Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/318

302 same voters who called the convention, and, when adopted, to be passed on by Congress. The legislature called by the State constitution was to ratify the Fourteenth amendment. The States were to remain as provisional till this amendment was ratified and became a part of the Constitution of the United States. No disfranchised person was eligible to any office.

The Fourteenth amendment was to be ratified under compulsion. "The amendment reduced representation in Congress and based it upon voting population ; provided that no person should hold office under United States authority, who, having taken an oath as a Federal or State officer to support the Constitution, had subsequently engaged in the war against the Union." The insuperable objection to the Fourteenth amendment was to be found in the clause which required the Southern people to disfranchise their own leaders, to brand with dishonor those who had led them in peace and in war. The North now intended to force this amendment under the terrible compulsion of the congressional reconstruction law. It is recalled here, too, that five of the restored States had already ratified the Thirteenth amendment, and their votes had been accepted and counted as valid in the ratification promulgated by the secretary of state of the United States (Mr. Seward). Without these votes the amendment would have lacked the necessary three-fourths of the States needed. The question arises, Was the ratification legal or illegal under the Constitution.

This made little difference then with Congress. A supplementary act was passed by the new Congress in March, specifying details for the government of the generals commanding the five military districts, carrying out the same bitter spirit in the enforcement of the law.

The Southern people regarded this new legislation as harsh in the extreme, and ungenerous to them in their prostrate and helpless condition. Just as they thought they were being restored to civil government and could