It would be an agreeable thing to the writer of this period of American history, were he able to record that the principal matter which occupied the thought and attention of the Committee on Reconstruction was how to secure the necessary civil rights of the freedmen. But in the interest of exact truth he is compelled to forego this pleasure. The first thing which that Committee considered and recommended to the Houses of Congress was the political matter of a redistribution of the representation in the House of Representatives and in the Presidential electoral college. On the 22d of January (1866) the Committee reported to the two Houses the following proposition as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State--excluding Indians not taxed--provided, that whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation." For nearly six weeks both the Committee and Congress were occupied in the discussion of this proposition. In a slightly modified form it was adopted in the House, but, at last, on the 9th of March, it came to vote in the Senate, and not having received the necessary two-thirds majority, it was abandoned as a separate measure, and {75} merged into the general article containing the regulations of all the points to which reference was made above. It was Monday, April 30th, before the Committee was ready to report the entire article, which took the name of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The article as presented to the Houses of Congress by the Joint Committee on that day read as follows: "Sect. 1. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. "Sect. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But whenever in any State the elective franchise shall be denied to any portion of its male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation in such State shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age.