The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LX: “Residents and Voters”

Despite having made a reasonably cogent point about the nature of the federal district and the reason for its existence – lacking in detail though it indeed may have been – one might accordingly have expected Senator Spessard Holland to then yield the floor. He had eulogized his failed poll tax amendment and he had drawn his colleagues’ attention to the motivations of the Framers. What more, in all sincerity, could a Senator possibly desire? Well, in Holland’s case, it seemed, there was at least one last point to make. It came, as it happened, at the end of what turned out to be a rather lengthy discussion. Senators James Eastland, Olin Johnston, and Barry Goldwater – proponents of states’ rights, all – just had to weigh in on Holland’s poll tax amendment, though it had already been defeated. But then, having addressed each of their objections as patiently as one supposes possible, Holland returned to the subject of D.C and its so-called intended purpose. First, he quite accurately observed that the proposed amendment then under consideration – which would have permitted the residents of the District to appoint their own presidential electors – would, if approved, have left the jurisdiction and its residents in almost exactly the opposite position to what the Framers originally intended. Recalling James Madison’s relevant assertions in the text of Federalist No. 43, one would seem to have no choice but to concur with this assessment.

While it was the aim of the Framers, according to Madison, to create an autonomous federal district specifically to ensure that those physically nearest to the seat of government would quite lack any stake in federal affairs – and so would have no call to use their proximity to unduly influence the federal government – they simultaneously had no desire to rob these same individuals of the right to be represented in their own municipal governments. For a time, of course, this intention was reflected in the administrative arrangement of the District itself. While D.C.’s residents had never been represented in federal affairs up through the summer of 1960, they did at least possess various forms of democratic municipal government – in the form of city and village councils – until they were finally all replaced by the Board of Commissioners in 1874. By granting the since completely disenfranchised inhabitants of the District the right to appoint three members of the Electoral College, the amendment then under discussion might accordingly have been described as effectively completing the inversion of the Framer’s intended arrangement that Congress had first began in the aftermath of the Civil War. Was this a particularly meaningful point on Senator Holland’s part? Arguably, it was not.

If Senator Holland had been advocating for the creation of a municipal home rule government in the District – something which the inhabitants thereof were sorely lacking – it might well have been a useful thing to bring up the relevant text of Federalist No. 43 as an encouragement to the assembled Senators. Input into the election of presidents was all well and good, of course, but what the people of D.C. needed far more urgently – as pointed out by certain of Holland’s colleagues – was the ability to shape the policies that more affected their daily lives. But this was not, as aforementioned, what Holland was trying to do. On the contrary, he was of the opinion that granting the District any federal representation was quite probably a mistake, and was using the words of the Framers to help convince his fellow senators of the same. This was not, one might argue, the most noble position to take. Nor, upon consideration, was it really all that logical. The generations of senators and congressmen who had served their various constituents in the almost two hundred years between the ratification of the Constitution and the moment of this meeting of the Senate had already deviated from the stated intentions of the Framers in a whole host of ways both subtle and dramatic. This present discussion, indeed, is a litany of those deviations, not the least of which was the alteration of the method of choosing Senators. Why were these changes acceptable, as far as Senator Holland was concerned, while the change under consideration in the summer of 1960 was not? Why was it seemingly permissible to part from the Framers in some cases but not in this one in particular?

Holland did end up answering these questions, though only indirectly. Continuing to speak on the subject of the District of Columbia and the propriety of granting it federal representation, he went on to assert that the question at hand was actually far more complex than the amendment’s supporters made it out. “No one can pretend for a moment [,]” he said,

That the area of the District of Columbia is comparable, on the question of citizenship of those who live here with, for example, the citizenship and the residents in the State so ably represented by the Senator from South Dakota, where those who live there are residents and voters by a great preponderance, certainly 98 or 99 percent. So one of the improvements of the amendment that comes back from the House is in this very matter. The representation of the District of Columbia in the electoral college is placed much more nearly in accord with the merits of the situation than was the case with the one against which the Senator from Florida voted.

What Holland seemed to mean by this, in essence, was that attempting to grant the residents of the District of Columbia representation even just in the Electoral College was very much complicated by the fact that a relatively small percentage of that selfsame population were both “residents and voters.” And it was, upon consideration, a rather strange phrase to use.

