at any one of the thirteen States who finally came
under the provisions of that Constitution, and have ever since
constituted a part of the nation, were not living under republican
forms of government? The honorable member will pardon me for saying
that to suppose it is to disparage the memory of those great and good
men. There was not a State in the Union when the Constitution was
adopted that was republican, if the honorable member's definition of a
republican government is the one now to be relied upon. A property
qualification was required in all at that time. Negroes were not
allowed to vote, although free, in most of the States. In the Southern
States the mass of the negroes were slaves, and, of course, were not
entitled to vote. If the absence of the universal right of suffrage
proves that the Government is not republican, then there was not a
republican government within the limits of the United States when the
Constitution was adopted; and yet the very object of the clause to
guarantee a republican government--and the honorable member's
citations prove it--was to prevent the existing governments from being
changed by revolution. It was to preserve the existing governments;
and yet the honorable member would have the Senate and the country
believe that, in the judgment of the men who framed the Constitution,
there was not a republican form of government in existence.

"The definition of the honorable member places his charge of
antirepublicanism as against the present forms of constitution upon
the ground of the right to vote. I suppose the black man has no more
natural right to vote than the white man. It is the exclusion from the
right that affects the judgment of the honorable member from
Massachusetts. Voting, according to him, is a right derived from God;
it is in every man inalienable; and its denial, therefore, is
inconsistent and incompatible with the true object of a free
government. If it be such a right, it is not less a right in the white
man than in the black man; it is not less a right in the Indian than
in the white man or the black man; it is not less a right in the
female portion of our population than in the male portion. Then the
honorable member from Massachusetts is living in an anti-republican
government, and he ought not to stay there a moment if he can find any
government which would be a government according to his theory. None
has existed since the world commenced, and it is not at all