As will be remembered, seven of the ten Southern communities, viz., North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Arkansas, had already before the close of the impeachment trial ratified the "State" constitutions framed for them by the "carpet-bag, scalawag, negro conventions" held in each for them, had elected "State" officers and legislators, and the legislature of one of them, Arkansas, had ratified the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as the legislature of each of them was required to do before it could be admitted to representation in Congress. {198} [Sidenote: The Congressional Acts admitting the Senators- and Representatives-elect from the reconstructed "States" to seats in Congress.] Congress now looked upon the work of its hands and pronounced it good, and proceeded to pass the acts, necessary in its conceit, to admit these communities to representation in the legislative houses of the Nation. First came the Act in reference to Arkansas, of the 22d of June, 1868, since, as has been just said, the new legislature of Arkansas had already ratified the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. It provided "that the State of Arkansas is entitled and admitted to representation in Congress, as one of the States of the Union, on 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."