m.
Without pausing here to consider the policy or impolicy of Africanizing
the southern part of our territory, I would simply ask the attention of
Congress to that manifest, well-known, and universally acknowledged rule
of constitutional law which declares that the Federal Government has no
jurisdiction, authority, or power to regulate such subjects for any
State. To force the right of suffrage out of the hands of the white
people and into the hands of the negroes is an arbitrary violation of
this principle.

This bill imposes martial law at once, and its operations will begin
so soon as the general and his troops can be put in place. The dread
alternative between its harsh rule and compliance with the terms of this
measure is not suspended, nor are the people afforded any time for free
deliberation. The bill says to them, take martial law first, _then_
deliberate. And when they have done all that this measure requires them
to do other conditions and contingencies over which they have no control
yet remain to be fulfilled before they can be relieved from martial law.
Another Congress must first approve the Constitution made in conformity
with the will of this Congress and must declare these States entitled to
representation in both Houses. The whole question thus remains open and
unsettled and must again occupy the attention of Congress; and in the
meantime the agitation which now prevails will continue to disturb all
portions of the people.

The bill also denies the legality of the governments of ten of the
States which participated in the ratification of the amendment to the
Federal Constitution abolishing slavery forever within the jurisdiction
of the United States and practically excludes them from the Union. If
this assumption of the bill be correct, their concurrence can not be
considered as having been legally given, and the important fact is made
to appear that the consent of three-fourths of the States--the requisite
number--has not been constitutionally obtained to the ratification of
that amendment, thus leaving the question of slavery where it stood
before the amendment was officially declared to have become a part of
the Constitution.

That the measure proposed by this bill does violate the Constitution
in the particulars mentioned and in many other ways which I forbear
to enumerate is too clear to admit of the least doubt. It only remains
to consider whether the injunctions of that instrument ought to b