On motion by Mr. Stewart, the yeas and nays being desired by one-fifth of the Senators present,

Those who voted in the affirmative are Messrs. Abbott, Ames, Boreman, Brownlow, Chandler, Gilbert, Hamilton of Texas, Nye, Osborn, Pomeroy, Pratt, Ramsey, Robertson, Spencer, Stearns, Stewart, Sumner, Thayer, and Wilson.

Those who voted in the negative are Messrs. Anthony, Bayard, Blair, Buckingham, Carpenter, Casserly, Conkling, Corbett, Cragin, Edmunds, Fenton, Flanagan, Fowler, Hamilton of Maryland, Hamlin, Harlan, Harris, Howard, Johnston, Kellogg, McCreery, Morrill of Vermont, Patterson, Ross, Saulsbury, Sawyer, Scott, Sherman, Sprague, Stockton, Thurman, Tipton, Trumbull, Vickers, Warner, Willey, and Williams. So the amendment of Mr. Stewart was not agreed to; and

On the question to agree to the resolution reported by the Committee on the Judiciary it was determined in the affirmative.

So it was

Resolved, That Joshua Hill has been duly elected Senator of the United States by the legislature of the State of Georgia, and is entitled to take his seat on taking the oaths required by the Constitution and laws.

Whereupon

Mr. Hill apppeared, and the oaths prescribed by law having been administered to him by the Vice-President, hetook his seat in the Senate.

[The debate is found on pages 871-874 of the Congressional Globe, part 2, 3d sess. 41st Cong.]

FRIDAY, February 24, 1871.

The Vice-President stated that the message of the President of the United States, just received, announced that he had approved and signed the "Joint resolution* prescribing the oath to be taken by H. V. M. Miller, Senator-elect from the State of Georgia," and requested Mr. Miller, Senator-elect from the State of Georgia, whose credentials were presented on the 11th day of January, 1869, to come forward and take the oath of office.

Whereupon

Mr. Miller appeared, and the oaths prescribed by law were administered to him by the Vice-President, and he took his seat in the Senate.

COMPENSATION OF SENATORS AND CONTESTANTS.

SATURDAY, February 25, 1871.

Mr. Trumbull submitted the following resolution; which was read, and passed to a second reading:

แ

Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate be directed to pay to the Senators from the State of Georgia the compensation allowed by law, from the 29th day of July, 1868; and to H. P. Farrow and Richard H. Whiteley, contestants from the State of Georgia, compensation from the 16th day of February, 1870, the date of their election by the reorganized legislature of Georgia, to 30th day of January, 1871, when the Senate decided they were not entitled to seats."

MONDAY, February 2ì, 1871.

On motion by Mr. Trumbull, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution submitted by him on the 25th instant, directing the Secretary of the Senate to pay the Senators from the State of Georgia; and the resolution was agreed to.

* The proceedings of the Senate relating to this joint resolution are omitted

[Forty-first Congress-Second session.]

H. R. REVELS,

Senator from Mississippi from February 25, 1870, till March 3, 1871.

February 23, 1870, the credentials of Mr. Revels were presented. A resolution was submitted that they be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary with instructions to inquire whether he had been nine years a citizen of the United States, and whether the person certifying to his election was the governor of the State. Mr. Revels's credentials were signed by Adelbert Ames, brevet majorgeneral United States Army, provisional governor of Mississippi. The act of July 25, 1866, provided that it shall be the duty of the governor of the State from which any Senator shall have been chosen as aforesaid to certify his election" &c. It was contended that this was not such a certificate as was required by that act. It was also contended that Mr. Revels, being partly of African blood, had not been nine years a citizen of the United States; that he was not a citizen at birth, following the decision of the Dred Scott case; that he became a citizen only on the ratification of the fourteenth amendment in 1868. After debate, the motion to refer the credentials was determined in the negative, and Mr. Revels took the oath of office February 25. Extracts from remarks given below will show the grounds upon which certain Senators proceeded.

The history of the case here given consists of a transcript of the proceedings of the Senate relating to it from Senate Journal, 2d sess. 41st Cong., with extracts from remarks of Messrs. Vickers and Scott. Special references to the debates of each day, which are found in the Congressional Globe, part 2, 2d sess. 41st Cong., are inserted below.

WEDNESDAY, February 23, 1870.

Mr. Wilson presented the credentials of H. R. Revels, elected a Senator by the legislature of the State of Mississippi for the unexpired portion of the term ending March 4, 1871; which were read.

Mr. Wilson presented a certified extract from the proceedings of the house of representatives of the State of Mississippi, also a certified extract from the proceedings of the senate and house of representatives of the State of Mississippi, relative to the election of H. R. Revels as a Senator in Congress; which were read.