“Residents and voters,” he said. Certainly, there were many people – continue to be many people – who work in DC while actually residing in Virginia and Maryland. And there was also – is also – a significant cohort who do live in DC on a temporary basis – being political staffers or military personal – but who vote absentee in their respective home states. The first group could not reasonably be considered “residents,” of course, though they make daily use of public infrastructure as though they were. And while the second group could not be said to reside anywhere other than the District of Columbia – thus allowing them to be counted among its permanent population for the purpose of assigning Electoral College delegates – their real numbers simple aren’t likely to throw off the resulting apportionment. No, the simple fact of the matter is that most of the people who legally reside in the District – and this was as true in 1960 as it is today – do so on a permanent basis and are not registered to vote absentee in any other state. This bring us, naturally, to the second term that Senator Holland chose to deploy. Referring to the state of South Dakota by way of comparison with D.C., Holland observed of the former that, “those who live there are residents and voters by a great preponderance, certainly 98 or 99 percent.” In a jurisdiction in which, in keeping with congressional fiat, they were no voters, to whom, exactly, was Holland referring? Circa 1960, the ratio of voters to those who lived in the District on a permanent basis was surely something very near to zero percent. This fact, indeed, formed the crux of the discussion then underway in the Senate. For all intents and purposes, D.C. had no resident voters, something which the sponsors of S.J. Res. 39 were endeavoring to correct. So what, then, was Holland talking about? What comparison was he trying to make?

At this stage it would seem prudent to say a work or two about Democratic Senator Spessard Holland. A former Governor of Florida turned long-serving senator, he is perhaps best remembered for first helping to eliminate the poll tax in his home state in the late 1930s and then spending the best part of three decades championing a federal ban on the same while serving in Congress. But while Holland’s commitment to eliminating a patently unjust practice certainly warrants a degree of admiration – particularly given how often his stance against poll taxes brought him into conflict with his fellow Southern Democrats – one ought not to lose sight of where his priorities actually lay. Poll taxes, of course, were a favored tactic by which Southern Democrats in the 19^th and 20^th centuries attempted to keep members of the Black community from voting, specifically by taking advantage of the fact that most Black voters were also the victims of systemic economic discrimination. Being unable to easily afford a registration fee of one or two dollars – and being required to present a receipt of payment in order to cast a vote – Black residents of various Southern states were thus prevented from exercising any influence over the governments to which they were subject in such a way that did not run afoul of the explicit text of the 14^th Amendment. Holland’s opposition to this practice was certainly noteworthy in its day, owing to his status as both a Southerner and a Democrat. But the man did not stake out this position out of any sympathy for the Black community.

Holland, by his own admission, saw the poll tax primarily as a form of discrimination against poor whites, as a tool of political corruption, and as a barrier to voter turnout. Working-class Floridians, he said – and, by extensions, working-class Americans – should not have been prohibited from taking part in the electoral process simply because they could not spare the money to pay the necessary fees. Nor was it particularly sensible, he continued, to create and maintain what was essentially a ready-made system by which wealthy politicians, their backers, or those who wished to procure political influence could simply buy the votes of the otherwise disenfranchised poor by simply paying their poll taxes and directing their support a certain way. Democracy, in the American tradition, was not supposed to be the sole possession of the well-to-do or the plaything of certain well-heeled special interests, but rather the means by which the American people at large – regardless of their level of individual prosperity – could make known their will in the form of the public servants that they chose and the policies that they supported. Within this understanding of electoralism – to which Holland seemed very much to subscribe – the more people that could vote and did vote, the healthier and more legitimate the resulting government. Poll taxes stood in the way of this outcome and should accordingly have been done away with.

None of this is to say, mind you, that Senator Holland believed in the moral equality of all Americans. Indeed, several aspects of his public record would seem to indicate that quite the opposite was true. In 1954, for example, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Holland was one of many Southerners then serving in Congress who responded by claiming that the Court had ruled mistakenly and that he and his colleagues would resist the dismantling of segregated education with every power at their disposal. This culminated in the drafting and release of the “Southern Manifesto” in 1956, to which Holland affixed his signature. For reference, the document in question famously declared of the Brown v. Board decision that,

This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.

It bears noting that this statement seeking to declare that the Supreme Court’s ruling was set to disrupt the so-called “amicable relations” that had “been created through 90 years of patient effort” between the white and Black communities was published just one year after the well-publicized lynching death of a Black youth named Emmett Till (1941-1955) in rural Mississippi. It also came a mere three years after several thousand white rioters laid siege to an apartment building in Cicero, Illinois because it contained a single Black family and just a decade after a series of race riots in the West Lawn neighborhood of Chicago, the purpose of which was to prevent Black veterans from settling in and amongst their white counterparts. In the years that followed, Holland also (unsurprisingly) came out against the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Of the first of these, which was famously filibustered by Southern Democrats, he declared, “We'll stand up and fight as long as we can.”

