If the amendment prevails, and those States withhold the right of
suffrage from persons of color, it will deduct about thirty-seven,
leaving them but forty-six. With the basis unchanged, the eighty-three
Southern members, with the Democrats that will in the best times be
elected from the North, will always give them a majority in Congress
and in the Electoral College. They will at the very first election take
possession of the White House and the halls of Congress. I need not
depict the ruin that would follow. Assumption of the rebel debt or
repudiation of the Federal debt would be sure to follow. The oppression
of the freedmen, there--amendment of their State constitutions, and the
reestablishment of slavery would be the inevitable result. That they
would scorn and disregard their present constitutions, forced upon them
in the midst of martial law, would be both natural and just. No one who
has any regard for freedom of elections can look upon those governments,
forced upon them in duress, with any favor. If they should grant the
right of suffrage to persons of color, I think there would always be
Union white men enough in the South, aided by the blacks, to divide the
representation, and thus continue the Republican ascendency. If they
should refuse to thus alter their election laws it would reduce the
representatives of the late slave States to about forty-five and render
them powerless for evil.

It is plain that this amendment must be consummated before the defunct
States are admitted to be capable of State action, or it never can be.

The proposed amendment to allow Congress to lay a duty on exports
is precisely in the same situation. Its importance cannot well be
overstated. It is very obvious that for many years the South will not
pay much under our internal revenue laws. The only article on which we