sion of a thousand such states as Kansas. I will not vote to introduce them into the Senate under their late election. States have the right to elect senators; territories have no such right. Was Minnesota a state in the Union when she elected these gentlemen to the Senate? No. The whole record, this day's debate, shows that she is not now, and was not then a state. Then under what clause of the Constitution did she elect senators and accredit them to this body? Under what clause of the Constitution did she elect representatives? She is entitled to her delegate as a territory; and she is entitled to nothing more. I shall not vote to introduce her members here; and if I were a member of the House of Representatives, it would not matter a fig whether she claimed one, or two, or three, or twenty representatives, I would vote to admit none of them.

I understand that a state must be clothed with all the immunities, privileges, rights, and dignities of a state before she can elect a senator. Sir, this thing has been peddled down low enough; it is disreputable; it is treating the older states of the confederacy with less dignity than they are entitled to, to allow territories, in advance of their coming in as states, to elect senators and send them here. Then what have we got before us now? A proposition, taking Minnesota and Kansas together, from the venerable and distinguished senator from Kentucky, in advance of the admission of this state, to receive her senators, and then, right upon the back of that, to admit the state. And then we have, as to Kansas, a proposition to admit her in one sentence, and then allow herself to turn herself out in the next, to declare that she is in the Union, and then leave it to her own people to say whether she is in or not. Why, upon my soul, sir, I cannot see where we are going. You admit Kansas to-day, you admit her and declare her in the Union, and allow her to resolve herself out to-morrow. It seems to me that this involves us in unmistakable difficulty. When a state is fairly in the Union, a member of the confederacy, let her elect her senators and her representatives, and do not permit her to do it before. When she is once in, she can get out but by one mode, and that, let me tell senators, is by the peaceable process of secession.

But, sir, I rose simply to say, that inasmuch as this amendment proposed nothing but to re-enumerate the inhabitants of Minnesota, I shall vote for it. I thank the senator from Massachusetts for bringing it forward. It is just to Minnesota, and ought to be adopted.

ALIEN SUFFRAGE.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, APRIL 7, 1858, ON INDIAN
AND ALIEN SUFFRAGE IN CONNECTION WITH THE ADMISSION
OF MINNESOTA.

I WISH to express my concurrence in the main views of the senator from Texas. I think his position exactly right. He votes for the admission of Minnesota, with a protest against the improper features of her constitution. I join in that protest; and if I had the slightest

dream that my vote was to be construed into an endorsement of the constitution, I would withhold it, or put it upon the other side. But I desire to ask the senator from Texas whether he approves of that other remarkable feature of this constitution, upon which he did not comment, which grants to Indians who have adopted the habits of civilization the right of suffrage. My friend is the especial champion of the aboriginal tribes here, and whenever you strike an Indian you seem to make a personal issue with my friend.

Mr. HOUSTON. The gentleman has not been suspected of striking at Indians himself. Though he lived in their neighborhood, I always understood him to be very kind to them. I will assure him that I do most cordially approve of the provision. I think it very important. I will barely remark that those Indian tribes who had opportunities of organizing themselves into communities, are quite as civilized and as well regulated as we are ourselves, and I think it well to encourage them whenever they evince a disposition to become civilized and christianized.

Mr. BROWN. That is well enough as a sort of general reply; but the language of the Minnesota constitution is that Indians who have adopted the habits and customs of civilization shall be allowed to vote. That kind of phraseology, it seems to me, lets in all the Indians of the country. All you have to do is to catch a wild Indian in Minnesota, give him a hat, a pair of pantaloons, and a bottle of whiskey, and he would then have adopted the habits of civilization, and be a good voter. [Laughter.] Whole tribes will be carried up to vote in this way.

Mr. HAMLIN. That is the way they did vote.

Mr. BROWN. The senator from Maine says that is the way they did vote. This, however, is the business of Minnesota, not mine. I think it all wrong; and if I had any power to correct it, or any right to interpose, I would do so. This feature of her constitution is infinitely more objectionable to me than that one which tolerates foreigners in exercising the right of suffrage. I agree with the senator from Texas, and other senators, that men who have not taken the oath of allegiance to the government, ought not to participate in its elections, state or national; but I would much rather-and there I differ from the senator from Texasgive to the least gifted of those who come to our shores, or, in the language of the senator from Tennessee, who are drifted here, and the least educated of them, the right of voting after they get here, than to confer the same right on these breechless savages, who are made to adopt the habits of civilization, in the language of this constitution, on the day of election, by putting on the garb of white men, to be doffed the hour after the election is over.

