Mr. COWAN. Mr. President, I have aword to say. I am not exactly in the category of my honorable friendfrom Ohio. I do not wear the harness of caucus on this occasion, or iu' deed upon any other. I am opposed to any alteration of the Constitution in this point, because to me that is vital. But I am going to vote for the proposition of the Senfrom Wisconsin because I think it better than the 0ri inal proposition and not worse. t does seem to me there are most extraor dinary notions of political power here, what constitutes itwhere it is vested, and how it is wielded. What conceivable difference can it make to a citizen of Pennsylvania as to how Ohio distributes her political power? What conceivable interest has the honorable Senfrom Ohio, or a.Senfrom any other State, to say to us whom we shall allow to vote and whom we shall not allow? They do not pre tend that they have a right to say to us whom we shall elect and whom we shall not elect; and is not the elector just as much the choice of the community as an officer is the choice of it, except that the electors are chosen by a class and described by a general designation, whereas the officer is chosen by name to perform certain functions? Mr. President, to touch, to venture upon that ground is to revolutionizethe whole frame and texture of the system of our Government; to turn it over; to violate our own canons. What is the guarantee of the U.S. to the several States? It is that they shall have a RFG. Now we are told that a RFG is this, that, and the other. One man says it is “ universal suffrage "’ another man says it is “ universal inanhoo suffrage, ” so as to throw out the ladies; another says it is “universal white suffrage, ” and so on. Who can agree as to what a RFG is? lfgentle men had read the original text and the approved commentaries thereon the would have found that the guarantee was sue a form of government as the State itself should make. The State is the judge of the RFG, and not the citizens of the other States. Then, ifa State has the right to form its own government, and that is the republican form, y what right can one of the other States, or 2 of them, or ten of them, or 3/4ths of them, if you please, venture to introduce into the State a power from without in order to control its distribution of political power? If the effect of any such extra action upon a State would be to deprive it of a portion of its weight in the Union, that is a vioation of the original compact; it is a violation of the very instrument upon which the Union was formed; it is putting the torch to the very fabric you wish to reserve; it is putting a mine under the very uilding you wish to secure. Are on to preserve these States if you are to regulate the weight hereafter that they are to have in the Union? Can half a dozen or a dozen or 2 dozen of these States undertake to shear of their political power the other States? Can you violate your own guarantee? When you say that nobody else shall deprive these States of the right of making their own government and distributing their own power as they please, can you do it? Can the guarantor himself with im unity violate his own guarantee?Mr. President, I had intended to makesome more extended remarks on this topic; and as I am on the floor now I may just as well say at this time what I have to say on the Generalsubject. It is perfectly clear, I shoal think, to all wise peop e that the basis of representation, or the measure of political power and that which adjusts it among the States, should be something fixed, certain, determined. You cannot make a flexible standard. You cannot make a standard that is 33 inches to dny and 36 tomorrow, and the next day 40. You cannot allow a State to open and shut her valves and admit power or expel it at will. You propose to say that if she does not do certain things she shall not have but a certain amount of power. Suppose she wants power. She is made the arbiter of the power she shall have in the Union. Suppose she chooses to exclude it again. what then? Here we have a constantly shifting panorama upon which I do not see how it is possible that an apporTTonmentbill can be framed. Population, however, is certain, fixed, determinate, a thing to be counted every ten ears, and a thing to be encouraged, because i youmake population the basis of representation then you encoura population; but if you make voting the basis, or if you make that the measure, then you encourage the degradation of the franchise. I am willing, on the part of my own State, that she shall be the guardian of the franchise within her limits. The people of our State are to be the judges of the persons in our society who are tit and proor to cast our ballots; and we are perfectly Willing that all other States shall enjoy that privilege, because we believe thatit is an inherent and essential privilege in every State. But what will be the result upon us of the proposition before the Senate? We have in Pennsylvania about 100,000 negroes, and we have a Representative in congress based upon them. What is to be the operation of this amendment? Just this: your whip is held over Pennsylvania, and you sayto her that she must either allow her negroes to vote or have one member of Congress less. That is it; and it comes with very bad grace from a.parcel of people who have no ncgroes among them; and that I think is the worst. feature in all this business from one end of it to the other. Here are a parcel of States who have no negro population, and they are exceedingly anxious that the people who have them should letthem vote. What is that their business“! We have never known that they invited them that they might ct votes. The negro is now as free to go to Massachnsetts or to any State where he is allowed to vote as he is to stay in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. If he insists upon this privilege he has the same right to go after it that I have, or any other man has, and he can go and get it. If I do not like the laws of Pennsylvania and they do not suit me, and I have not powe'r and in fluence enough in the State to mold them to suit my particular desire, I can go to another State and, nnotheruntil I suit myself. But why people who are not interested in this