The Equal Rights of the colored race occupied the constant attention of Congress in different forms. One measure was known as the Civil Rights Bill, securing the right to sue and testify in court, introduced by Mr. Trumbull January 5, and passed April 9, 1866. Others were intended to secure suffrage for colored citizens in the District of Columbia and generally in the Rebel States. The efforts of Mr. Sumner were applicable to all these measures. He insisted always upon the equal title of all to rights of white citizens, whether civil or political, and he wished to act directly. Not doubting the plenary powers of Congress to provide for the equal rights of all, political as well as civil, especially since the Constitutional Amendment prohibiting Slavery, he pressed action by “appropriate legislation.”
Meanwhile the House of Representatives undertook to meet the Suffrage question indirectly, and by a proposition for an Amendment of the Constitution, reported by Hon. Thaddeus Stevens from the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Proceeding originally from Hon. James G. Blaine, a Representative from Maine, afterwards Speaker, it was known familiarly as “the Blaine Amendment.” After elaborate discussion, the joint resolution containing the Amendment was adopted by the House, January 31st,--Yeas 120, Nays 46,--in the following terms:--
“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed: _Provided_, That, whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons therein of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation.”
Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, who was the Senate Chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, promptly gave notice that he should call for its consideration in the Senate February 5th. This opened the whole subject in all its branches, and Mr. Sumner seized the earliest opportunity to discuss it, beginning the important debate. His speech, after asserting the equal rights of all, vindicated the plenary powers of Congress, especially under the clause requiring the United States to guaranty a republican form of government. Though made on the Constitutional Amendment, it was equally applicable to Mr. Trumbull’s Civil Rights Bill, then pending, as also to the Bill for Enfranchisement in the District of Columbia, and to all measures of Reconstruction.