But I know of no way by which you can correct this evil; I know of no authority in Congress to strike this clause from the constitution; and if you had the power to do it, I know enough of the relations existing between the federal and state governments to know that, if Minnesota is in love with it, she can put it back to-morrow, and then, being entirely independent of the action of Congress, it would remain there. I simply content myself, therefore, with protesting against it, and protesting that no one is to assume that I endorse it when I vote to admit this state into the Union.

While I do not concur in the reasoning of the senator from Texas, I do concur in his main conclusions. I think that a state may authorize

a foreigner to vote without his being naturalized; I think a state may authorize a civilized Indian to vote; but certainly it is going a great way to assume, that when he has simply adopted the habits of civilization you are to allow him to vote, without defining what shall be considered an adoption of the habits of civilization. If he is not taxed, you cannot enumerate him; you cannot even count him in making up the sum of population; and yet he can vote. You give him the right of suffrage, and you do not even enumerate him as one of the population of the state. That is carrying the thing a great way. But if he is a foreigner inhabiting the country, you must enumerate him; and if the state chooses, it may confer on him the right of suffrage; but the right conferred in Massachusetts cannot be carried by the same man to Virginia, unless he has taken the oath of allegiance. It is a citizenship of the United States, and not of a particular state, that confers on him the right of suffrage. If he be a citizen of the United States, then he may be a citizen of any one of the states, and must stand upon the same footing in Virginia that a native son of Massachusetts would stand.

I understand that clause of the constitution quoted by my friend from Tennessee, to mean that Virginia cannot make a distinction between the adopted and native born citizens of Massachusetts; that she cannot confer a privilege on the senator from Massachusetts, and deny the same privilege to a citizen of that state, who has been naturalized under the laws of Congress, though he was born in France, or Spain, or Ireland. If he be a citizen of the state, without regard to birth, he carries with him all the privileges of any other citizen. No distinction is to be made in Virginia between citizens of Massachusetts, of native or of foreign birth. That is what I understand by it. In other words, Virginia cannot say that the native born citizens of Massachusetts shall vote, and that the adopted citizens, if they are citizens of the United States, made so under the act of Congress, shall not vote; but if they be simply and alone authorized to vote by the laws of Massachusetts, then they do not carry that local right to any one of the other states: that is not being a citizen. The right of voting and the rights of citizenship are two things separate and distinct. The right of suffrage does not necessarily involve the right of citizenship. The right of citizenship does involve the right to vote, because that is a right which belongs to every citizen, and cannot be taken from one class and denied to another classthat is all. You cannot deny the naturalized citizen the right of suffrage, and give it solely to the native citizen. One single state might do it, but still that naturalized citizen, if he went to any other state, would not carry with him that disability to the state in which he went. It is a disability which simply attaches to him in his locality.

Mr. STUART. If I understand the senator from Mississippi-and I really wish to understand him on this point-I quite agree with him. My position is, that every state has a right to say who shall exercise the right of suffrage.

Mr. BROWN. Certainly.

Mr. STUART. Now, sir, if a man is a citizen of the United States by naturalization, and has certain rights in Massachusetts, he does not carry with him into Mississippi any of those rights, unless Mississippi chooses to give them to him.-I mean the right of suffrage. Mississippi may say that, of the two men going from Massachusetts, one a natural

born citizen, and the other a naturalized citizen, the one who is a citizen by birth may vote in Mississippi; and the other, who is a naturalized citizen, shall not. I think it is competent for Mississippi to say so.

Mr. BROWN. Then we differ. I hold that, if they are citizens, you have no right to apply the rule; otherwise, it will not make them equal. But they must be citizens of the United States. As to what may constitute, in the technicalities of local law, citizenship in a state, that is a different matter. But when a man is a citizen of the United States, native-born or naturalized, I hold, if he and a native-born citizen pass from one state into another, the state into which they go has no right to make distinctions between them on account or their birth. That is my doctrine. If they are citizens of the United States, one native-born and the other adopted according to law, and pass from Massachusetts to Virginia, I maintain that Virginia cannot then make a distinction between them. She must treat them alike.