thing, who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by it, can expect to maintain the Union by insisting upon propositions of this kind I confess is more than I can see. This is not common justice in a common ordinary transaction; and I do not know whether it would be considered fair even in a horse trade. The advantage is all on one side. It is like the Indian an the white man dividing the possum and the turkey. The white man said to the Indian, "' Nowyou take the possum and I take the turkey, or if you do not like that, I will take the turkey and you take the possum." [Laughter] “Why, ”said the Indian, “ you have not said turkey to me once; ” and that is the way with this constitutional amendment. The States that have no negroes are to shear the States that have negroes of the political power they have according to the fundamental law, according to the ancient bargain made, and according to which the Union exists, and which is in factitself the Union; that bargain which is bathed in the blood of 200,000 American soldiers, for which we have sacrificed 6 or 8,000 million dollars; thatrbargain nowis to be amended in its essentials, and to be amended for the benefitof one section of the Union who have every thing to gain by it and nothing to lose, and to the re'udic‘e of the residue. M: fresident, will the man who knows the value of this Union to these States, the man who loves it, who reveres it, and who believes that it will make his country the greatest republic on earth will he be guilty of unfair ness? And, sir, what is worse about it all, those States which are to suffer most, and the States within which it is to operate most hardly, are not heard; they are not allowed to come upon this floor and argue their case although this is a free country with a representative form of government, and, as I supposed, a republican form? Mr. President, I consider this attempt as dangerous to the peace of the Union as the origi nal doctrine of secession. Do gentlemen suppose that the people of the States affected wrll submit to this? ct me remind gentlemen of another thing. The Republican party existed over half the Union. It existed as a party north of Mason and Dixon’s line. It was a minority party. When Mr. Lincoln was elected in 1860 there was a majority on the popular vote of more than 900 and) 30,000 against him. He was elected under the forms of the Constitution, and was really and lawfully the POTUS; but under the workings of the Constitution it did so happen that there was that majority against him. In the States north of Mason and Dixon’s line the majority for Mr. Lincoln, at the last residential election, was about 400,000, I believe. At any rate, nobody can deny but that very nearly 1/2 of the people of the North belong to the Democratic party. There, too, I suppose, you may consider that the people of the South now belong, because your estinies are in their hands. They will inevitably sit in judgment upon you here in this Chamber. They will mete out to you, if you are not careful, the same measure you try to mete out to them. Now, I warn my fellowSenators that we cannot afford this with this form of government of ours. Had we not better stand upon the Constitution as it is, where our fathers put it, that Constitution which we enforced at such cost? Think of partners after a difficulty, one partner trying to compel, and to compel under threats the insertion of a new clause into the original articles of partnership. But can we compel it; and if we cannot compel it, what then? You know what it cost us to com1 obedience to the Constitution as it is. on cannot compel obedience to the Constitution as it is not. You could comcl obedience to a Constitution that was the law of the land, but you cannot compel obedience to a Constitution that is not the law of the land. Mr. President, I am for dealing fairly. In the 1st place, as I have said before on this floor, I trust the American people everywhere. Why? I trust them because they are the foundation upon which this structure is built; and to say that they are to be punished into the proper shape or driven into the proper shape is to say that the whole rests upon a quicksand, rests upon a foundation which is distrusted, which begins to show cracks in the walls already if these things be true. I trust the people. I trust the people North. I trust tie South. people I trust the people of all parties. Why not? Why is it that the South will sustain the Union now? Because it is her interest to sustain it. Why is it that we sustain it? Is it l because we arrogate tr, ourselves superior Virtue? Has the grace of God been more liber ally bestowed upon us than on our brethren? Is that the pretense? We may be wiser, but. surely I think nobody can say of the people 3 or any part of the people that we are more honest. Trusting the people, then, the people must, be trusted everywhere, and what we do especially must be fair. It is a characteristic of our race, and one which has marked it forlong ages, that there must be fair play. No man of our race will interfere even in his brother's unrrel in a fair contest. We must play fair. What have we been playing for? We have been playing for the Union and for the Constitution. Vhat is the attempt now after we have won? It is to say that we will have neither except upon terms. Terms with whom? Terms with the very men we have been struggling with for years in order to compel them to assent to our terms the Constitution and the Union. I say again that we must be fair; we must allow to the States the rights which they reserved to themselves when they made this compact, and especially must we ullbw to them the essential rights, the rights that underlie the whole fabric, that are tche basis of the whole structure, the 1st of which is the right to regulate their own domestic concerns. Have we forgotten our own platform? Let gentlemen who talk about party fidelity recur to the plat form of Chicago in 1860; recur, ifyon please, to your Baltimore platform of 1864; and then you will see who are faithful to the original doctrines of the party and who are not. Shall we undertake now to say that we will regulate the ballot all over the U.S., remodel the whole affair, redistribute the