For section third, denying suffrage until 1870 to all {78} persons who had given aid voluntarily to the rebellion, Congress had substituted an entirely new resolution, which rendered the Confederate chieftains ineligible to office instead of disqualifying the rank and file for suffrage. It reads as follows: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." This was certainly a wise change. It certainly could not be contended that disqualifications for holding office and legislative mandate violated any so-called natural right. It was better that whatever punishments of a political nature might fall upon the Confederates should strike the leaders, rather than the followers. And it was not a severe punishment which required that, for a time at least, the people inhabiting the communities lately in rebellion should choose as their representatives to the National legislature and to the Presidential electoral college, and as their "State" officers, men not identified with the rebellion so closely as to have been among its leaders. It is difficult to see how the Confederate leaders could have been required to suffer less, and have been rebuked at all for their acts. Finally, section four was supplemented by a sentence which declared that "the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts {79} incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." The last words of the section were also somewhat modified in the direction of greater emphasis, but the meaning remained the same. As thus perfected, the section declared the validity of all the existing obligations of the United States, and repudiated all obligations whatsoever assumed in aid of rebellion, and all claims for the loss or emancipation of any slave. This covered the ground completely in regard to the security of the public obligations of the United States both from the positive and negative side, and it prevented both Congress and the "States" from ever recognizing, in the future, the claim for any relief from the natural consequences of unsuccessful rebellion, and the right to any compensation for deprivation of property in man.