            Bearing all of this in mind, Senator Holland’s staunch opposition to the poll tax ought not to be misconstrued as any kind of liberal gesture on his part towards the advancement of civil rights or racial equality in the United States of America. Certainly, he was aware of the fact that the poll tax had originally been created for the purpose of depriving Black voters of the ability to cast a ballot. And he was also aware that its repeal would likely to lead to an increase in Black political participation. But it wasn’t as though poll taxes were all that kept Black voting rates down across the America South. Prejudicial registration policies, literacy tests, and the ever-present threat of violence more than accounted for their fair share of voter suppression. From Holland’s perspective, therefore, while banning poll taxes on the national level would almost certainly lead to more Black people casting ballots in states where decades of policymaking had intended to make such a thing next to impossible, a number of mechanisms would remain in place – legal or otherwise – to ensure that white majority control was not meaningfully threatened. Indeed, the elimination of the poll tax might actually contribute to this outcome. While low-income Black voters would still be disinclined to jump through procedural hurtles while also risking physical assault just to cast a ballot, low-income white voters would now be free to reinforce the existing power structure to an even greater degree.

            So what did Holland really mean, then, when he unfavorably compared the proportion of resident voters in South Dakota – “certainly 98 or 99 percent” of the total population, he reckoned – to that which he thought likely to be found in the District of Columbia? Given the comments he had previously made, and would go on to make, concerning topics like desegregation and civil rights, it would seem more than likely his base assumption was that those who would actually be able to vote in D.C. were bound to account for a relatively small portion of the population. Congress, after all, would remain the paramount authority in the District even if the residents thereof were granted the ability to vote in presidential elections. Specifically, power would remain in the hands of the House and Senate Committees on the District of Columbia. And since history had frequently shown the chairmanship of said bodies to devolve upon such unrepentant racists and hatemongers as Mississippi Senator Theodore G. Bilbo (1877-1947) and South Carolina Congressman John L. McMillan (1898-1979), one struggles to imagine the creation of an electoral regime that made a point of supporting and encouraging the full participation of the District’s majority Black population. On the contrary, such men would doubtless make a point of ensuring that it was no easier for a Black person to cast a ballot in D.C. than it was in their home states. And the result, of course, would be as Holland predicted. That is, the number of electors granted to the District of Columbia in proportion to its population would far exceed the total that the number of registered voters would otherwise indicate. That the relevant authorities in the House had sought to adjust this ratio – from allowing the District to choose as many electors as its population warranted to allowing it to choose no more than the least populous state – accordingly suited Senator Holland just fine, and was one of the key reasons why he was even mildly inclined to support the amendment then under discussion.

            Notwithstanding the evident ambivalence of men like Spessard Holland, the outright hostility of men like Joel Broyhill, and the racial animus, barely concealed, that animated them both, Congress did ultimately approve the amendment to the Constitution in question. On June 16^th, once Holland had had his say, a little more hemming and hawing followed, and then the yeas and nays were finally called. In the end, as stated in the Congressional Record, the thing was affirmed by a simple voice vote. Apparently, after having debated the matter for what at that point amounted to several months, a large enough majority of the assembled senators were content to vote in favor that the final result was not reasonably in doubt. And really, under the circumstances, this is not such a surprise. While the disposition of the District of Columbia and the wellbeing of its inhabitants were clearly topics about which certain members of Congress harbored particularly strong feelings – from Case and Keating’s passionate sympathy to Broyhill’s cynical self-interest and Holland’s reflexive bigotry – the passage of the original measure through the meatgrinder of the legislative process had rendered it digestible enough for even the most sensitive of palates.

The original sponsors of S.J. Res. 39 – Clarence Case, Kenneth Keating, and J. Glenn Beall – had been forced to watch as their attempt to fully enfranchise the District’s citizens was reduced to a pale shadow of its former self, to be sure. But at least they succeeded in granting them some voice in the nation’s political affairs. And while the likes of Congressman Broyhill had shown no objection to the text of the original resolution – “The right to vote for President and Vice President [,]” he said, “does not infringe on the rights of the other people of this great Nation. If we granted the people of the District of Columbia representation in the House and Senate, it would not infringe on the rights of the other people of this Nation” – his interests were nevertheless served by its having been cut down in committee. An ardent opponent of home rule in D.C. and a racist and a segregationist who did not believe in Black equality, it suited Broyhill just fine, regardless of what he might have said to the contrary, to extend political rights to the District’s inhabitants haltingly, if at all. Even Spessard Holland, who had just been forced to witness yet another defeat on the part of his anti-poll tax crusade, was able to make peace with the resolution in question. While he remained uncertain – for what it was worth – whether the Framers would have approved, and while he yet maintained that the District of Columbia presented potential reformers with a more complicated problem than they tended to let on, he was satisfied enough with the efforts of the House to moderate the original proposal to withhold his opposition and allow the final resolution to pass. And so, much reduced, it did indeed pass.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LIX: “The Position They Stated At That Time”

    At around the time that the conversation in the Senate surrounding what remained of S.J. Res. 39 seemed to be winding down, the senior senator from Florida, one Spessard Holland, curiously decided to try to refocus the discussion on the essential logic underpinning the very existence of the District of Columbia. Holland, as mentioned previously, had sponsored one of the clauses of the original draft of S.J. Res. 39 – namely, that which proposed to make poll taxes illegal – and in many ways it was only natural that he should have been compelled to speak on the subject of its subsequent mutilation by the House. And this he did, remarking both upon his sense of disappointment as well as his conviction to keep pursuing the same goal. But then, for whatever reason, Senator Holland kept talking. “I wish to make it very clear that I am not entirely sold on the amendment which is before the Senate, although I propose to vote for it [,]” he said.

