To the honorable members of the House of Representatives:

Minority report of Andrew J. Rogers, one of the committee of fifteen on reconstruction, against the joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to regulate representation among the several States.

As the subscribed was the only member who, in committee, voted against said resolution, he deems it due to himself, this House, and the country, that he should make known the reasons for his opposition to it; and therefore he submits to your honorable body the following as reasons why this House should reject the proposed change in the organic law. It is dangerous to the liberties of the people and the rights of the States to amend or change the organic law as established by our fathers.

The old Constitution brought the people of this country to a state of prosperity at home and consideration abroad unequalled in the history of the world.

Under it the population of this country increased from three to thirty millions, foreign wars were successfully prosecuted, and as long as it was sustained as the supreme law of the land, public and private liberty was secure, and the blessings of domestic peace and prosperity were enjoyed by the people for more than seventy years.

It is the life of the virtue, wisdom, and courage of the fathers of the republic, and is a bright jewel of civil liberty, intended by its framers to be handed down to their posterity unimpaired forever, as a precious relic of the intelligence, judgment, and patriotism of our departed patriots and sages.

As it now is, it provides for representation in the following language, to wit:

"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons."

The resolution now before the House directs that taxes 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; which resolution contains the proviso, that whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation.

This amendment is violative of the great aim and object of our fathers, that representation and taxation should always go together.

Taxation without representation caused our fathers to rebel against their mother country, marshal armies, throw into the water at Boston and New York the tea, and set in motion the first machinery of war, which, after a seven-years struggle, ended in the success of that great doctrine, that taxation without representation was iniquitous, despotic and unjust.

Taxation and representation, or no taxation without representation, lies at the very bottom of our Union, and is the foundation-stone upon which all the pillars of American liberty and independence rest.

Our present Constitution does not base representation at all upon the voting population, but upon all free persons and three-fifths of the slaves. Before slavery was abolished representation to the States was much more liberal under it than since, because representation was allowed for three-fifths of a population that were not persons, citizens, or people within the meaning of the organic law, as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case.

There is now no representation but for free persons.

This amendment infringes upon the sovereign and reserved right of a State to regulate the qualifications of voters, and is especially oppressive to the southern States, where there is a large population of colored people, in this: that it tends to coerce the States to adopt the pernicious, wicked, and debasing dogma of the ruling party, to wit, unqualified negro suffrage, and visits upon the States as a penalty for their refusal a deprivation of representation for a portion of their population.

For instance, the four southern States where the colored population predominates over the white in numbers would be deprived of one-half of the present representation to which they are now entitled under the Constitution.

In all the States all persons of color are under our present organic law entitled to representation, and the result of this amendment is to deprive all the States of representation for the colored population, even for those who are allowed under qualified suffrage.

A State under this amendment, in order to have any representation for colored people, must grant to them unqualified suffrage, as any abridgment of the suffrage to the negroes forfeits all right to have them included in the basis of representation, while it allows the States to entirely disfranchise all their white population and still have them included in the basis of representation; so that, in the four states where the negroes are in the majority, if unqualified suffrage should be allowed, they could disfranchise every white man, and still have all the white people included in the basis of the representations of such States. A State, under the present organic law, may impose upon its electors such qualifications as it deems best.

This amendment does not alter the organic law in this particular so far as it relates to white people; but so far as it relates to colored people, it inflicts a penalty upon the States for refusing unqualified suffrage to the negroes.

It does not compel the States to adopt negro suffrage, and is therefore not against the letter of the Constitution, which leaves the States to judge of the qualification of voters; yet it is against the spirit of the Constitution and the reserved rights of the States, and is therefore unconstitutional in attempting to control the sovereign domain of the States, by depriving them of representation on account of the exercise of their sovereign powers, as no amendment can legally take away from a State any sovereign reserved power without its consent.

This places the negroes in a better position than the white people, because it visits upon the States a penalty for qualifying the right of suffrage to negroes that it does not for qualifying that right to white people.

The disfranchising of one single negro, or qualifying the right of suffrage to him, on account of race or color, forfeits all right to representation for all or any of the negro population.

The object of this amendment is to establish universal and unqualified negro suffrage throughout the whole Union; and instead of boldly and openly meeting that issue, it attempts to deceive the people by inflicting a severe penalty upon the States that refuse unqualified suffrage to the colored race, and the result will be that before the States will part with this valuable right of representation, those of them in which the negroes are not in the majority will grant to them unqualified suffrage.

The States are compelled to protect and support this colored population, and be taxed for them, yet they cannot have representation for the black race unless they grant to them unqualified suffrage. This is despotism pure and simple.

Unnaturalized persons, women, and persons under twenty-one years old, cannot vote, yet they are all to be counted in the basis of representation. Why not exclude such persons from the basis of representation, unless they are allowed to vote?

Another objection to this amendment is, that it is not to be submitted to the people. All States, of late, have been compelled to submit their organic laws to the people. A legislature of a State is not the people of the State. The spirit of the age and the wisdom of half a century have verified the maxim, that the right of self-government demands that the people, as citizens, should be consulted upon all changes in an organic law.

The organic law provides two ways of submitting an amendment to it—one to submit it to conventions of the States, and the other to legislatures of the States. The question involved in this amendment was not an issue when the present legislatures were elected. By submitting it to conventions, the people act directly upon it in the election of the delegates, and in that way they could decide for themselves whether they wanted the organic law so amended as to eventually compel the States to adopt unqualified negro suffrage. It would be an expression of the people, if ratified, by way of advice at least to the States, to adopt unqualified negro suffrage.

All which is most respectfully submitted,

ANDREW J. ROGERS.

• Minority Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction on H. Res. 51 (introduced on 1866-01-22 12:00:00 - CREATE_FROM - e870834) [This document]
• Motion to Print H. Res. 51 (introduced on 1866-01-22 12:00:00 - PROCEDURE - e654803)

• Minority Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction on H. Res. 51 (introduced on 1866-01-22 12:00:00 - CREATE_FROM - e870834) [This document] [view current proposal at this moment]
  • Motion to Print the Minority Report (introduced on 1866-01-22 12:00:00 - PROCEDURE - e654804) [view current proposal at this moment]
    • None (introduced on 1866-01-22 12:00:00 - ADOPT_PROPOSAL - e654805) [view current proposal at this moment]