On the other hand, the Reconstruction Committee of Congress had reported a bill along with the Article of Amendment, which virtually proposed to make the ratification of the proposed Amendment by the respective legislatures of the reconstructed Southern communities the condition of the admission of the Senators- and Representatives-elect from them to seats in Congress. That is, it was proposed that Congress should make its recognition of the reconstructed bodies as "States" conditional upon their ratification of the Article of Amendment. Or perhaps some of those supporting this proposition would have preferred the statement that it was proposed that Congress should make its recognition of the reconstructed governments of the "States" in which secession had {81} been attempted conditional upon the ratification of the Amendment by the legislative departments of these reconstructed governments respectively. [Sidenote: The absurdity of the condition.] No matter how it might have been stated, it was an absurdity. The true theory on this point was that held by Mr. Stevens, viz., to consider only those "States" which had never attempted secession, those "States" which had never been members of the Southern Confederacy, as constituting the "States" of the Union at that moment, and all other territory and people subject to the jurisdiction of the United States as being under the exclusive government of the central Government; to amend the Constitution by a three-fourths majority of these loyal "States"; and then to admit these reconstructed communities as new "States" into the Union with its amended Constitution. The amended Constitution would then have the same power over them as if the Amendment had been ratified by them. In fact, their petition for admission or recognition as "States" of the Union with the amended Constitution would imply their assent to the Amendment as well as to every other part of the Constitution. The more moderate Republicans feared that the Southern communities would not feel obligated by a Constitution amended in this way. It is difficult to see why they should not. The Southern statesmen knew that Congress had no power under the Constitution to require of new "States" obedience to anything as a condition of their admission to the Union, but the Constitution as it was at the moment of their admission. Looked at from the point of view of the present, it would certainly appear that the exaction of such an unlawful promise, imposing such a degrading discrimination, would have been far more exasperating than anything else which could have been invented or imagined. {82} Enough of them saw this to prevent Congress from enacting the bill proposed by the Reconstruction Committee into a law, and when the proposed Amendment went to the legislatures of the "States," there was no requirement attending it which appeared to deprive any legislature, or body claiming to be a legislature, of its discretion in dealing with the subject.