The reason why I am not entirely sold on it was stated by the Founding Fathers, and I think that there is a grave question as to whether the position they stated at that time is not yet true. That position was that, based upon the experience they had had in other cities, each lying in a State of the Union where the Capital of the young United States of America had been for a time located, they felt that it was sounder to have the Capital in an area where it could be insulated from the continued pressure of an electorate and of a citizenry which, clothed with all of the powers of an electorate elsewhere, would be pressing for local improvements, pressing for local measures, pressing for construction of buildings, and for other measures not justified by the state of the economics in the Nation, and otherwise resorting to pressure which would be more acutely felt by Senators and Representatives of that young Government because of the fact that they were surrounded by the citizens of the site of the Capital.

Given Holland’s status as a Southern Democrat, a degree of opposition on his part might have been expected to any measure that threated to empower the majority Black population of the District of Columbia. And yet, contrary to the reasoning deployed by the likes of Congressman Broyhill – who believed that D.C.’s inhabitants simply had less claim to their home city than did the combined citizens of the United States – Holland purported to approach the issue from the perspective of the Founders. The District of Columbia had been placed under the auspices of Congress for a very specific reason, he sought to remind his fellow lawmakers, and they would all of them do well to remember exactly what that reason was.

    Holland’s argument, in essence, was the same as that offered by James Madison in the aforementioned Federalist No. 43. That is, in an effort to ensure that Congress did not ultimately fall under the sway of the government of whichever state was chosen to act as its host, it was only sensible to carve out a small slice of territory within which Congress would perpetually exercise paramount authority. The fear was, as Holland put it, that the inhabitants of whichever state Congress chose to call home, “Clothed with all of the powers of an electorate elsewhere, would be pressing for local improvements, pressing for local measures, pressing for construction of buildings, and for other measures not justified by the state of the economics in the Nation [.]” Exactly how they might set about applying this pressure, Holland did not say. Nor did he make it entirely clear why Congress would end up being the recipient of popular agitation over various local concerns rather than the relevant state legislature. Such vagueness notwithstanding, however, one can discern a hypothetical scenario fitting this basic description. If, in response to a public outcry in favor of infrastructure funding, the government of the state in which Congress made its home then pointed to Congress in turn as the proper source of such improvements – claiming that the least the national government could do was invest in the state that had agreed to host it – it surely wouldn’t be very long before public ire became focused on the latter. And if that same state government then threatened to start taxing Congress in order to secure compliance? The possibilities for great mischief would indeed seem to be rather obvious.

    Hypotheticals, to his credit, were not all that Holland had to offer. The Framers, he said, had come to believe the creation of an autonomous federal district to be essential, “Based upon the experience they had had in other cities, each lying in a State of the Union where the Capital of the young United States of America had been for a time located [.]” And while he elaborated upon this claim no further, his point is nevertheless well taken. Prior to settling permanently in the District of Columbia in 1801, the national government of the United States – in its various provisional and ultimately transitory forms – had been headquartered in a number of cities over the course of the 1780s and 1790s. Philadelphia had been its original home, of course, and enjoyed the longest association with the same, being the site of both the First Continental Congress (September-October, 1774) and the succeeding Second Continental Congress (May 1775-March, 1781), the Congress of the Confederation (March, 1781-November, 1783), and the current United States Congress (December, 1790-May 1800). But in and amongst these various sojourns in the City of Brotherly Love, Congress also met in a number of other locations in various other states. Between December, 1776 and February, 1777, for example, the assembled delegates convened in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. In the latter year, they then met for one day (September 27^th, 1777) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania before spending the next eight months (September, 1777-June, 1778) in nearby York. For a four-month period in 1783, Congress next met in Princeton, New Jersey, and for another eight months after that, it met in Annapolis, Maryland. This was followed by a month and a half period in the late fall of 1784 when it called Trenton, New Jersey, its home. And finally, for the better part of six years between January of 1785 and December of 1790 – the longest period of residency in any one location since last leaving Philadelphia in June of 1783 – the United States government was firmly headquartered the City of New York.

