While, as we have seen, the President did not exactly deny the constitutionality of the bill, the Democrats in Congress, and the Southerners seeking seats in Congress, did. There was, therefore, but one course left open to the Republican majority, and that was to make what they considered to be the incidents of the Thirteenth Amendment express provisions of the Constitution. There were also several other things which had become clear in the course of the debates in the Civil Rights bill and the Freedmen's Bureau bill. In the first place, it was seen that the emancipation of the slaves would increase the representation in Congress and in the Presidential electoral college from the old slave "States" by two-fifths whenever the Southern communities should be recognized as "States" again, and that too without the admission of the emancipated persons to the exercise of political suffrage. It was certainly to be apprehended that, with such increased representation, the Southern members and the Northern Democrats would constitute a majority in Congress and in the electoral college, and might proceed not only to repeal the Civil Rights Act, and all acts in behalf of the freedmen, but also to throw the Confederate debt or a part of it upon the United States, or establish pensions for Confederate soldiers, or even repudiate the debt of the Union made in defence of its own life. While the danger of these things was, probably, somewhat {74} exaggerated, still it would not have been becoming for men of prudence and patriotism to have failed to provide against them. Really there was but one thing to do, and that was to enact, and secure the adoption of, another amendment to the Constitution covering these points, while the power to do so still existed. [Sidenote: The political provision in the proposed Fourteenth Amendment.]