This is the plain and simple plan of the
Constitution; and believing that had it been pursued when Congress
assembled in the month of December, 1865, the restoration of the States
would long since have been completed, I once again earnestly recommend
that it be adopted by each House in preference to legislation, which I
respectfully submit is not only of at least doubtful constitutionality,
and therefore unwise and dangerous as a precedent, but is unnecessary,
not so effective in its operation as the mode prescribed by the
Constitution, involves additional delay, and from its terms may be taken
rather as applicable to a Territory about to be admitted as one of the
United States than to a State which has occupied a place in the Union
for upward of a quarter of a century.

The bill declares the State of Arkansas entitled and admitted to
representation in Congress as one of the States of the Union upon the
following fundamental condition:

That the constitution of Arkansas shall never be so amended or changed
as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of
the right to vote who are entitled to vote by the constitution herein
recognized, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies
at common law, whereof they shall have been duly convicted under laws
equally applicable to all the inhabitants of said State: _Provided_,
That any alteration of said constitution, prospective in its effect,
may be made in regard to the time and place of residence of voters.

I have been unable to find in the Constitution of the United States any
warrant for the exercise of the authority thus claimed by Congress.
In assuming the power to impose a "fundamental condition" upon a State
which has been duly "admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with
the original States in all respects whatever," Congress asserts a right
to enter a State as it may a Territory, and to regulate the highest
prerogative of a free people--the elective franchise. This question is
reserved by the Constitution to the States themselves, and to concede
to Congress the power to regulate the subject would be to reverse the
fundamental principle of the Republic and to place in the hands of the
Federal Government, which is the creature of the States, the sovereignty
which justly belongs to the States or the people--the true source of all
political power, by whom our Federal system was created and to whose
will it is sub