    Bearing all of this in mind, at least a part of Holland’s claim would seem to check out. That is, over the course of the earliest years of its existence, the location of the capital of the United States of America did indeed vary quite significantly, lending the Framers a fair bit of experience in terms of the nature of the relationship between the apparatus of the national government and whichever state happened to be its host. But was this experience purely negative in its character and its outcomes? Did the Framers come to believe that creating an autonomous federal district was essential because in every instance in which Congress was hosted by another state, the result was mutual antagonism and disaster? Well, no, in point of fact, though the full truth is somewhat…complicated. In most cases, the residency of the United States government in any given city during the period in question was relatively brief and never intended to be permanent. In the 1770s, this was almost exclusively due to the ongoing Revolutionary War. As British forces first threatened Philadelphia – prompting the initial relocation to Baltimore in December of 1776 – and then captured the city and occupied it – resulting in the second relocation in September of 1777 – Congress found itself on the run and seeking shelter wherever it could find it. And for most of the 1780s, it was quite simply the case that the membership of Congress could not agree where precisely to locate the seat of national power. Southerners demanded a Southern capital, Northerners would only tolerate a Northern capital, and New York City was finally settled upon as a tolerable – if temporary – solution. Congress did remain in some of these locations for relatively lengthy intervals – almost nine months each in York and Annapolis and almost a full six years in the City of New York – but its departure was never due to a souring of local relations. The national government, that is, did not spend so many years in constant transit because it just couldn’t get along with the various state governments that played its host. The exception being, of course, the government of Pennsylvania.

    It was quite probably because the City of Philadelphia had had such a long and intimate relationship with Congress that the relationship between the embryonic national government and that of the state of Pennsylvania eventually become so frayed by the beginning of the 1780s. Prior to 1799, recall, when the mantle was taken up by the aforementioned City of Lancaster, Philadelphia was also the capital of Pennsylvania itself. Having to thus share the city with the ad hoc national government of the nascent United States of America, the political class in the Keystone State accordingly found themselves in a bit of a spot. Because Congress had made the capital city of Pennsylvania its home, said city inevitably became the target of concerted British military attention. Accordingly, when the British navy blockaded the entrance of the Delaware River while attempting to move troops through southern New Jersey near the end of 1776, nearly half the population fled and Congress relocated to Baltimore. Where this not disastrous enough – both for the state of the local economy and for the ability of the Pennsylvania government to transact its own business – the return of Congress to Philadelphia in March of 1777 prompted a second British offensive which resulted in the capture and occupation of the city by the end of September. Over the course of the following nine months, Philadelphia and its remaining inhabitants – some fifteen thousand in total – suffered through repeated food shortages and price fluctuations as winter set in and basic supplies became increasingly scarce, along with round after round of theft and looting on the part of garrisoned British soldiers with too little to eat and too much free time. By June of 1778, when the British finally departed, the city was in a sorry state, significantly damaged in terms of public infrastructure and private property alike. Congress chose to return, of course, Philadelphia being its birthplace as well as the birthplace of the Revolution itself. But the next time it left the city, British bayonets would have nothing to do with it.

    By June of 1783, a great deal had occurred to change the nature of the relationship between the national government as embodied by Congress and those of the various states. The ratification of the Articles of Confederation in February of 1781 had established a fairly strict differentiation between the authority of Congress and the authority of the various states which left the former with little in the way of practical power. Congress could requisition funds from the states but had no means of enforcing collection. Congress could command the combines armed forces of the states but only during a state of war. In the midst of an ongoing conflict with Great Britain, this made for a reasonably functional arrangement. The governments of the various states understood the value to their collective war effort of allowing Congress to act as a coordinating body and allowed it – if sometimes grudgingly – to make military and financial decisions on their behalf. With the war’s looming conclusion, however, circa 1783, this sense of permissiveness swiftly evaporated as, absent a common threat to their existence, the states shifted their focus to guarding their respective sovereignties. Congress, in consequence, very swiftly lost a great deal of the agency to which certain of its members had grown accustomed during the late conflict with Britain. Not only was the national government no longer able to cajole the states into filling its coffers by invoking the threat of British conquest and repression, but the increasingly effective army which it had but lately commanded was on the brink of ceasing to exist. This all made for a somewhat tenuous situation, particularly as Congress proved itself repeatedly incapable of fulfilling certain of the responsibilities which it had taken on during the recent war. Enter, in June of 1783, the City of Philadelphia and the events of the so-called “Pennsylvania Mutiny.”

    While, as of the summer of 1783, the war between Great Britain and the breakaway United States had not yet come to a formal conclusion – the Treaty of Paris not being signed until September and not being ratified until the following January – active hostilities had, by that time, more or less come to an end. The Franco-American victory at the Battle of Yorktown (1781) marked the end of major British military operations in the North American theater, and while the years that followed were marked by the occasional minor skirmish – the Battle of Blue Licks, for example, or the Battle of the Combahee River, both fought in August of 1782 – most of the Continental Army was allowed to lapse into inactivity. The result – understandable in hindsight – was something of a disaster in the making. Here were hundreds of soldiers garrisoned throughout the United States, many of whom had fought and suffered for years under the command of Congress, being told to stand down by a government which had promised to pay them for their service but now found itself unable to raise the necessary funds. The states had no particular interest in taking up the resulting debt, of course. Many of them had already collected more than their fair share of liabilities during the war and were in many cases struggling just to pay off their own militiamen. And while, for the most part, the loyalty which the average soldier felt towards the leadership of the Continental Army – and particularly towards its Commander-in-Chief, one George Washington – kept the discontent which had begun to simmer in the ranks from boiling over into outright hostility, the likes of General Washington could not be everywhere at once. So it was, on June 17^th, 1783, that a group of disaffected Continentals stationed in Philadelphia sent a message to Congress asking for the pay that they were owed and threatening drastic action if they were refused.