Mr. Saulsbury objected to the reception of the credentials; and

After debate, the Vice-President submitted the question to the Senate: Shall the credentials be received? It was determined in the affirmative.

Whereupon

Mr. Stockton submitted the following resolution:

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Resolved, That the credentials of Hiram R. Revels, who is now claiming a seat in this body as a Senator-elect from the State of Mississippi, be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, who are hereby requested to inquire and report whether he has been a citizen of the United States for the period of nine years, and was an inhabitant of the said State at the time of his alleged election in the sense intended by the third section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States, and whether Adelbert Ames, brevet major-general and provisional governor of Mississippi, as appears by the credentials, was the governor of the State of Mississippi at the time, and whether he was an inhabitant of the said State."

On the question to agree to the resolution of Mr. Stockton,
After debate,

On motion by Mr. Thayer (at 5 o'clock), the Senate adjourned.

[The debate is found on pages 1503-1514 of the Congressional Globe referred to in the head-note.]

THURSDAY, February 24, 1870.

The Senate resumed the consideration of the motion to refer the credentials of H. R. Revels, elected a Senator by the legislature of the State of Mississippi for the unexpired portion of the term ending March 4, 1871, with certain instructions; and

After debate, the Senate adjourned.

[The debate is found on pages 1542-1544 of the Congressional Globe referred to in the head-note. Mr. Saulsbury's speech is found on pages 125-130 of the Congressional Globe, part 7, Appendix, 2d sess. 41st Cong.]

FRIDAY, February 25, 1870.

The Senate resumed the consideration of the motion of Mr. Stockton to refer the credentials of H. R. Revels, elected a Senator by the legislature of the State of Mississippi for the unexpired portion of the term ending March 4, 1871, to the Committee on the Judiciary, with instructions to inquire and report whether he has been a citizen of the United States for the period of nine years, and was an inhabitant of the said State at the time of his alleged election in the sense intended by the third section of the first article of

the Constitution of the United States; and whether Adelbert Ames, brevet major-general and provisional governor of Mississippi, as appears by the credentials, was the governor of the State of Mississippi at the time, and whether he was an inhabitant of the said State; and

After debate, on the question to agree to the motion, it was determined in the nega tive-yeas 8, nays 48.

On motion by Mr. Pomeroy, the yeas and nays being desired by one-fifth of the Senators present,

Those who voted in the affirmative are Messrs. Bayard, Casserly, Davis, Hamilton, McCreery, Saulsbury, Stockton, and Vickers.

Those who voted in the negative are Messrs. Abbott, Anthony, Boreman, Brownlow, Buckingham, Cameron, Carpenter, Chandler, Cole, Conkling, Corbett, Drake, Fenton, Ferry, Fowler, Gilbert, Hamlin, Harlan, Harris, Howe, Howell, Kellogg, Lewis, Mc Donald, Morrill of Maine, Morrill of Vermont, Nye, Osborn, Pomeroy, Pool, Pratt, Ramsey, Rice, Robertson, Ross, Sawyer, Schurz, Scott, Sherman, Spencer, Stewart, Sumner, Thayer, Tipton, Trumbull, Willey, Williams, and Wilson.

So the motion was not agreed to.

On motion by Mr. Wilson, that the oaths prescribed by law be now administered to Mr. Revels, it was determined in the affirmative-yeas 48, nays 8.

On motion by Mr. Pomeroy, the yeas and nays being desired by one-fifth of the Senators present,

Those who voted in the affirmative are Messrs. Abbott, Anthony, Boreman, Brownlow, Buckingham, Cameron, Carpenter, Chandler, Cole, Conkling, Corbett, Drake, Fenton, Ferry, Fowler, Gilbert, Hamlin, Harlan, Harris, Howe, Howell, Kellogg, Lewis, McDonald, Morrill of Maine, Morrill of Vermont, Nye, Osborn, Pomeroy, Pool, Pratt, Ramsey, Rice, Robertson, Ross, Sawyer, Schurz, Scott, Sherman, Spencer, Stewart, Sumner, Thayer, Tipton, Trumbull, Willey, Williams, and Wilson.

Those who voted in the negative are Messrs. Bayard, Casserly, Davis, Hamilton, McCreery, Saulsbury, Stockton, and Vickers.

So the motion was agreed to; and

The oaths prescribed by law were administered to Mr. Revels by the Vice-President, and he took his seat in the Senate.

[The debate is found on pages 1557-1568 of the Congressional Globe referred to in the head-note.]

[Extract from remarks of Mr. Vickers, of Maryland, in support of the resolution submitted by Mr. Stockton. Delivered in the Senate February 25, 1870, and found on pages 1557, 1558, and 1560 of the Congressional Globe referred to in the head-note.]

