Fourth, a group that consisted of an insignificantly small number of white men who claimed to be national Republicans and local Democrats,—­that is, they claimed that they voted for the Republican candidate for President every four years, but for Democrats in all other elections.  Of course they were against the proposed legislation.  These men succeeded in inducing some well-meaning Republican members of Congress, like Senator Washburne, of Minnesota, for instance, to believe that the passage of such a bill would have a tendency to prevent the building up of a strong Republican organization at the South.  Then again, the free silver question was before the public at that time.  The Republican majority in the Senate was not large.  Several of those who had been elected as Republicans were free silver men.  On that question they were in harmony with a majority of the Democrats, and out of harmony with the great majority of Republicans.  The Free Silver Republicans, therefore, were not inclined to support a measure that was particularly offensive to their friends and allies on the silver question.  After a careful canvass of the Senate it was developed that the Republican leaders could not safely count on the support of any one of the Free Silver Republicans in their efforts to pass the bill, and, since they had the balance of power, any further effort to pass it was abandoned.  It was then made plain to the friends and supporters of that measure that no further attempt would be made in that direction for a long time, if ever.

I wrote and had published in the Washington Post a letter in which I took strong grounds in favor of having the representation in Congress,—­from States where the colored men had been practically disfranchised through an evasion of the Fifteenth Amendment,—­reduced in the manner prescribed by the Fourteenth Amendment.  In that letter I made an effort to answer every argument that had been made in opposition to such a proposition.  It had been argued by some fairly good lawyers, for instance, that the subsequent ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment had so modified the Fourteenth as to take away from Congress this optional and discretionary power which had been previously conferred upon it by the Fourteenth Amendment.  I tried in that letter,—­and I think I succeeded,—­to answer the argument on that point.  It was also said that if Congress were to take such a step it would thereby give its sanction to the disfranchisement of the colored men in the States where that had been done.  This I think I succeeded in proving was untrue and without foundation.  The truth is that the only material difference between the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments on this particular point is that, subsequent to the ratification of the Fourteenth and prior to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, a State could legally disfranchise white or colored men on account of race or color, but, since the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, this cannot be legally