    At first, Congress opted to ignore this initial demand. Perhaps its members – a group which at the time included the likes of Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson – felt that the soldiers, however disgruntled, were nevertheless unlikely to turn against the government for which they had so recently risked their lives. And for a time, at least, this seemed to be the case. Two days went by without a military uprising taking place. But then, on the second day, distressing news reached Philadelphia. A group of about eighty additional soldiers had just left their barracks at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, travelled the sixty miles between that city and Philadelphia, and joined with the local garrison to seize control of the nearby weapons depot. The following day, on June 20^th, several hundred of these soldiers descended on the Pennsylvania State House while Congress was in session. Their demand, as before, was that they be paid what they were owed and they refused to allow for an adjournment until the assembled delegates acquiesced. Hamilton, a former Continental himself, was ultimately able to convince the assembled mutineers to stand down for the moment and allow Congress to add the topic of military back pay to its agenda for the following day’s session. But while this seemed to point that a peaceful solution was in the offing, certain members of the national legislature evidently had other ideas.

    Meeting in secret, Hamilton and small committee of fellow delegates subsequently drafted a request to the Pennsylvania Executive Council – then the state’s collective executive body – asking for the state militia to step in and deal with the rebellious soldiers. The next day, June 21^st, the committee then met in person with the Executive Council and once more made their request for active protection. In response, Council President John Dickinson (1732-1808) promised to consult with the militia leadership and return on the 22^nd with a response. That response, when it finally came, was an unambiguous refusal. Congress, its members’ backs now against the wall, was accordingly forced to do as it had threated and fled the city for more welcoming environs in New Jersey. Two days later, having received word of the incident, George Washington dispatched a force of some fifteen hundred troops to dispel the mutiny and arrest its leaders. Congress, as aforementioned, would never again face as serious a threat to its authority, though it would likewise decline to return to Philadelphia for a further seven years. And by that time, its authority – under the auspices of the newly-ratified Constitution – would be significantly enhanced far beyond what the Articles of Confederation ever allowed.

    As to the reasons that the Pennsylvania government ultimately declined to come to the assistance of Congress, the likeliest answer would seem to be a combination of elements. There was, of course, the simple fact that Pennsylvania state militiamen, regardless of their orders, were as likely to sympathize with the Continental Army mutineers as to attempt their arrest. All throughout the war between the United States and Great Britain, state militia units had fought alongside formations of the newly created Continental Army. Indeed, to the extent that militia units were often placed under the command of Continental Army officers, the two frequently acted as though they were part and parcel of the same force. In consequence, having thus shared the same hardships and savored the same triumphs, it would have been only natural, circa 1783, for members of any given state militia detachment to look upon their Continental counterparts as comrades-in-arms. As the entire nation was at that moment also struggling under the weight of the debts that had been accumulated during the late war, there would accordingly seem to have been ample reason for the Pennsylvania Militia to refuse to turn their weapons against soldiers of the Continental Army. Having been promised reasonable pay for the suffering they’d been made to endure – suffering which, as noted above, many militiamen had shared in – why shouldn’t they have agitated for the compensation they had earned?

    This question, no doubt, at least passed through the mind of the President of the Executive Council, the aforementioned John Dickinson. Having served, during the Revolutionary War, as an both an officer in the Pennsylvania Militia and a private in the Delaware Militia, Dickinson almost certainly had a better idea than many of his fellow statesmen of the privation and the hardship involved in soldiering in the late 18^th century. In consequence, when asked to turn the Pennsylvania militia upon a group of Continental Army personnel whose only crime was to insist that they be paid the wages that they were promised for their service, it is little wonder that Dickinson did not acquiesce on the spot. Alexander Hamilton may have been able to speak with firsthand knowledge of the physical and emotional toll of battle – a fact which makes his apparent lack of sympathy for the mutineers all the more alarming – but men like James Wilson, and James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson could not. And while those who had indeed served in either the Continental Army or in the militia of their home state evidently found it in themselves to reconcile whatever sympathy they might have felt with the sense of frustration that doubtless accompanied being waylaid by a pack of disgruntled soldiers, Dickinson was evidently in a position to respond coolly and thoughtfully. His Quaker upbringing, to be sure, would not permit him to resort to violence at the first suggestion of conflict. But his personal experiences in the military was more likely what made him respond to cries of privation from soldiers with sympathy and to refuse the pleas of Congress when it directed violence against the same. 

