Mr. WADE. I thought it was earlier than that; I did not remember the date. The pending amendment proposes to attach a condition to the admission of this State. I do not know whether you can do that. She ought to be admitted, if at all, on the same footing with all the other States. Up to hour this regulation of the elective franchise has been regarded as a State question. It belongs, under the Constitution as it now stands, exclusively to the States of the Union. We have not proposed to take it away from any State. This State has never yet committed an act by which she forfeited her rights. If a State has raised her hand against your Constition, if by rebellion she has forfeited her right to exist, she has then placed herself in a position where you have a constitutional right to deal with her just as you please. But I do not know what right you have to deal in this way with a State or a Territory which has been always loyah; which has forfeited none of her rights, which has performed all of her duties. I do not know what right you have to say that a State shall be admitted, not on an equality with every other State, and shall not be allowed to regulate her elective franchise as she pleases. I say to the gentleman who offers this amendment that you have not, under the Constitution, as yet declared anywhere that the General Government can fix the status of the elective franchise. You have left it thus far with the States. The constitutional amendment that we passed last year left it to the States, even to the rebel, forfeited States, to regulate it for themselves, the only restriction being that they should not have political power for those of their population whom they excluded from the right of voting. Of course, I am as much for the principle of the amendment as anybody else. I wish the word “white” were excluded from the consti But neither you, sir, nor I, nor this Congress, can do it under the Constitution of the U.S. We have no power here to say to the State of Ohio, “Correct this error in your constitution or we will correct it for you.” Will any gentleman contend that we can do it? I do not suppose that is contended in regard to a State has not forfeited her rights by treason.