[86] _Cong. Globe_, 1866, p. 322. [87] _Cong. Globe_, 1866, pp. 745-46. [88] _Cong. Globe_, 1866, p. 475. [89] _Cong. Globe_, 1866, p. 530. [90] _Cong. Globe_, 1866, p. 1293. [91] "Doolittle tells me he wrote the President a letter on the morning of the 22d of February, knowing there was to be a gathering which would call at the White House, entreating him not to address the crowd. But, said D., he did speak and his speech lost him two hundred thousand votes." (_Diary of Gideon Welles_, II, 647.) [92] W. A. Dunning, _Reconstruction_, p. 82. [93] Both of these cases are reported in the first volume of Abbott's Circuit Court Reports. [94] United States _v._ Harris, 106 U.S. 629. [95] Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3. CHAPTER XVIII THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT While the events in the preceding chapter were transpiring, a joint committee on Reconstruction were making an inquiry into the condition of the ex-Confederate States in order to determine whether they or any of them were entitled to immediate representation in Congress. It consisted of Senators Fessenden, Grimes, Harris, Howard, Williams, and Johnson, and Representatives Stevens, Washburne, of Illinois, Morrill, of Vermont, Bingham, Conkling, Boutwell, Blow, Rogers, and Grider. Senator Reverdy Johnson and Representatives Rogers and Grider were Democrats. All the others were Republicans. There was a preponderance of conservatives on the committee. Senator Fessenden was the chairman, and his selection for the place marked him as _princeps senatus_ in the estimation of his colleagues. While the Civil Rights Bill was pending in the House, we have seen that Bingham, of Ohio, made a speech against it and voted against it, holding it to be unconstitutional. He had supported the Freedmen's Bureau Bill because it applied only to states in the inchoate condition which then existed. It was to be inoperative in any state, when restored to its constitutional relations with the Union. The Civil Rights Bill, on the other hand, was to apply to the whole country, North and South, without limit as to time, and to affect the civil and criminal code of every State Government. He held that there was no constitutional warrant for this, either in the Thirteenth Amendment or elsewhere. In order to cure the supposed defect, Bingham proposed to the Reconstruction Committee a new constitutional amendment in these words: The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of each state all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states, and to all persons in the several states equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property.