l admitting Nebraska, Mr. Wade promptly
introduced both bills anew, at the beginning of the second session of
the Thirty-ninth Congress. The case of Nebraska was, in popular
judgment, stronger than the case of Colorado. The population was
larger, and being devoted to agriculture, was naturally regarded as
more stable than that of Colorado, which was based principally upon the
somewhat fortuitous discovery of mines of the precious metals. But
there was an admitted political embarrassment in regard to both
Territories, the principal debate on which occurred when the bill
admitting Nebraska was under consideration. Congress was, at the time,
engaged in passing the Reconstruction Act for the States lately in
rebellion, and had made it imperative that negroes should be endowed
with suffrage by those States. While insisting on this condition for
the Southern States it was obviously impossible for Congress to admit
two Northern States with constitutions prohibiting suffrage to the
negro. In the months of the Congressional vacation public opinion in
the North had made great strides on this question.

A minority of Republicans were intent on sending the bill back and
having the question of negro suffrage submitted for popular decision,
but in the opinion of the majority of the party this was a needless
postponement of a pressing question, and all propositions looking to
such postponement were rejected. A final compromise of views was
reached, by inserting in the Act of admission an additional section
declaring "that this Act shall not take effect except upon the
fundamental condition that within the State of Nebraska there shall
be no denial of the elective franchise or of any other right to any
person, by reason of race or color, excepting Indians not taxed; and
upon the further fundamental condition that the Legislature of said
State, by a solemn public act, shall declare the assent of said State
to the said fundamental condition and shall transmit to the President
of the United States an authentic copy of said Act." When notified
of this solemn public act by the Legislature, it was made the duty of
the President to announce the fact by proclamation, and thereupon the
admission of the State to the Union, without further proceedings of
Congress, was to be considered complete. The objection to this
compromise by those who opposed it and by others who reluctantly
supported it, was that it did not have the force of Organi