Speech #510093044

This is understood to mean and did mean that if one of the late slaveholding States desired to exclude its colored population from the right of voting at the expense of reducing its representation in Congress it could do so before the adoption of the fifteenth amendment. In the case of the United States against Reese. same report. page 214. the Supreme Court said: -The fifteenth amendmentdoes not confer the right of suffrage upon any one. it prevents the States of the Union from giving preference in this particular to XXI430 one citizen of the United States over another on account of race. color. or previous condition of servitude. The first section of the fourteenth amendment declaresThat all persons born or naturalized in the United States or subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and tih State wherein they reside. The Constitution does not say that a negro shall not be disfranchised. but it prevents his disfranchisement on account of his " race. color. or previous condition of servitude." He may be disfranchised because he does not own property of any given value. he may be disfranchised because he can not read or write. or because he is not a believer in the Protestant or Catholic religion. or because he was foreign born. or because lie can not read Latin. Greek. or Hebrew. or because he can not speak French or German. yet the law which disfranchises him for any of these causes must be made to apply to all white men within the State in like condition. Citizenship which is secured by the fourteenth amendment does not confer the right to vote. Women and children born in this country or naturalized are citizens. but they can not vote. Neither does citizenship nor the right to vote. nor both combined. confer the right to hold office byreasonof anything contained in the Constitution of the United States. When the fifteenth amendment was under consideration in Congress on the 11th of January. 1869. the House Judiciary Committee reported a proposed amendment. to be known as Article XV. and recommended its adoption.