The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864, page 139 by Various Authors
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Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided, ... that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.'
Can anything be clearer? And yet how men have contrived to mystify the whole question by vague declamation about the rights of States! As if those rights of States that were meant to be protected, were not carefully guarded by the article itself, and especially by the proviso 'that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate'! As if, too, the rights of the States were everything, the rights of the Nation nothing! It might well be asked, moreover (as, indeed, a discriminating writer in The Evening Post has lately asked), whether the people of the States have no rights that are to be considered in this discussion; whether there are not certain reserved rights of the people that have been violated by many States--rights reserved in the very constitutions of those States, as well as in the Constitution of the United States? But let it be noted, as above intimated, that this fifth article is duly careful to guard the rights of States. Three fourths of the States must concur in the amendment; and in no event may a State be unwillingly deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate, which is the distinguishing mark of the independent equality of all the States in the Union. On the other hand, the rights of the States being thus protected in a manner and degree which we must suppose to have been satisfactory to the men who framed and the States which ratified the Constitution, the article then proceeds to care for the rights of the Nation, by declaring that the amendment duly ratified by three fourths of the States 'shall be valid, as part of the Constitution:' thus binding all the States, the three fourths which have ratified it, and the one