ly rejected the Amendment. Out of one hundred and six
votes in the Alabama Legislature only ten could be found in favor of
it. Mississippi and Louisiana both rejected it unanimously. Texas,
out of her entire Legislature, gave only five votes for it, and the
Arkansas Legislature, which had really taken its action in the
preceding October, gave only three votes for the Amendment.

This course on the part of the Southern States was simply a declaration
of defiance to Congress. It was as if they had said in so many words:
"We are entitled to representation in Congress, and we propose to
resume it on our own terms; and therefore we reject your conditions
with scorn. We will not consent to your Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution. We will not consent that the freedom of the negro shall
be made secure by endowing him with citizenship. We demand that
without giving negroes the right to vote, they shall yet be counted in
the basis of representation, thus increasing our political power when
we re-enter Congress beyond that which we enjoyed before we rebelled,
and beyond that which white men in the North shall ever enjoy. We
decline to give any guarantee for the validity of the public debt.
We decline to guarantee the sacredness of pensions to soldiers disabled
in the War for the Union. We decline to pledge ourselves that the
debts incurred in aid of the Rebellion shall not in the future be paid
by our States. We decline, in brief, to assent to any of the
conditions or provisions of the proposed amendment to the Constitution,
and we deny your right to amend it without our consent."

The madness of this course on the part of the Southern leaders was
scarcely less than the madness of original secession; and it is
difficult, in deliberately weighing all the pertinent incidents and
circumstances, to discover any motive which could, even to their own
distorted view, justify the position they had so rashly taken. Strong
as the Republican party had shown itself in the elections, it grew
still stronger in all the free States, as each of the Confederate
States proclaimed its refusal to accept the Fourteenth Amendment as
the basis of their return to representation. The response throughout
the North, in the mouths of the loyal people, was in effect: "If these
rebel States are not willing now to resume representation on the
terms offered, let them stay out until their anger ceases and their
reason returns. If they are not w