Mr. COWA N. The ratification of that amendment by the State of Tennessee gives you not a single advantage; it does not give you an additional guarantee; it furnishes you no further security; and yet your House resolution here cites it as the cause, as the reason. I say it is not a valid cause, it is not a good reason, it is a mere pretext. If the amendment to the Constitution had been ratified by 3/4ths of the States, then I admit it would have been a good reason upon which you might have based your action; but it is only ratified by the State of Tennessee, and even that ratification is denied and assailed, and the fact of that ratification not known here except upon a telegram, and upon a tele ram which may have been sent by any wag in ash ville. Who knows whether that amendment has been ratified in the Legislature of Tennessee or not, or anythin about it? Who knows how it was done? who knows what were the means used? It is perfectly certain that the military were called upon to compel the at tendance of members to ratify an amendment to the Constitution. I ask in all seriousness in the American Senate ‘whether there is a sane man in the body who believes that an amendment to the Constitution ratified in that way, ratified against the will of members who were compelled to go to the Legislature in order to do it, and ratified by a Legislature which was not elected with a view to the consideration of this question and without a fair opportunity of canvassing its merits before the ople, would be worth the paper on which it is written? Suppose it was ratified everywhere. The ultimate power is with the people, and all these barriers that you attempt to build up between the people and power and their servants are as mere straw an chaff. Some day they must give way, and certainly no wise man wants the Constitution amended by any trick ery or any contrivance or any unfair means of that kind. It is asserted that of the members of the quorum, the 56 required to constitute a quorum of the 84 members of the Legislature, 2 were actually not in the chamber, but were in the custody of the sargeant at arms in his room, not present in the hall when the vote was taken. How this is, I do not know; but all these doubts hang over this thing, so that I say you do not know and no one can aver today whether the Legislature of Tennessee ever did ratify that amendment to the Constitution or not; and if they did, it is no justification for any action on the part of Congress or the majority of Congress, and amounts, as I said before, simply to a pretext, a pretext which will be understood when it goes to the country.