ate on account of race or
color."

Mr. Pike of Maine made a strong speech against the amendment, the
spirit of which was in favor of declaring universal suffrage. He
added to the illustrations already given of the inefficacy of the
proposed amendment to reach the desired end, one of special force
and pertinency. "Suppose," said he, "this Constitutional amendment
to be in full force, and a State should provide that the right of
suffrage should not be exercised by any person who had been a slave
or who was the descendant of a slave, whatever his race or color?"
He suggested that it was "a serious matter to tell whether this simple
provision would not be sufficient to defeat the Constitutional
amendment which we here so laboriously enact and submit to the States."
Mr. Conkling argued that "the amendment we are proposing is not for
Greece or Rome, or anywhere where anybody besides Africans were held
as slaves. It is to operate in this country, where one race, and
only one, has been held in servitude." Mr. Pike replied that "in no
State has slavery been confined to one race." "So far," added he,
"as I am acquainted with their statutes, slavery has not been confined
to the African race. I have examined the matter with some care, and
I know of no slave-statute which says that Africans alone shall be
slaves. Well-authenticated instances exist in every slave State,
where men of Caucasian descent, of Anglo-Saxon blood, have been
confined in slavery and they and their posterity held as slaves, so
that not only were free blacks found everywhere but white slaves
abounded."

On the 29th of January the debate closed, and the resolutions
originally reported from the Committee on Reconstruction, together with
the suggested amendments, were again referred to that committee.
Especial interest was taken by many members in the language proposed
by Mr. Schenck of Ohio: "Representatives shall be apportioned among
the several States which may be included within this Union, according
to the number of male citizens of the United States over twenty-one
years of age having the qualifications of electors of the most numerous
branch of the Legislature;" and also in the proposition of Mr. Broomall
of Pennsylvania, providing that "when the elective franchise shall be
denied by the constitution or laws of any State, to any proportion of
its male citizens over the age of twenty-one years, the same proportion
of its entire population shall be e