    It is also worth recalling, when attempting to explain the ambivalence displayed by the government of Pennsylvania during the events of the Philadelphia Mutiny, that the relationship between that state and the government of the American republic did not at that point have much cause to be particularly warm. As discussed above, Philadelphia – then also the capital of Pennsylvania itself – had twice suffered directly for having played host to Congress. First, in 1776, its citizens had been moved to flee in fear that a British invasion was imminent. And then, in 1777, when a British invasion did finally take place, the city spent the next nine months under enemy occupation. But while Congress eventually returned following the British evacuation in the summer of 1778, one cannot help but imagine that it was not welcomed back with the utmost of warmth. The war was still ongoing, the threat of British attack still very much extant. What did Pennsylvania receive in exchange for hosting Congress? What did the state government gain for thus exposing its own seat of power to the depredations of British soldiers? Nothing, it would seem, but whatever prestige it might have thought to claim. Congress could not reward the state by paying for new roads or better sewars in the City of Philadelphia. Congress had not the means to raise the funds for such improvements. Nor could it claim that serving as the seat of the national government would make Philadelphia, de facto, the most well-guarded city in America. To the contrary, experience had shown that exactly the opposite was true. When it became clear, therefore, in the summer of 1783 that Congress was under threat from a cohort of mutinous soldiers intent on collecting their promised pay, what reason had the government of the state of Pennsylvania to react in any manner beyond indifference? Thus far, hosting Congress had garnered them little more than suffering while the promise of being rid of Congress carried the prospect of peace and freedom. Peace, at least, compared to being the repeated target of enemy invasion. And freedom, at least, from becoming a permanent accessory to Congress’s various misfortunes. 

    Whatever the reason for it, of course, the basic circumstances of the mutiny are clear. In June of 1783, a state government – in the form of the Pennsylvania Executive Council – flatly refused a request for aid from Congress in the midst of a burgeoning mutiny by federal soldiers. Granted, this was not exactly the kind of scenario that Senator Holland would go on to describe as having motivated the Framers to advocate for the creation of a federal district. Holland spoke of “pressure” being exerted upon the national government chiefly as a result of the agitations of the local populace. The events of the Pennsylvania Mutiny involved something else altogether. One can fairly see, however, the manner in which such an incident could have brought about the same outcome. Lacking any control over either the government of the City of Philadelphia or the state militia of Pennsylvania – and faced with a hostile contingent of Continental Army soldiers no longer interested in obeying their orders – Congress was quite at a loss to defend itself once presented with a serious threat. During the late war with Great Britain, the fledgling national government had been able to depend on foreign loans and requisitions from the states to pay off its various military responsibilities. And in its capacity as a body of military coordination and foreign diplomacy, Congress had amply demonstrated its usefulness to the various states. But by the summer of 1783, this usefulness had more or less evaporated. The states, Pennsylvania included, had less reason to defend Congress than at any point since the American republic had declared its independence from the British Empire. And Congress, now without the means to easily command the loyalty of the various states or raise the funds necessary to keep the Continental Army from effectively turning to banditry, was in as vulnerable a position as it had ever been during the war. It is little wonder, then, after having been essentially chased out of Philadelphia at the behest of embittered American soldiers and a seemingly ambivalent state government, that certain members of Congress began to develop certain specific ideas about how the national government might best secure its continued existence.

    Bearing all of this in mind, it might be fair to say that Senator Holland did seem to have a point. The relevant history did not play out precisely as he described it, but Congress had indeed once suffered as a result of relying on a state to act as its host. And doubtless in large part as a result of this specific incident, certain members of the Founding Generation had indeed been moved to push for the later creation of an autonomous federal district. Was something like the Pennsylvania Mutiny at all likely to recur at the time that Holland was speaking in the summer of 1960? That is, was the rationale which led directly to the creation of the District of Columbia still relevant at the far end of the 20^th century? This is, in truth, a rather difficult question to answer. Seemingly, one must first conjure a hypothetical scenario in which, though the Constitution was indeed ratified in 1787, a federal district was not created and the seat of government remained entirely within the jurisdiction of one of the states. Flashing forward from that point once more to the summer of 1960 – at which point Congress was in session in New York, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore, or wherever – was it at all likely that members of the United States Armed Forces would turn against Congress and attempt to hold it members hostage in an attempt to secure their unpaid wages? All else being equal, it really rather doesn’t. Circa 1960, the United States Government had possession of more than enough funding sources to keep the soldiers in its employ paid. Nor does it seem particularly likely that, faced with an unforthcoming paymaster in the form of the United States Government, members of the armed forces would decide that holding Congress hostage was the best way to secure what they were owed. Broadly speaking, American servicemen at the far end of the 20^th century tended not to think like that.

