ported amendments to the Constitution, and two
bills constituting their plan of Reconstruction, one
of the bills recited the amendments proposed, and
enacted that on the ratification by any of the States
lately in insurrection, &c., the Senators and Rep-
resentatives of such States, if found duly elected
and qualified, &c., might be admitted into Con-
gress as such. The second bill declared certain
persons in those States ineligible to office under
the Government of the United States. This re-
port of the Committee failed of adoption by Con-
gress.
Finally, on the thirteenth June, eighteen hun-
dred and sixty-six, the Joint Resolution aforesaid,
now before the Committee, passed Congress, and
on the sixteenth June was filed in the State De-
partment and transmitted to the Governor of this
State, to be laid before the Legislature for ratifica-
tion.
The proposed amendment is substantially the
same as that reported by the Committee, on the
thirtieth of April, and was subsequently reported
by the Committee as they say, in another form.
The report of the Committee accompanying the
proposed amendment, with the documents, testi-
mony, &c., is contained in a volume of nearly
eight hundred pages, printed in small type. The
testimony was exparte, and from witnesses selected
by the sub Committees, and summoned from all
the Southern States and elsewhere. The subject
of their inquiries was, they gay, in a word, the fit-
ness of those States to take an active part in the
administration of national affairs. They describe
their condition at the close of the war to have
been one of utter exhaustion. Having protracted
their struggle against Federal authority, until all
hope of successful resistance had ceased, and laid
down their arms only because there was no longer
any power to use them, the people of those States
were left bankrupt in their finances, and shorn of
their private wealth which had before given them
power and influence. After a long, bloody and
wasteful war, they were compelled by utter ex-
haustion to lay down their arms, and this they
did, not willingly, but declaring that they yielded
because they could no longer resist, affording, no

Report of the
Committee.