In addition to the first section, as shown above, the amendment provided that Representatives should be apportioned among the several states according to population, but that when the right to vote was denied in any state to any of the male inhabitants who were twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, except for rebellion or other crime, the representation of such state in Congress and the Electoral College should be proportionately reduced. Also that no person should hold any office under the United States or any state who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, had engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, but that Congress might, by a two-thirds vote, remove such disability. Also that the validity of the public debt of the United States should not be questioned, but that no debt incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion should ever be paid by the United States or any state. The concluding section provided that Congress should have power to enforce by appropriate legislation the provisions of the article. The Fourteenth Amendment passed the Senate June 8, by 33 to 11, and the House June 13, by 138 to 36. Sumner had opposed it bitterly in debate because it dodged, as he said, the question of negro suffrage; but when the vote was taken he recorded himself in the affirmative. The report of the committee giving the reasons for their action was submitted on the 18th of June. It held that the seceding states, having withdrawn from Congress and levied war against the United States, could be restored to their former places only by permission of the constitutional power against which they had rebelled acting through all the coördinate branches of the Government and not by the executive department alone. If the President [it said] may, at his will and under his own authority, whether as military commander, or chief executive, qualify persons to appoint Senators and elect Representatives, and empower others to elect and appoint them, he thereby practically controls the organization of the legislative department. The constitutional form of government is thereby practically destroyed, and its powers absorbed by the Executive. And while your committee do not for a moment impute to the President any such design, but cheerfully concede to him the most patriotic motives, they cannot but look with alarm upon a precedent so fraught with danger to the Republic. This conclusion was logical but misleading. The danger to the Republic lay not in the absorption of powers by the Executive, but in the prolongation of chaos, in dethroning intelligence, and arming ignorance in the desolated districts of the South.[96]