As this is a penal statute, this construction makes it ex post facto, and therefore unconstitutional.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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Stanton had for two years been holding office illegally; whereas he had been holding under the clearest legal title, which could no more be altered by legislation than black could be made white.
A power founded on implied necessity must fail when the necessity does not exist.
The whole past is unrolled by himself, and he cannot prevent the Senate from seeing it.
The sight may ache; but how else can justice be done?
Once more we hear the voice of Slavery crying out in familiar tones, that conditions cannot be imposed on new States.
The Constitution, like the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, embraces all alike within its mandates and all alike within its promises.
No such enormous prerogative can be wrung out of any such moderate power.
Here was Slavery, barbarous, brutal, vindictive, warring for recognition.
How can you expect to restore the national credit, now unnaturally sensitive, while the Nation is still uneasy from those Rebel pretensions which have cost so much?
Security is the first condition of Financial Reconstruction; and I am at a loss to find any road to it, except through Political Reconstruction.
And yet there are many, who, while professing a desire for an improvement in our financial condition, perversely turn their backs upon the only means by which this can be accomplished.
So long as a dollar of irredeemable paper is forced upon the country, the Rebellion still lives, in its spurious progeny.
It will come with the general health of the body politic.
I know no substantial reason for this enormous difference, except in the superior credit established by England.
It weakens the Nation and hampers the citizen.
Driven from the ocean by pirate flags during the Rebellion, it cannot struggle back to its ancient supremacy until the accustomed laws of trade once more resume their rule.
Reason, humanity, religion, and common sense, all reject the wretched thing.
Necessity may excuse an action not in itself just, but it is without the force to render it just; for justice is immutable.
In harmony with the promise of Nature is the promise of our fathers, recorded in the Declaration of Independence, to which the Republic has succeeded also.
But this warning is as applicable now as then.
Nor is it to be forgotten, that, dying in such a cause, his living voice is echoed from the tomb.
The right of any citizen of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of the race, color, or previous condition of slavery of any citizen or class of citizens of the United States.
Nothing can be a “qualification” which is not in its nature attainable,--as residence, property, education, or character, each of which is within the possible reach of well-directed effort.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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