cannot be impaired by the act of a State or its
people, a State may, by rebellion, so far rupture its relations to the
Union as to suspend its power to exercise the rights which it
possessed under the Constitution; that it belonged to the legislative
power of the government to determine at what time a State may safely
resume the exercise of its rights; and that the doctrine that such
State is itself to judge when it is in proper condition to resume its
place in the Union is false, as well as the other doctrine that the
President was alone sole judge of the period when such suspension
shall be at an end.

If these propositions created no surprise, the refusal squarely to
meet the suffrage issue created much adverse comment. One resolution
expressed a hope that the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment would
tend to the equalisation of all political rights among citizens of the
Union, but although Greeley submitted a suffrage plank, as he did in
the preceding year, Curtis carefully avoided an expression favourable
even to the colored troops.

"Extreme opinions usually derive a certain amount of strength from
logical consistency," wrote Raymond. "Between the antecedent
proposition of an argument and its practical conclusion there is
ordinarily a connection which commends itself to the advocates of
principle. But the radicalism which proposes to reconstruct the Union
has not this recommendation. Its principles and its policy are not
more alike than fire and water. What it contends for theoretically it
surrenders practically."[1078] Although this was clearly a just
criticism, the radicalism of Congress showed more leniency in practice
than in theory. The Northern people themselves were not yet ready for
negro suffrage, and had the South promptly accepted the Fourteenth
Amendment and the congressional plan of reconstruction, it is doubtful
if the Fifteenth Amendment would have been heard of.

[Footnote 1078: New York _Times_ (editorial), September 7, 1866.]

Conservative Republicans, however, were too well satisfied with their
work at Philadelphia to appreciate this tendency of Congress. The
evidence of reconciliation had been spectacular, if not sincere, and
they believed public opinion was with them. The country, it was
argued, required peace; the people have made up their minds to have
peace; and to insure peace the Southern States must enjoy their
constitutional right to seats in Congress. "This is the one question
n