Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/389

CHAP. XXXII to pay for the re-admission to Congress of their senators and representatives. The details belong to history: all we need here note is that these deep-reaching, but under the circumstances perhaps unavoidable, changes were carried through not by the free will of the peoples of three-fourths of the States, but under the pressure of a majority which had triumphed in a great war, and used its command of the National government and military strength of the Union to effect purposes deemed indispensable to the reconstruction of the Federal system.

Many amendments to the Constitution have been at various times suggested to Congress by Presidents, or brought forward in Congress by members, but very few of these have ever obtained the requisite two-thirds vote of both Houses. In 1789, however, and again in 1807, amendments were passed by Congress and submitted to the States for which the requisite majority of three-fourths of the States was not obtained; and in February and March 1861 an amendment forbidding the Constitution to be ever so amended as to authorize Congress