But I did not rise to discuss the question. I only wanted to sound my friend from Texas, and I am sorry I have been betrayed an inch beyond that to know what he thought of letting Indians vote.

ENGLISH BILL.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, APRIL 29, 1858, ON
WHAT IS COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE ENGLISH BILL, OR THe report
OF THE COMMITTEE OF CONFERENCE ON THE DISAGREEING
VOTES OF THE TWO HOUSES ON THE ADMISSION OF
KANSAS INTO THE UNION.

MR. PRESIDENT: I desire, in a few words, and without making a speech, to assign the reasons why, if we are ever brought to a vote, I shall record mine in favor of this proposition. I must say, in the outset, that I do not like it; there are a great many reasons why I do not; but as I have brought my mind to the conclusion to vote for it, I shall not assign the reasons why I do not like it, but rather assign the reasons which influence me to vote in its favor.

The first is this: that we settle this question; and better on these terms, than leave it open. I can see, if left open, that it is to be made the fruitful source of discontent and strife, and of political turmoil perhaps for years to come. I can see how, in very many ways, it may endanger, seriously endanger, the perpetuity of the government itself. As long as the question is kept open it must continue to irritate the feelings of the people of the two sections of the Union. Until this question is settled, you cannot begin to have a reconciliation on that great controversy which has been going on for years and years between the North and the South. This question is a thorn which rankles in the side of the nation. You must extract it, or you can have no permanent peace. If I had no other reason for going for this bill, I would do it for that and that alone. It is a peace measure; it brings healing upon its wings; it brings the different sections of the country in closer neighborhood, in better fellowship.

How much is there in the bill to forbid our taking it? First, it is said by some of those who vote against it, that it is a submission of the Lecompton constitution to the people of Kansas. And then again, others vote against it because it is not a submission. I mean to state my own

views with perfect candor and with entire fairness. I do not understand it to be the submission of the constitution to the people, but I do understand this to be true, that you submit collateral questions-the land question, and others involved in the Kansas ordinance-to the people of Kansas; and that if in voting upon those questions they choose to determine that they will not come into the Union under the Lecompton constitution, they have the right to do it.

They pass no judgment directly at the polls on the constitution, one way or the other, but each voter can control his own vote by his own reasons; and if he chooses, under cover of voting to sustain the ordinance, to vote against the whole constitution and against coming into the Union, he can do so; and if a majority take the view of the subject, the state is not in the Union.

That much in fairness and candor, for thus stands the question, if I properly comprehend it.

Now what just ground have we southern men to object to that? What just reason is there for our opposing it? We took the ground in the beginning, and maintain it now, that we would not and will not sustain a submission of this constitution to the people under the circumstances of its coming here. But we took the ground at the same time that we would not sanction this ordinance, making, as it did, exorbitant land demands upon the government, and setting up other pretences which had not been tolerated in the admission of other new states. From the beginning, the friends of the Lecompton constitution struck at that ordinance, determined not to receive it, and not to give it their sanction. The original Senate bill declared that it was no part of the constitution, and could not be so recognised by Congress. After we made that declaration, I apprehend, if the bill had passed, it would have rested with Kansas to decide whether she would organize under the constitution or not; whether she would come into the Union or be considered a member of it. had stricken off her ordinance. You chose not to regard it as a part of the constitution. But did Kansas so regard it? She did not. You struck it off without her consent. She thought it a material part of her proposition.

You

Then was she in the Union? She was not, until, either by silent acquiescence in your action, or by some positive declaration of her own, she placed herself into the Union. I hold that if you had passed the regular Senate bill, and Kansas had refused to organize a state government under the Lecompton constitution, and under that bill, there would have been no power in this government to force her, and therefore that she would not have been in the Union. She would not, because you had not met her proposition, and she had not accepted yours. Your minds had not agreed. She would not accept the proposition you had sent to her. You had changed her proposition so far as to strike off her ordinance, and she had not agreed to have it stricken off.

Then it rested with her to say whether she was in the Union or not; and what does this proposition amount to? It simply declares that Kansas may determine for herself whether she is in or out of the Union