At the time of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, in 1870, the following States still restricted the suffrage to white persons: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. Illinois[689] adopted a new Constitution in 1870 which omitted the word “white.” Missouri[690] amended its Constitution on November 8, 1870, after the Fifteenth Amendment went into effect, by erasing the word “white,” and Virginia,[691] in its Constitution of 1870, extended the suffrage to “male citizens.” It is needless to say that all the Constitutions adopted since 1870 have omitted the word “white” from the suffrage qualifications, so it is not worth while to note the various Constitutions and Amendments that have been adopted since that date. But in some State Constitutions which have not been changed within the last forty years, one still finds the provision that only “white male citizens” are electors. This is true of Maryland.[692] Attempts have been made to amend the Constitution by erasing the word “white,” but the objection has been made that it is null and void[693] anyway by the Fifteenth Amendment, and that it would be too expensive to call a constitutional convention or hold an election solely for the purpose of erasing a “dead” word. The history of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment—the opposition it provoked and the means that had to be adopted to procure its ratification by the Southern States—is found in the records of Congress, newspapers, and political discussions of that day. Very little of it has been preserved in the laws of the States. In the following resolution by the legislature of Oregon[694] is found one of the few traces of the opposition to the Amendment occurring in the laws of a State outside the South: “Whereas, the State of Oregon was, on the fourteenth day of February, A.D., 1859, admitted into the Federal Union, vested with the right to declare what persons should be entitled to vote within her boundaries; and until she, by her voluntary act, surrenders that right, the Congress of the United States has no authority to interfere with the conditions of suffrage within the boundaries of the State of Oregon: and “Whereas, the Congress of the United States, by means of an arbitrary majority of votes acquired by the power of the bayonet, has sought to force upon the several States the so-called Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, in direct violation of the terms under which the State of Oregon was admitted into the Sisterhood of States; therefore “Be it resolved by the Senate, the House concurring: “That the so-called Fifteenth Amendment is an infringement upon the popular rights, and a direct falsification of the pledges made to the State of Oregon by the Federal Government. “Resolved, that the said Fifteenth Amendment be and the same is hereby rejected.