, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.

"SECTION 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation."

This was the consummation of the ordinance of 1787, carried to its
last analysis, applied in its broadest sense. It drove the last nail
in the coffin of slavery, and blighted the fondest hope of the friends
of secession.

But there was need for another amendment to the Constitution
conferring upon the Colored people manhood suffrage. On the 27th of
February, 1869, the Congress passed a resolution recommending the
Fifteenth Amendment for ratification by the Legislatures of the
several States. On the 30th of March, 1870, President U. S. Grant sent
a special message to Congress, calling the attention of that body to
the proclamation of the Secretary of State in reference to the
ratification of the Amendment by twenty-nine of the States.

SPECIAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT GRANT ON RATIFICATION OF THE
FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT:

"_To the Senate and House of Representatives:_

"It is unusual to notify the two houses of Congress, by message,
of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State,
of the ratification of a constitutional amendment. In view,
however, of the vast importance of the XVth Amendment to the
Constitution, this day declared a part of that revered
instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable.
A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, who
were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land not
citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so, (with
the assertion that, 'at the time of the Declaration of
Independence, the opinion was fixed and universal in the
civilized portion of the white race, regarded as an axiom in
morals as well as in politics, that black men had no rights which
the white man was bound to respect,') is indeed a measure of
grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the
foundation of our free government to the present day.

"Institutions like ours, in which all power is derived directly
from the people, must depend mainly upon their intelligence,
patriotism, and industry. I call the attention, therefore, of the
newly-enfranchised race to the importance of their striving in
every honorable manner to make