have already spoken of the theory of
State-suicide advanced by Mr. Stevens and a comparatively small school
of extremists. The theory most popular with most of the Republicans,
which was finally formulated by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction,
was that the rebel States had not been out of the Union, but had lost
their working status inside of the Union, and had to be restored to
their regular constitutional relations to the Union by action of
Congress, upon such conditions as Congress might deem proper.

To meet the dangers which so far had become visible on the horizon, the
Joint Committee on Reconstruction devised the Fourteenth Amendment to
the Constitution, which was long and laboriously debated in both Houses.
In the form in which it was finally adopted it declared (1) that all
persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the
United States and of the States in which they reside, and that no State
shall make or enforce any law abridging the privileges or immunities of
citizens, nor deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without
due process of law, nor deny to any person the equal protection of the
laws; (2) that if in any State the right to vote at any election for
the choice of national or State officers is denied or in any way
abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the
basis of representation in Congress or the electoral college shall be
reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall
bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in
such State; (3) that no person who had taken part in the rebellion,
having previously, as a national or State officer, military or civil,
sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, shall be a
Senator or Representative in Congress or hold any office, civil or
military, under the United States, or any State, unless relieved of that
disability by a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress; (4) that the
validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be
questioned, nor shall any debt or obligation contracted in aid of
rebellion, or any claim for emancipated slaves be paid.

_The Fourteenth Amendment_

Thus the Fourteenth Amendment stopped short of the extension of the
suffrage to negroes--a subject which many Republicans were still afraid
to touch directly. But by implication it punished the States denying
that extension by reducing the basis of representation