from their property and their toil." Against these just
provisions, which in their nature are limited as to time, the Democrats
in Congress and in every Legislature of the Union recorded an
absolutely unanimous vote.

Another provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, temporary in its
application, indeed necessarily limited to the existing generation,
was demanded by the Republicans. The great mass of those engaged in
the Rebellion were pardoned the moment their arms were laid down. But
the leaders who, in official position before the war, had solemnly
sworn to support the Constitution, were held to be far more guilty
than the multitude who followed them. They deliberately rebelled
against a government to which, on their consciences and on their oaths,
they had given their personal pledge of fidelity. The Republicans did
not propose to visit even these chief offenders with pains and
penalties; but they resolved to place in the Constitution a prohibition
upon their holding office under the National government until after
two-thirds of both branches of Congress, satisfied of their good
intentions, should remove their disabilities. The Democrats
unanimously voted against even this mild discipline to those who
precipitated the desperate war, thereby declaring their willingness,
if not their desire, that the most guilty should fare as well as the
innocent; that for example Mr. Toombs might resume his seat as a
senator from Georgia, Mr. Breckinridge as a senator from Kentucky, Mr.
Benjamin as a senator from Louisiana, Mr. Jefferson Davis as a senator
from Mississippi.

Still another provision of the Amendment which might prove temporary
in its application, or might prove permanent, as the South should
decide, was that relating to representation in Congress. On this point
the Republicans held, as has been so often repeated, that the negro
should not be included in the basis of representation until he was
admitted to suffrage. There is such absolute justice and fair dealing
in this proposition, that no reply which deserves to be called an
argument has ever been made to it. The original provision in the
Constitution by which three-fifths of the slaves were enumerated in
the basis of representation, agreed to originally as a compromise in
connection with the subject of direct taxation, had lost its relevancy
by reason of emancipation as decreed in the Thirteenth Amendment. The
question now before Congress was therefore a