es in the Senate, falling short of the
admitted Administration strength. Mr. Reverdy Johnson moved to strike
out the words which included members of the State Legislatures, but
the amendment secured only ten votes. He also moved to strike out the
words "having previously taken," and insert "at any time within ten
years preceding the 1st of January, 1861, had taken;" and this also
received but ten votes. Mr. Van Winkle moved to amend so that a
majority of all the members elected to each House should be empowered
to remove the disability, instead of two-thirds as required by the
amendment. This also received but ten votes.

In further discussion of the extent to which the pardon of the
President goes, Mr. Reverdy Johnson cited a case which had just been
argued by himself and others but was not yet decided, in the Supreme
Court of the United States, as to whether an attorney in that court
could be bound to take the ironclad oath as prescribed by Act of
Congress, January 24, 1865. He had no doubt, he said, that the
operation of the pardon was to clear the party pardoned from the
obligation to take that oath. The case referred to was that since
so widely known as _ex parte_ Garland, and decided by the Supreme
Court adversely to the Constitutionality of the statute. Mr. Howe
of Wisconsin interrupted the senator from Maryland and asked him
whether he knew "of any authority which has gone to the extent of
declaring that either an amnesty or a pardon can impose any limitation
whatever upon the power of the people of the United States, through
an amendment to their Constitution, to fix the qualifications of
officers." Mr. Johnson replied, "That is not the question to which
I spoke. It is quite another inquiry. I was speaking of the operation
of a _statute._"

Mr. Doolittle also answered his colleague by saying, "I know it may be
said that by an amendment to the Constitution, which is the supreme
law of the land, you can annul all existing rights. You could,
perhaps, by an amendment to the Constitution, enact a provision which
would deprive individual citizens of their property, and vest the
whole of it in the Government of a State or in the Government of the
United States. You might, perhaps, by a Constitutional amendment, pass
a bill of attainder by which certain men would be sentenced to death
and to corruption of blood. But, sir, would it be right? That is the
question." Mr. Doolittle was discussing it on the