the list the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person Constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

ARTICLE XIII.

SECTION 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

SEC. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XIV.

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizen of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

SEC. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

SEC. 3. No person shall be a Senator, or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold

any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof; but Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

SEC. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims, shall be held illegal and void.

SEC. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

ARTICLE XV.

SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The States ratified the Constitution in the following order :

A few of the signers of this great charter of the new Government were also signers of the Declaration of Independence, a paper standing second in importance, perhaps, in the veneration of Americans. For some reason the names of the signers of the Declaration were pushed out of their place in the third volume. That they may not be lost from the first edition of this. work, they are deliberately inserted here with the sentence introducing them in Mr. Jefferson's immortal document, as follows:

The foregoing declaration was, by order of Congress, engrossed, and signed by the following members:

EDWARD RUTLEDGE, THOMAS LYNCH, Jun.

THOMAS HEYWARD, Jun. ARTHUR MIDDLETON.

GEORGIA.

BUTTON GWINNETT,

GEORGE WALTON.

LYMAN HALL,

31-R

CHAPTER XVII.

VAIN EFFORTS TO HARMONIZE THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS TWO STUBBORN BODIES-THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL-A HIGH-TONED FARCE AND

N°

SCANDAL-ALTA VELA.

O event in the history of Congress or the country during this memorable period was so great a source of public excitement and interest, and was yet of so little benefit or honor to the Nation, as the impeachment trial of the President. It was the result of the unfortunate division between Congress and the Executive, and the evil and stubborn spirit which took no small part in the affairs of the times. Mr. Johnson viewed his early reconstruction measures as right, and designed them to be permanent. He did not mean that they should be set aside by Congress, or that any other should take their place. In the long interval between his inauguration and the meeting of Congress he pushed his plan forward with great rapidity, and hoped it was too far developed, and too well sanctioned by the initial steps of Mr. Lincoln, to meet serious opposition. He had been too hasty. The spirit of the Rebellion was not dead, and the progress of events had satisfied the majority in Congress that his policy was not safe. If the majority in Congress had determined to oppose the