It may be replied that the rebellious States had been reduced to the condition of territories, over whose suffrage the general government had control. But let me ask why, then, a large class of men remained disfranchised after these States again took up local government? A large class of men were especially exempted from general amnesty and for the restoration of their political rights were obliged to individually petition congress for the removal of their political disabilities, and these men then became "voters in States," by action of the United States. Here, again, the United States recognized citizenship and suffrage as synonymous. If the United States has no voters of its own creation in the States, what are these men? A few, the leaders in the rebellion, are yet disfranchised, and no State has power to change this condition. Only the United States can again make them voters in States. Under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments the colored men of the South, who never had possessed the ballot, and those colored men of the North over whom some special disqualification hung, were alike made voters by United States law. It required no action of Delaware, Indiana, New York, or any of those States in which the colored man was not upon voting equality with the white men, to change their constitutions or statutes in order to do away with such disqualifications. The fourteenth amendment created another class of United States voters in States, to the number of a million or more. The fourteenth amendment, and the act of congress to enforce it, were at once recognized to be superior to State law--abrogating and repealing State constitutions and State laws contradictory to its provisions. By an act of congress March 3, and a presidential proclamation of March 11, 1865, all deserters who failed to report themselves to a provost marshall within sixty days, forfeited their rights of citizenship as an additional penalty for the crime of desertion, thus losing their ballot without possibility of its restoration except by an act of congress. Whenever this may be done collectively or individually, these men will become State voters by and through the United States law.