political power, and we do this right in the face of our own law? Who passed the act of the 4th of March, 1802? Who voted foritin this Chambernndiu theother? Nobody. insaid it; nobody thoughtofgainsaying it. fiiid yet that law in force today is violated, trampled under foot and disregarded. By whom? By us. We who foughtfor the Constitution and for the law; we who proclaimed our selves those who would see it enforced at all hazards violate it; we, in the face of our own law, today refuse to hear the people we are legislating for upon our floors. That law gives to the southern States, 11 of them, I believe 50 8 members, and they have not one, and you have not the poor apology that is stuck into this amendment to the Constitution here, that these members engaged in rebellion, because the fact is that a great many of them did not; a great many of them engaged to suppress it; some of them shed their blood in that attempt, and some of them struggled through all manner of difficulties to be true and faith ful, and yet they are excluded; they are not allowed to so. a word here for their fellow citizens. An this is fair! This is the way to deal with a artnerl This the way to deal with men with whom you expect to live in peace and unit coming centuries! What is it all about? Vhere is the difficulty about it? Are they stronger than you? Are you afraidin the other House, with 183 members now, that you cannot manage 50 eight? Are we afraid here with 50 Senators that we cannot manage 22? Mr. President, the disguise which covers this proposition is too transparent. As I said before, the Republican part was a minority party. Its policy immediate y upon attaining to power was to make itself a national party; was to throw out its lines and set its stalles in every uarter of the Union. Let it penetrate every amlet from Maine to Georgia, from NCarolina to California. Let a network of both parties ramify everywhere, spread over the country, and then you may have a Union; and I may remark that the binding efficac, the cement of the 2 parties interwoven li e a network over the whole country, will contribute 100times more to kec) it together than any other device, or even t to constitution itself. When this was violated, what was the consequence? When there ceased to be 2 parties all over the country, all over the len th and breadth of it, what had you then? ebellion; and rebellion will follow it inevitably, not only now, but in all time to come. Strike a line north of Formsylvania and elect a President against the will 0 everybody north of the north line of Pennsylvania; or, in other words, go into an election and beat every man north of that line, and a rebellion is inevitable. You have the same difficulty then that we encountered in 1860. The election of Mr. Lincoln beat every man south of Mason and Dixon’s line, or very nearly so. All parties and all factions were 0 osed to him. All had pledged themselves against him, and after the campaign waxed hot and the blood boiled, they had pledged themselves to resist; they were bound before the crisis came, and how could they preventit? 1000s no doubt re retted it, but their lips were sealed. Thousands were unwilling to act, but still, an der the influence of this mortification, they did not. It is a mortification, you observe, that reaches everybody; it reaches men, women, and children; it goes everywhere, and however trifling it may appear to a wise man and a cool man, yet it affects the people, and sheets them in a most tender and vital point, and they present it. They did present it. I say again, that ifunder the same circumstances a candidate was to be elected who would beat all NewEngland and NewYork, they would not aub mit, in my judgment. Then Isay it was the business of the Republican party to extend itself upon some common platform, not the platform of fairness exact y in the distribution of political power, because the Constitution was not base upon fairness in that respect. There was nothing fair in the provision that RhdIsland an Delaware should each have 2 Senators, and Pennsylvania and NewYork each only two. It was not built upon the principle of equality originally. Still we oug t to stand upon it an maintain it; and in order to do that there should have been no oin away from the original doctrine. Wes oul have stood upon it and strictl and literally enforced it, and we should have had a right to enforce it, and could have enforced it in the face of the civilized world and had the civilized world with us. But that opportunity was neglected; the Re ubliean party did not do that; and then it was driven to the miserable shift of either taking to itself as allies the negroes of the South, or what? Depriving the South of the political power which she enjoyed by virtue of the no roes. Do you thin the world does not understand this? Do you think the people do not understand why this is? Do you think you can delude the people with the idea that this is honest on our part; that it is fair on our art, and that that is what we really mean? I tell) gentlemen that if they think so they are mistaken. The people understand this exactly. Do you believe the people want, the mass of the Republican party want, such allies as those in the South? Do you believe they want to rely upon the aid they can get from negro suffrage in the South to hold the balance of power in this Republic? Go to Pennsyl vania, go to Illinois, and ask them. When Pennsylvania, with her 100,000 negroes, refuses them suffrage, why is it? And 1f she refuses to allow you to intermeddlc with it, why is it? Do you pretend that you are improving the suffrage, do you pretend that you are making the institutions of the country more secure when you insist upon this? Who does so in the face of the civilized world? Are you bringing into the councils of the country more wisdom, more independence, more Virtue? Nobody pretends it. Do you allow negroes to vote yourselves? You allow it partially in NewYork a kind of emasculated suffrage there; you allow it partially in Massachusetts: absolutely nowhere; and yet you stand here and crack your whip over the head of the southern States who have millions of negfoes in them, and on say they must let theirs vote when you will not let yours.