Mr. Shellabarger followed his colleague, giving objections to the amendment as reported by the Committee on Reconstruction: "First, it contemplates and provides for and in that way authorizes the States to wholly disfranchise an entire race of people; second, the moral teaching of the clause offends the free and just spirit of the age, violates the foundation principle of our own Government and is intrinsically wrong; third, associated with that clause in our Constitution relating to the States being republican this amendment makes it read thus: 'the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, provided, however, that a government shall be deemed republican when whole races of its people are disfranchised, unrepresented and ignored.'" Mr. Eliot of Massachusetts moved an amendment that representation should be based upon the whole number of persons, "and that the elective franchise shall not be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color." Mr. Pike of Maine made a strong speech against the amendment, the spirit of which was in favor of declaring universal suffrage. He added to the illustrations already given of the inefficacy of the proposed amendment to reach the desired end, one of special force and pertinency. "Suppose," said he, "this Constitutional amendment to be in full force, and a State should provide that the right of suffrage should not be exercised by any person who had been a slave or who was the descendant of a slave, whatever his race or color?" He suggested that it was "a serious matter to tell whether this simple provision would not be sufficient to defeat the Constitutional amendment which we here so laboriously enact and submit to the States." Mr. Conkling argued that "the amendment we are proposing is not for Greece or Rome, or anywhere where anybody besides Africans were held as slaves. It is to operate in this country, where one race, and only one, has been held in servitude." Mr. Pike replied that "in no State has slavery been confined to one race." "So far," added he, "as I am acquainted with their statutes, slavery has not been confined to the African race. I have examined the matter with some care, and I know of no slave-statute which says that Africans alone shall be slaves. Well-authenticated instances exist in every slave State, where men of Caucasian descent, of Anglo-Saxon blood, have been confined in slavery and they and their posterity held as slaves, so that not only were free blacks found everywhere but white slaves abounded."