MR. SUMNER. My name is recorded, on all the yeas and nays, and they were numerous, against the admission of Tennessee; and the reason I assigned was, that the constitution contained the word “white.”
MR. WADE. You voted for the Constitutional Amendment.
MR. SUMNER. Yes, I did vote for the Constitutional Amendment, in its final form;[46] but does the Senator consider himself bound to admit a Rebel State refusing the suffrage to freedmen? I wish my friend to answer that.
MR. WADE. I do not know that I understand the Senator. Let me say that I should consider myself bound by the Constitutional Amendment, if the Southern States complied with it within a reasonable time; and that reasonable time, in my judgment, is nearly elapsed.
MR. SUMNER. Even with the word “white” in a constitution?
MR. SUMNER. Without regard to the rights of the freedman?
MR. WADE. On complying with the requisitions of the Constitutional Amendment, I should vote for them.
MR. SUMNER. I do not agree with the Senator. I distinctly stated, when the Amendment was under discussion, that I did not accept it as a finality, and that, so far as I had a vote on this floor, I would insist that every one of these States, before its Representatives were received in Congress, should confer impartial suffrage, without distinction of color; and now I ask my friend what inconsistency there is, when I insist upon the same rule for Nebraska.
MR. WADE. I cannot see how the Senator could have misled the Southern States with that. When they complied with all we asked of them in the Constitutional Amendment, I supposed we could not refuse to let them in on those terms.… Certainly I am as much for colored suffrage as any man on this floor; but when I make such an agreement as that, I stand by it always.
MR. SUMNER. When I make an agreement, I stand by it. But I entered into no such agreement, and I do not understand that the Senate or Congress entered into any such agreement. I know that certain politicians and editors have undertaken to foist something of this sort into the Constitutional Amendment; but there was no authority for it. The Committee on Reconstruction may have reported a resolution to that effect, but they never called it up, and I know well that I offered a resolution just the contrary.