After a considerable discussion, the question being taken on the passage of the preamble as substituted by the Senate, together with the resolution of the House, resulted in twenty-eight votes in the affirmative, and four in the negative. The House promptly agreed to the amendment of the Senate, and the joint resolution was sent to the President for his approval. The President approved the joint resolution, but sent a message to the House which was in the nature of a protest against the opinions expressed in the preamble. After giving at length his objections to the preamble, the President said: “Earnestly desiring to remove every cause of further delay, whether real or imaginary, on the part of Congress to the admission to their seats of loyal Senators and Representatives from the State of Tennessee, I have, notwithstanding the anomalous character of this proceeding, affixed my signature to the resolution. My approval, however, is not to be construed as an acknowledgment of the right of Congress to pass laws, preliminary to the admission of duly qualified representatives from any of the States. Neither is it to be construed as committing me to all the statements made in the preamble, some of which are, in my opinion, without foundation in fact, especially the assertion that the State of Tennessee has ratified the amendment to the Constitution of the United States proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress. No official notice of such ratification has been received by the Executive, or filed in the Department of State; on the contrary, unofficial information from most reliable sources, induces the belief that the amendment has not yet been constitutionally sanctioned by the Legislature of Tennessee. The right of each House, under the Constitution, to judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members is undoubted, and my approval or disapproval of the resolution could not in the slightest degree increase or diminish the authority in this respect conferred upon the two branches of Congress.” CHAPTER VI TENNESSEE AND THE NEW AMENDMENTS The deed of cession of Tennessee to the United States by North Carolina contained the provision “that no regulation made or to be made by Congress shall tend to emancipate slaves.” The constitution under which Tennessee was admitted into the Union also recognized slavery by the use of the term “freeman” throughout the bill of rights. It was, however, exceedingly liberal in regard to the suffrage, conferring it upon every “freeman of the age of twenty-one years, and upwards.” Under this provision, free negroes were allowed to vote.