Mr.Clarke of New Hampshire, who had shown throughout the discussion great aptness at draughting Constitutional provisions in appropriate language, now moved to substitute for section four, which had gone through various mutations not necessary to recount here, the precise section as it now stands in the Constitution.
In the course of the discussion Mr.Doolittle had moved that in imposing political disabilities, those should be excepted "who have duly received pardon and amnesty under the Constitution and laws." He had just admitted the broadest possible power of a Constitutional amendment duly adopted, and, recognizing that the amendment as it stood would certainly include those who had received pardon from the President, desired to avert that result.

His amendment was very briefly debated and on a call of the _ayes_ and _noes_ received only ten votes.

The effect of this vote unmistakably settled, in the judgment of the law-making power of the Government, that the operation of the Fourteenth Amendment would not in the least degree be affected by the President's pardon.

Before the proposed amendment of Mr.
Doolittle, Mr.Saulsbury had tested the sense of the Senate practically on the same point, by moving to make the clause of the amendment read thus: "Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House and the President may by the exercise of the pardoning power, remove such disabilities;" but it was rejected by a large majority, and every proposition to permit the pardon of the President to affect the disabilities prescribed by the Fourteenth Amendment in any way whatever was promptly overruled.
As a result of this decision, Southern men who, under the Fourteenth Amendment, had incurred disabilities by reason of participation in the Rebellion, _could not assume office under the National Government until their disabilities should be removed by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, even though they had previously been pardoned by the President._ The language of the amendment, the very careful form in which the tense was expressed, appeared to leave no other meaning possible, and the intention of legislators was definitively established by the negative votes already referred to.
The intention indeed was in no wise to interfere with the pardon of the President, leaving to that its full scope in the remission of penalty which it secured to those engaged in the Rebellion.

The pertinent clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was regarded as merely prescribing a qualification for office, and the Constitutional lawyers considered it to be within the scope of the amending power as much as it would be to change the age at which a citizen would be eligible to the Senate or the House of Representatives.( 2) One of the singular features attending the discussion and formation of this amendment, was that all the Democratic senators preferred the third section as embodied in the Constitutional amendment finally passed, to that which had been proposed as it passed the House.