That instrument also makes each House “the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members,” and therefore all that is now necessary to restore Arkansas in all its constitutional relations to the Government is a decision by each House upon the eligibility of those who, presenting their credentials, claim seats in the respective Houses of Congress.  This is the plain and simple plan of the Constitution; and believing that had it been pursued when Congress assembled in the month of December, 1865, the restoration of the States would long since have been completed, I once again earnestly recommend that it be adopted by each House in preference to legislation, which I respectfully submit is not only of at least doubtful constitutionality, and therefore unwise and dangerous as a precedent, but is unnecessary, not so effective in its operation as the mode prescribed by the Constitution, involves additional delay, and from its terms may be taken rather as applicable to a Territory about to be admitted as one of the United States than to a State which has occupied a place in the Union for upward of a quarter of a century.

The bill declares the State of Arkansas entitled and admitted to representation in Congress as one of the States of the Union upon the following fundamental condition: 

That the constitution of Arkansas shall never be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the right to vote who are entitled to vote by the constitution herein recognized, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law, whereof they shall have been duly convicted under laws equally applicable to all the inhabitants of said State:  Provided, That any alteration of said constitution, prospective in its effect, may be made in regard to the time and place of residence of voters.

I have been unable to find in the Constitution of the United States any warrant for the exercise of the authority thus claimed by Congress.  In assuming the power to impose a “fundamental condition” upon a State which has been duly “admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever,” Congress asserts a right to enter a State as it may a Territory, and to regulate the highest prerogative of a free people—­the elective franchise.  This question is reserved by the Constitution to the States themselves, and to concede to Congress the power to regulate the subject would be to reverse the fundamental principle of the Republic and to place in the hands of the Federal Government, which is the creature of the States, the sovereignty which justly belongs to the States or the people—­the true source of all political power, by whom our Federal system was created and to whose will it is subordinate.