ht to hold office. That in the United
States there were only a few exceptions, and those were exceptions
under the Constitution.

Finally, the House, by a reduced vote refused to concur with the
amendment of the Senate. It was at this crisis that Wendell Phillips
wrote an article in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ over his own name in
which he said in substance and in words, that the House proposition was
adequate and that it ought to be accepted by the Senate. His name and
opinion settled the controversy. The Southern Republicans deserted
Mr. Sumner feeling that the opinion of Phillips was a sufficient
shield. A slight change of phraseology was made and the proposition of
the House became the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States.

I wrote a letter of acknowledgment to Mr. Phillips in the opinion
that he had saved the amendment. At that time the prejudice against
negroes for office was very strong in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and in
varying degrees the prejudice extended over the whole North.

The enjoyment of the right to vote has not been fully secured to the
negro race, but no one has appeared to deny his right to hold office.
Indeed, the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party has
placed him in office, both by election and appointment. Thus has
experience shown the folly of Mr. Sumner's amendment.

That Mr. Sumner should have been willing to risk the rights of the
whole negro race upon a statute whose constitutionality would have
been questioned upon good ground, and which might have been repealed,
is a marvel which no one not acquainted with Mr. Sumner can
comprehend. First of all, though he was learned, he was not a lawyer.
He was impractical in the affairs of government to a degree that is
incomprehensible even to those who knew him. He was in the Senate
twenty-three years and the only mark that he left upon the statutes is
an amendment to the law relating to naturalization by which Mongolians
are excluded from citizenship. The object of his amendment was to
save negroes from the exclusive features of the statute which was
designed to apply only to the Chinese. His amendment made plain what
the committee had designed to secure. He was a great figure in the
war against slavery and as a great figure in that war he should ever
remain.

The Fourteenth Amendment saved the country from a series of calamities
that might have been more disastrous even than the Civil War. The