my understanding and
that, it seems to me, would be the legal construction; but if the
gentleman from Pennsylvania is correct, then I maintain that it is
the bounded duty of this House to make the language so plain that he
who runs may read--that there may be no doubt about its construction."

Mr. Garfield said that "the point made by the gentleman from Maine
shows that, whatever may be the intention of the committee or of the
House, the section is at least susceptible of double construction.
Some may say that it revokes and nullifies in part the pardons that
have already been granted in accordance with law and the proclamation
of the President. Others may say that it does not apply to the rebels
who have been pardoned."

Mr. Stevens interrupted Mr. Garfield and said, "I was not perhaps
sufficiently explicit in what I stated in answer to the interrogatory
of the gentleman from Maine. I admit that a pardon removes all
liability to punishment for a crime committed, but there is a vast
difference between punishment for a crime and withholding a privilege.
While I admit that the pardon will be full and operative so far as
the crime is concerned, it offers no other advantage than an exemption
from punishment for the crime itself."

Mr. Garfield, resuming, said that he was about to remark that "if the
section does not apply to those who have been pardoned then it would
apply to so small a number of people as to make it of no practical
value, for the excepted classes in the general system of pardons form
a very small fraction of the rebels."

Mr. Boyer, a Democratic member from Pennsylvania, declared that the
effect of the amendment if adopted would be to disfranchise for a
period of four years nine-tenths of the voting population of eleven
States.

The point was subsequently alluded to by the leading lawyers of the
House, with the general admission that, whatever might have been the
implied pledge of the President or of Congress, or whatever might be
the effect of the pardon of the President, it did not in any limit
the power of the people to amend their Constitution. To the
proposition to exclude those who had been engaged in the Rebellion
from the right of suffrage for National office until 1870, there was
a strong hostility from two classes--one class opposing because it was
a needless proscription, and the other, equally large, because it did
not go far enough in proscribing those who had been guilty of
rebelli