I do not deem it necessary further to investigate the details of this bill.

No consideration could induce me to give my approval to such an election law for any purpose, and especially for the great purpose of framing the constitution of a State.

If ever the American citizen should be left to the free exercise of his own judgment, it is when he is engaged in the work of forming the fundamental law under which he is to live.

That is his work and it cannot properly be taken out of his hands." The whole issue presented by this bill was but another of the countless phases of that prolonged and fundamental contest between those who believed that guarantees should be exacted from the rebel States, and those who believed that these States should be freely admitted, without condition and without restraint, to all the privileges which they had recklessly thrown away in their mad effort to destroy the Government.
The strength of each side had again been well stated in the debates of the Senate and House and in the veto-message of the President, and no change of opinion was expected by either party from the reasoning or the protest of the other.

The President's argument was therefore met by a prompt vote passing the bill over his veto, in the House by 114 _ayes_ to 25 _noes_, and in the Senate by 40 _ayes_ to 7 _noes_.