adopted, perpetually
excluded the great mass of the leading men of the South from holding
public office, either in Nation or State, unless their disabilities
should be removed by a vote of two-thirds in each House of Congress.
No adequate explanation was given for the preference, and the final
vote substituting that which was incorporated in the Constitution for
the House proposition was 42 in the affirmative to 1 in the negative.
The negative vote was given by Reverdy Johnson; while such staunch
Democrats as Guthrie of Kentucky, Hendricks of Indiana, McDougal of
California and Willard Saulsbury of Delaware voted to prefer the one
to the other. Mr. Johnson afterward explained that he voted under a
misapprehension; so that the substitution was made, in effect, by a
unanimous vote of the Senate.

On the final passage in the Senate of the consolidated amendment the
_ayes_ were 33 and the _noes_ 11. When the amendment was returned to
the House, Mr. Stevens briefly explained the changes that had been made
in the Senate. The first section was altered to define who are
citizens of the United States and of the States. Mr. Stevens declared
this to be an excellent amendment, long needed to settle conflicting
decisions between the several States and the United States. He said
the second section had received but slight alteration. "I wish," he
continued, "it had received none. It contains much less power than I
could wish. It has not half the vigor of the amendment which was lost
in the Senate." The third section, he said, had been wholly changed
by substituting the ineligibility of certain high officials for the
disfranchisement of all rebels until 1870. Mr. Stevens declared that
he could not look upon this as an improvement. "It opens the elective
franchise to such as the States may choose to admit. In my judgment
it endangers the government of the country, both State and National,
and may give the next Congress and President to the reconstructed
rebels." The fourth section, "which renders inviolable the public debt
and repudiates the rebel debt, will secure the approbation of all but
traitors." "While I see," concluded Mr. Stevens, "much good in the
proposition I do not pretend to be satisfied with it; yet I am anxious
for its speedy adoption, for I dread delay. The danger is that before
any Constitutional guard shall have been adopted, Congress will be
flooded by rebels and rebel sympathizers." The House came t