"The subject before the Senate is one which relates to the eligibility of an individual elected to this body. That question involves the three qualifications which the Constitution of the country requires of persons before they can take a seat in this Assembly: the first, that they shall have been citizens of the United States for nine years; secondly, that they shall be inhabitants of the State from which they are elected; and thirdly, that they shall be of the age of thirty years.

"Now, the question of reference to the Committee on the Judiciary includes all three inquiries, whether this party is thirty years of age, is a legal inhabitant of the State of Mississippi, and has been a citizen of the United States for nine consecutive years. I do not propose to dwell upon any of these propositions except the one of citizenship; and the question for the Senate to consider is whether he has been a citizen of the United States for nine years. That is the point which I wish to present to and impress upon the judgment of the Senate.

"I shall rely mainly on the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Scott vs. Sandford, which has been referred to, and upon the opinion delivered by Chief-Justice Taney on behalf of a large majority of that court.

"I know that decision has been denounced not only in the Senate but in the country, but it stands unrepealed, and is the adjudicated law of the land. Chief-Justice Taney was in social life one of the most exemplary of men. His private character was pure and unsullied. He was honest, just, and faithful. He performed all the duties of private, social, and public life with that fidelity and correctness which we should expect from a man so virtuous and exalted. There has never been a blemish upon his private or his public life. I believe, although I am not fully qualified to say, that he was not a slaveholder. I think he was not, and I am sure that I am justisfied in saying that after he was placed upon the bench he separated himself from the politics of the country and never exercised the right of suffrage. His ambition was to make an upright, able, and impartial judge, and he entered and left public office with as clean hands as any man that ever lived in this country. He entered it poor and he left it in the same condition, and bequeathed as a heritage to his family a high, pure, and exalted reputation.

"So much for the character of the judge. Now, what was that opinion? It was upon a case which involved the citizenship of a suitor in the courts of the United States. The Constitution gave jurisdiction to those courts between parties who are citizens of differ

ent States. The very question presented to the consideration of the court was whether the parties plaintiff, Dred Scott and others, were citizens of the United States within the constitutional intendment. To show that the court desired nothing but impartial justice, the case was ably argued twice at different terms, in order that the most thorough examination, discussion, and deliberation might be had on a matter of such magnitude. And what, under the circumstances, was the duty of the court? It was to decide whether the parties plaintiff were citizens according to the Constitution. That was incumbent upon them, and there was no alternative. This necessarily brought up to the attention and consideration of the court the condition of the parties. They were of African descent, and the question naturally arose, and it was so argued, are they citizens of the United States and qualified to sue in its courts? A large majority of the court decided that they were not citizens of the United States.

"I did not suppose that any one would have found fault with the court for the performance of this duty. They were bound to decide according to their convictions; but the complaint was, as was stated by the Senator from Delaware yesterday, that they departed from this question and went into an argument upon the condition of this class of people and the right of masters to take them into the Territories of the United States. We all know that there was great excitement in the country at that period in reference to the constitutional right of a master to take his slaves north of the Missouri line of 36° 30'. Some of these parties had been taken by their owners north of the Missouri line into what was called free territory, and this fact necessarily brought to the consideration and examination of the court the question whether the owner of a slave had a right to take him into a Territory of the United States.

"That decision, I know, has been animadverted upon here as it has been elsewhere. But have not other decisions been condemned? Was not that upon the fugitive slave law severely criticised in the country, and probably in Congress, too, by the Freesoilers? The senior Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] said in reference to it that he did not feel bound to sustain that law after the Supreme Court had decided in favor of its constitutionality; and yet that decision was made by a unanimous court. There was perfect unanimity upon the question of its constitutionality.

But I have waited with anxiety to hear a refutation of any single position which the Supreme Court took in the decision of the Dred Scott case. I know it is easy to censure a decision and get up a political clamor against it, but I want to know if any single position of fact or of law which that court announced has ever been successfully controverted. I have not heard it attempted in the Senate of the United States. I have not heard a single argument against the correctness of the legal positions or to any statement of fact asserted by the court.

66

‘And now, when a case has been so solemnly adjudicated by a court forming one of the co-ordinate branches of the Government, and whose duty it is to determine grave constitutional questions, I ask if any reason can be assigned against the decision of that case or any of the principles involved in it? Denunciation should be disregarded by an intelligent people while the principles of the opinion stand unassailed and irrefragable. "What were some of the propositions of law decided by that tribunal?

"1. That when the Constitution was adopted persons of African descent were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the States, and were not numbered among its people or citizens; consequently, the special rights and immunities guaranteed to citizens did not apply to them.

