xcluded from the basis of
representation." Two days afterwards, on the 31st of January, Mr.
Stevens reported from the Joint Committee on Reconstruction the
proposition in this form: "Representatives shall be apportioned among
the several States which may be included within this Union according to
their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each
State--excluding Indians not taxed; _provided that whenever the
elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account
of race or color, the persons therein of such race or color shall be
excluded from the basis of representation._" Mr. Schenck submitted his
amendment basing apportionment upon the number of male citizen of the
United States who are voters, but it was rejected by an overwhelming
vote, only twenty-nine of the entire House voting in the affirmative.
The amendment, as reported from the committee, was then adopted,--yeas
120, nays 46. It was substantially a party division, though some
half-dozen Republicans voted in the negative.

The amendment reached the Senate on the thirty-first day of January and
on the sixth of February was taken up for consideration. Mr.
Fessenden, chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, was
entitled to open the debate, but yielded to Mr. Sumner. Mr. Sumner,
with his rigid adherence to principle, opposed the amendment. "Knowing
as I do," said he, "the eminent character of the committee which
reports this amendment, its intelligence, its patriotism and the moral
instincts by which it is moved, I am at a loss to understand the origin
of a proposition which seems to me nothing else than another compromise
of human rights, as if the country had not already paid enough in
costly treasure and more costly blood for such compromise in the past."
He declared that he was "painfully impressed by the discord and
defilement which the amendment would introduce into the Constitution."
He quoted the declaration of Madison in the convention of 1787, that it
was wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea of property in man.
"Of all that has come to us from that historic convention, where
Washington sat as President and Franklin and Hamilton sat as members,
there is nothing having so much of imperishable charm. It was wrong to
admit into the Constitution the idea than man could hold property in
man. Accordingly, in this spirit the Constitution was framed. This
offensive idea was not admitted. The text