which the rulers and the laws of the Republic were to be made, one absolutely fundamental and going into the very essence of the Government, and one which could not be left to the States. This is not only one of those self-evident things about which there can be no debate, but it is so expressed, over and over, by those who made the Constitution. Mr. Hamilton says, (see Federalist, 403:)

"The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. To have submitted this to the legislative discretion of the States would have been improper, because it is fundamental, and for the additional reason that it would have rendered too dependent on the State governments that branch of the Federal Government which ought to be dependent on the people alone."

He also says, speaking of the clause making electors the same as for the most numerous branch of the State Legislatures, that

"It will be safe for the United States, because being fixed by the State constitutions it is not alterable by the State governments."

But in speaking of the declaration by Mr. Hamilton that the Constitution's definition of the qualifications of Federal electors was "not alterable by the State governments," Mr. Story says (1 Story on Constitution, section 586) "the provision has not in fact, and may not have, all the security against alteration so confidently affirmed." Thus it is seen, first, that the makers of the Constitution did regard this power of defining the qualifications of Federal electors fundamental, and one which the Convention could not properly leave to the States; second, that they thought that as they had arranged it in the Constitution it was substantially "unalterable by the States;" and third, that their expectations as to this last have not been historically realized. This vital power of Government has turned out, in practice, to be one not only "alterable by the States," but one which the States have so used as that in many of them the masses of the people who are loyal to their country and who have not gone into a stupendous rebellion for the

overthrow of the Government, could and would to-day be wholly deprived of all powers of government by the assumption of the elective franchise, by those alone who did engage in such rebellion. So startling a fact must impel us, by its irresistible forces, to go at once to the remedying of so grave a defect in the Constitution as that one is which leaves to the States, only and supremely, the matter of making both the rulers, and through these, the laws of the Republic.

Now, I appeal to the gentlemen upon the other side of the House, and on all sides, if I am not arguing the merest truism when I say that that Government is not a Government at all that has not in itself power to control the question as to who shall make the rulers of that Government, and which, for that very reason, has not in itself the power of either making or executing its own laws. It is fundamental, essential, as Mr. Hamilton said it was. Therefore I appeal to the other side of the House when I say that the thing is, in the philosophy of government and in logic, right. And it is therefore an amendment, in so far as it makes a Federal definition of Federal electorship, required by the plainest and most elementary principles of every free Government.

190. Senator Doolittle on the Proposed Fifteenth Amendment.1

To define the precise line of demarcation between the powers granted and the powers reserved is a most difficult task-to mark in language the precise point where the powers of the State end, and the power of the Federal Government begins. But there are some powers so clearly defined that no man in his senses can be mistaken. Upon this great question, whether the power of the States over the question of suffrage is reserved to them or conferred upon the Federal Government by the Constitution, no sane man can doubt. And, sir, the wisdom of still reserving it to the States is so undoubted that even Mr. Hamilton, the representative of centralization, the incarnation of Federalism, was compelled to say that to put into the Constitution of the United States such a power in this Government Congressional Globe, 40 Cong., 3 Sess., App., 151. February 6, 1869.

1

to control the question of suffrage and elections in the States would be an engine calculated to destroy the governments of the States.

Mr. President, I do not make this statement at random. 1 have before me the language of Mr. Hamilton, in the fiftyninth number of the Federalist, in which he puts this very case:

"Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution empowering the United States to regulate elections for the States, would any man have hesitated to condemn it both as an unwarrantable transposition of power and as a premeditated engine for the destruction of the State governments?"

And yet your proposed amendment does all that. Mr. President, it says that suffrage shall not be restricted on account of race, color, or previous condition, and that Congress shall have power to enforce it by appropriate legislation. Sir, the power to enforce it of necessity implies power over the election of the States. In order to give to the colored man of the States the right to vote at the elections in the States, to secure to his vote a fair count, and to make sure that if his vote be counted and determine the result that the person elected shall have the office, will draw to this Government the power to control the elections themselves. It is impossible to separate the two. But one authority can decide the result of an election. It must be the State authority or the Federal authority. As it reaches all elections, if the Federal authority is supreme, the State authority must succumb in all elections to Federal control. . . .

Mr. President, I maintain in the first place that the right to fix the qualifications of voters is essential to a republican form of government, and that any State which has not the right to fix and determine for itself who shall vote and who shall not vote ceases to be republican, for it loses the power to govern itself. If Congress can determine who shall vote in Indiana, Indiana no longer governs herself. If Illinois can determine who shall vote in Indiana, it is not the people of Indiana who govern themselves, but it is the people of Illinois who govern Indiana.

It cannot be too often repeated that it is absolutely essential to republican government that the State for itself shall have the power to fix the qualification of its voters. That clause in the Constitution to which the honorable Senator from Massachusetts so often appeals, "that the United States shall guaranty to each State a republican form of government," is in direct conflict with the proposed amendment, because republican government is self-government, and there can be no self-government in a State if any outside State or any other power above the control of the State can take away from the States the power to determine for themselves who shall exercise the right of suffrage in the States; for those who vote govern the State, and if an outside power determines who shall vote in a State that power governs the State. This is a proposition not to amend, but to revolutionize. It is not in the way of improving and upholding, but in the way of upturning the foundations of the system, and of destroying the very spirit which gives it life, the very ideas of which it was born, upon which it has lived, and without which our republican institutions in a country so vast and so diversified as ours cannot survive.

191. The Fifteenth Amendment.1

ARTICLE XV

SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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

192. Judicial Interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment. ... The Fifteenth Amendment does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone. It prevents the States or the United States, however, from giving preference, in this particular, to

1 This amendment went into effect March 30, 1870. Revised Statutes of the United States (1878), 32.

one citizen of the United States over another on account of race, etc. Before its adoption, this could be done. . . . Now it cannot. If citizens of one race having certain qualifications are permitted to vote, those of another having the same qualifications must be. . . . It follows that the Amendment has invested the citizen of the United States with a new constitutional right which is within the protecting power of Congress. That right is exemption from discrimination in the exercise of the elective franchise on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. . . .

The power of Congress to legislate at all upon the subject of voting at State elections rests upon this Amendment. It cannot be contended that the Amendment confers authority to impose penalties for every wrongful refusal to receive the vote of a qualified elector at State elections. It is only when the wrongful refusal at such an election is on account of race, etc., that Congress can interfere and provide for its punishment.1 ...

. . . The right of suffrage is not a necessary attribute of national citizenship; but exemption from discrimination in the exercise of that right on account of race, etc., is. The right to vote in the States comes from the States; but the right of exemption from the prohibited discrimination comes from the United States. The first has not been granted or secured by the Constitution of the United States; but the last has been.2 ...

1 United States v. Reese. Supreme Court of the United States, 1876. 92 U. S. 214.

2 United States v. Cruikshank. Supreme Court of the United States, 1876. 92 U. S. 542.