as not upon voting equality with the white
men, to change their constitutions or statutes in order to do
away with such disqualifications. The fourteenth amendment
created another class of United States voters in States, to the
number of a million or more. The fourteenth amendment, and the
act of congress to enforce it, were at once recognized to be
superior to State law--abrogating and repealing State
constitutions and State laws contradictory to its provisions.

By an act of congress March 3, and a presidential proclamation of
March 11, 1865, all deserters who failed to report themselves to
a provost marshall within sixty days, forfeited their rights of
citizenship as an additional penalty for the crime of desertion,
thus losing their ballot without possibility of its restoration
except by an act of congress. Whenever this may be done
collectively or individually, these men will become State voters
by and through the United States law.

As proving the sophistry used by legal minds in order to hide
from themselves and the world the fact that the United States has
power over the ballot in States, mention may be made of a case
which, in 1866, came before Justice Strong, then a member of the
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, but since a justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States. For sophistical reasoning it is a
curiosity in legal decisions. One point made by Judge Strong was,
that congress may deprive a citizen of the opportunity to enjoy
a right belonging to him as a citizen of a State even the right
of voting, but cannot deprive him of the right itself. This is on
a par with saying that congress may deprive a citizen of the
opportunity to enjoy a right belonging to him as an individual,
even the right of life, but cannot deprive him of life itself.

A still more remarkable class of United States voters than any
yet mentioned, exists. Soon after the close of the war congress
enacted a law that foreigners having served in the civil war and
been honorably discharged from the army, should be allowed to
vote. And this, too, without the announcement of their intention
of becoming citizens of the republic. A class of United States
voters were thus created out of a class of non-citizens.

I have mentioned eight classes of United States voters