clause which provides for amendment by submitting it as a single proposition. It is therefore plain that if this General Assembly fails to pass a law authorizing our soldiers to vote, these gallant defenders of our homes and liberties must be disfranchised for over two years to come. "I recommend therefore to you, as one of your first acts, the passage of a law providing for taking the votes of our soldiers in the field. Indeed, I will say, decorously however, that failure to protect the rights of the noble men who have left business and property, home and kindred, to preserve to you the enjoyment of this same peaceful right of suffrage, together with all other rights you hold dear, would subject you to the charge of being unfaithful servants to your country. The soldiers are citizens; they are the people of the country; their persons, their families, their property, their rights are as deeply affected by the legislation of the country as those of the citizens who remain at home, in the quiet enjoyment of peace and safety. If the soldier is not worthy to vote, who is? If he who bares his breast to the storm of battle, and bears aloft our flag, against the hordes who are madly striving to tear down our magnificent temple of constitutional liberty; if he shall have no voice in selecting his rulers, who shall? Therefore let this General Assembly signalize its patriotism by this act of prompt and necessary justice to the gallant citizen soldier of the State. "I would suggest to the General Assembly that, while I do not anticipate an unfavorable decision of the Supreme Court upon an enactment to be passed securing the right of suffrage to the soldiers, yet, in view of any such contingency, proper action should be taken for amendment to the constitution, as the next only mode of securing the object."1 1 Senate Journal, 1865, pp. 32, 33, 34. On January 18, a bill was introduced in the House to enable the qualified electors absent from the State in the military service of the United States to vote, which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and printed. On the same day it was moved that the rules be suspended so as to admit a resolution asking the opinion of the Supreme Court upon the constitutionality of a soldiers' voting bill. This was decided in the negative by a vote of 46 nays to 30 yeas. On February 2, the soldiers' voting bill was passed by a vote of 47 Republican yeas to 30 Democratic nays. The bill was received in the Senate on February 3, and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. On February 11, the Committee reported the bill, and filibustering ensued by motions to specially assign, for a call of the House, etc., etc. The bill was finally passed by a vote of 14 Republican yeas to 4 Democratic nays.2 1 This Act took effect on February 16, 1865. It was in its title, and in all essential particulars, a copy fo the New York Act of 1864. All the objections to the New York Act which I have previously discussed lie against the Illinois Act. There could be no separate return of votes cast under it because under the Illinois act, as under the New York act, nobody could tell how the soldiers voted. They voted by proxy, and although the ballots might have been kept separate, they were not. The provisions of this Act do not appear in the compilation of Illinois Statutes of 1869. 1 House Journal, 1865, pp. 246, 247, 513. 2 Senate Journal, 1865, pp. 351, 365, 578, 585, 598. CHAPTER XXV DELAWARE ELAWARE was really a border State and had DE a slave population in 1860 of 1,798. Breckenridge, the presidential candidate of the Southern Democracy received 7,340 votes against 3,815 for Lincoln, and the electoral vote of the State went to him. The General Assembly in 1861 was controlled by the Democrats in the Senate, and by the Peoples' Party, so called, in the House.1 It attempted to remain neutral, or, as its Governor said in his message, "laying no impediment in the way of the Government, nor affording its enemies any sort of aid." A resolution pledging the support of the State to the Government of the United States was passed in the Senate by a vote of 4 to 2, and refused passage in the House by a vote of 11 to 10. Delaware furnished its quota of troops to the Union during the Civil War. Comparatively few men were drafted, owing to the fact that the State volunteers supplied the quota required. The number of troops furnished during the war was 13,365, of whom 10,303 served for three years, or until the end of the war.2 It attempted to give them the right to vote out of the State. On February 4th, 1862, a bill was introduced in the House providing for soldiers' voting in the field, 1 History of Delaware, Conrad, Vol. 1, p. 194 et seq. 2 Ibid., p. 213. and was read. On February 6th, the bill was read by paragraphs, and its further consideration postponed to the following day when it was taken up and considered and killed by a vote of ten Republicans in its favor and eleven Democrats against it.1 In 1862, a plan was proposed by Lincoln to emancipate the slaves in Delaware by paying $900,000 in ten equal instalments by the United States to the State of Delaware, and out of this the slaveholders were to be paid what each slave was reasonably worth. This measure was not introduced into the Assembly, because it was found that it would be rejected. The "Emancipation Bill," so called, to carry out the President's plan was set forth in a joint resolution, in which the House placed upon record the grounds of their condemnation of it which were in brief, that to accept it would "encourage the abolition element in Congress"; that Congress had no right to appropriate money for the purchase of slaves and that the proposal to do so "evinced a design to abolish slavery in the States"; and also that the State of Delaware would not pledge its faith for the payment provided for by Congress in the bill because "the stocks of the United States are selling at a continually increasing rate of discount in the market"; and finally they resolved: "That when the people of Delaware desire to abolish slavery within her borders, they will do so in their own way, having due regard to strict equity; that any interference from without, and all suggestions of saving expense to the people, or others of like character, are improper to be made to an honorable people such as we represent, and are hereby repelled; that though the State of Delaware is 1 House Journal, Special Session, 1861-2, p. 207, 229, 266, 269. small and her people not of the richest, they are beyond the reach of any who would promote an end by improper interference and solicitations." 1 The slaves in Delaware were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, but exempted from it. In 1865, the Governor urged the Legislature to take measures for the emancipation of the slaves, but the Legislature being Democratic took no action, except to declare their opposition to the passage by Congress of a bill granting the franchise to negroes in the District of Columbia. They said "the immutable laws of God have fixed upon the brow of the white races the ineffaceable stamp of superiority, and that all attempts to elevate the negro to a social and political equal of the white man is futile and subversive of the ends and aims for which the American Government was established, and contrary to the doctrines and teachings of the Fathers of the Republic." They rejected the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States by a vote of 15 to 6. The Fifteenth Amendment was also rejected by a vote of 19 to 2. The result was that the stubborn little State had emancipation and universal suffrage thrust upon it against its objection, and had no money.2 1 House Journal, Special Session, 1861-2, p. 240. |