"2. That no State could by any subsequent law make a foreigner or any other description of persons citizens of the United States.

"3. That a State might by its laws put a foreigner, or any other description of persons, upon a footing with its own citizens; but that would not make him a citizen of the United States, nor entitle him to sue in its courts, nor to any of the privileges and immunities of a citizen in another State.

"The disqualification of the African race was as radical, fundamental, and perfect as language could make it. This is by a co-ordinate department of the Government, existing by the same Constitution as Congress; in its origin, design, and objects as thoroughly constitutional; in its powers and jurisdiction superior, because State and national legislation is measured and limited by the Constitution according to its judgment. Its decisions and decrees are as binding as the Constitution itself."

*

*

"I suppose there is not a Senator on this floor who voted either for the civil rights bill or for the submission of the constitutional amendment to the States but what believed it was absolutely necessary and indispensable to make these people citizens of the United States; without the passage of that bill in the opinion of some, and without the passage and adoption of the constitutional amendment in the opinion of others, they would not have been citizens of the United States. After the civil rights bill was passed and when it passed there were serious objections to it. It was doubtful in the minds of many whether grants by legislative enactment could make a citizen of the

Un. ed States; whether it did not require a constitutional amendment to make them such; and the better opinion was that it did require it, because by the Constitution they were not made citizens. You proceeded on the very ground that it was absolutely requisite that the amendment should be made which made the party now claiming his seat a citizen of the United States from the time of its approval only; from that time he became a citizen; and as nine years have not elapsed, how can we, upon our oaths and in view of the decisions of the Supreme Court, the practice of the Government, the decisions of all the State courts, the opinions of the Attorneys-General, say that in our opinion he was a citizen of the United States before the passage of the civil rights bill or of the fourteenth constitutional amendment?

"This is not a political but a judicial question, and ought to be decided by us as judges and not as politicians. In the Dred Scott case the Supreme Court said—

That, looking to the contemporaneous history and to the contemporaneous legislation of the several States at the time the Constitution was adopted, the use of the word "citizen," as employed in that Constitution, was to exclude the African and every race but the white.'

"The court looked into the construction of this provision. They took a deliberate view of the contemporaneous history of the States and the condition of the country at the time. This was proper and necessary to a full understanding of the subject. In a debate which took place in the Senate of the United States on the 7th of February, 1866, the senior Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] assumed the ground that no State had a republican government that tolerated slavery; and it was in reference to that that the late Mr. Fessenden, who was so distinguished in this body, as he was in every public station which he occupied, said in reply:

"I ask the question that he may answer it, because after all he will admit, as a lawyer, as we all must, that in construing a constitution, and construing a statute, and construing any provision, we look at contemporaneous history in the first place, and we look more particularly, when endeavoring to find out what the sense of an instrument is, at all its clauses in order to get the meaning of all, for one explains the other. It would seem to me that the Senator went a little too far with his argument as to the guarantee clause.'

"The opinion of Mr. Fessenden was that in construing the Constitution we must look at the contemporaneous history of the country. The Senator from Oregon [Mr. Williams] said yesterday that the decision in the Dred Scott case applied only to persons of African descent whose ancestors had been sold into slavery. Now, I ask how came that race among us? Is it not a historical fact that they were brought here and sold; that they were made articles of traffic; that they did not come here of their own accord; and that from those people have descended the whole of that class of population among us? They were denied naturalization. In the States where slavery existed the courts held that color, whether of the dark, mulatto, or mixed, was presumptive evidence of slavery, and the onus of proving emancipation or freedom rested upon the person. The courts of the United States always follow the decisions of State courts in matters local or affecting the relations or peculiar interests existing in them. If this subject shall be referred to a committee, there will be no difficulty in proving the race to which the claimant belongs, if appearances should not satisfy the most fastidious. The colonists coming from the bosom of Europe necessarily brought with them, to some extent, the feelings and sentiments of the nations toward this class of persons. The court, in reviewing the facts and the history of the condition of this people in the case alluded to, said that they did not migrate to America; and—

"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken.

"They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect: and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and

universal in the civilized portion of the white race.''''

[Extract from remarks of Mr. Scott, of Pennsylvania, in opposition to the resolution submitted by Mr. Stockton. Delivered in the Senate February 25, 1870, and found on page 1565 of the Congres sional Globe referred to in the head-note.]

"The proposal is to refer his credentials to the Judiciary Committee for the purpose of making inquiry as to whether he has been a citizen of the United States for nine years. It is admitted that he is a citizen now, and therefore he is admissible as a Senator unless there be some disqualification. What is that disqualification? It is alleged

79908°-S. Doc. 1036, 62-3-26