Page:The American Indian as slaveholder and secessionist (Volume 1).djvu/212

204 are regarded not only as impolitic but unconstitutional, it not being within the limits of the treaty-making power to admit a State or to control the House of Representatives in the matter of admission to its privileges. I recommend that the former provision be rejected, and that the latter be so modified as to leave the question to the future action of Congress; and also do recommend the rejection of those articles in the treaties which confer upon Indians the right to testify in the State courts, believing that the States have the power to decide that question, each for itself, independently of any action of the Confederate Government.

Again Arkansas was in the lead in the exhibition of interest and, on the motion of one of her delegation, Robert W. Johnson, the president's message and the documents accompanying it were referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. This was on the thirteenth of December and Johnson was the chairman of the committee. On the nineteenth, the treaties began to be considered in executive session. The first to be so considered was the Choctaw and Chickasaw, and interest concentrated on its twenty-seventh article, the one giving to the two tribes jointly a delegate in the Confederate Congress. This provision was finally amended so as to leave the delegate's status, his rights and his privileges, just as Davis had recommended, to the House of Representatives. Then came the consideration of the twenty-eighth article, which promised ultimate statehood, and that also was amended in such a way as to leave the final determination to Congress,

By whose act alone, under the Constitution, new States can be