise," and this was probably
the earliest foreshadowing of the real change in the basis of
representation that was made by the Fourteenth Amendment.

On the ensuing Monday Mr. Blaine of Maine proposed the following, in
lieu of the Constitutional provision then existing: "Representatives
and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which
shall be included within this Union according to their respective
numbers, which shall be determined by taking the whole number of
persons, _except those whose political rights or privileges are denied
or abridged by the constitution of any State on account of race or
color_." Mr. Blaine objected to taking voters as the basis of
representation. "If," said he, "voters instead of population shall be
made the basis of representation, certain results will follow, not
fully appreciated perhaps by some who are now urgent for the change.
I shall confine my examination of these results to the nineteen free
States, whose statistics are presented in the census of 1860, and the
very radical change which the new basis of apportionment would produce
among those States forms the ground of my opposition to it. The ratio