    But maybe this is the wrong way to go about answering the question entirely. Generally speaking, what the Framers were responding to – what they were attempting to counter in the future, essentially – was not necessarily another mutiny by federal soldiers so much as any situation in which the national government was under threat and found itself bereft of assistance from the states. Another uprising by unpaid soldiers in federal service would fit the bill, to be sure. But so would a natural disaster – a flash flood, say, or an ice storm – which required more personnel to deal with than the national government could muster on its own authority and on short notice. And so, too, would an insurrection of a more…popular nature. Imagine that the District of Columbia was never created and that the United States capital ended up in, say, Baltimore, Maryland, where it had met previously in the 1770s. Now imagine, as was the case in fact, that the second half of the 1960s witnessed a rising tide of liberalism among the dominant wing of the Democratic Party. Senators and congressmen begin sponsoring increasingly progressive pieces of civil rights legislation, the result of which is a series of ultimately failed filibusters and the slow but steady erosion of the power of the segregationist South. What if, in the midst of all of this, a group of embittered segregationists who had come to fear that their representatives in Congress were on the cusp of giving in, decided to stage an intervention in order prevent this from happening?

    Organized, in large part, by existing groups like the KKK or the Citizens’ Councils of America, these individuals gather firearms, organize transportation, and then finally launch their attack. Congress, then in session, is caught completely off guard by the sudden appearance of several hundred armed men on the grounds of the Capitol, and naturally responds by reaching out to the city police. But while the Baltimore PD responds as best as they are able, it soon becomes clear that the insurrectionists, having occupied the building, now possess the upper hand. As the federal government is then in the process of summoning the necessary military personnel, a request is made to the government of the State of Maryland. “Please,” says the President, “call out the National Guard. This may end up getting worse before it gets better.” Now just imagine one last, crucial detail. Imagine that the government of Maryland was then controlled by segregationists. In answer to the call for assistance, the Governor of Maryland simply says, “no.”

    Not that simply, of course; he makes some excuse having to do with federalism and how the crisis at hand has little all to do with Maryland. But the end result is the same no matter what the man says: the Maryland National Guard will not be called out. The business of Congress is accordingly halted until such federal forces can be assembled as to finally take the Capitol back. Days go by, and while the insurrectionists are eventually thwarted, arrested, and even charged with treason, their actions have nevertheless wrought the desired effect. Those few segregationist Senators who were on the cusp of voting for cloture are now so terrified by what might happen to them if they do that they make a show of reaffirming their prior positions. Nothing will ever shift them from upholding the rights of the states, they say, particularly now that the government of Maryland has made it clear where it stands. The filibuster thus continues, the bill under discussion is eventually withdrawn, and the national campaign for civil rights completely loses all momentum. The relationship between the federal government and that of Maryland is thoroughly soured, of course, and in the decades to come it recovers only gradually. And as to calls to move to the nation’s capital to more friendly environs? Think of the cost, the lost time, the lost work. Best to remain in Baltimore for at least the foreseeable future. If more incidents like this one occur, perhaps then it will be worth considering.

    This may very well be a somewhat fanciful scenario. Several independent variables would need to align in order for it to have taken place, of course, but stranger things have happened over the course of American history. And the central point remains no matter how unlikely the specific hypothetical. As it currently exists – and as it existed in 1960 – the District of Columbia possesses its own reserve military force in the form of the D.C. National Guard. Numbering, at present, just under thirty-five hundred men and women, they may be called into service by either the President or by Congress and may be tasked with supplementing the efforts of the D.C. Metro Police Department in such cases as when the latter proves insufficient to the needs of the occasion. Under the circumstances described above – an attempted insurrection by an ad hoc popular militia intent on disrupting the work of Congress – the ability of the federal government to call on the D.C. National Guard would seem to conform exactly to what the Framers claimed to intend. Rather than depend on the cooperation of the relevant state government for protection from such popular agitation – an arrangement which, as aforementioned, may not necessarily yield particularly desirable results – the national government has at its disposal the tools that it needs in order to ensure that its officers are not unduly influenced and that it may conduct its business as normal at all times.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LVIII: “The Present Un-American Condition”

    Senator Clarence Case of South Dakota was among the first to speak meaningfully on the subject of Senate Joint Resolution 39, specifically to express his disappointment at how the measure had fared in the lower house and how little time remained to make further modifications. “I, too, regret the dropping of the other two proposals in the triple-pronged constitutional amendment as it passed the Senate,” he said, echoing those of his colleagues who had already expressed their dissatisfaction.

However, we are approaching the end of the session, and we all recognize the practical situation which exists. I regret particularly the dropping of the provision for a Delegate in the House of Representatives. However, so far as the Senator from South Dakota is concerned, I recognized that in that particular matter, since the House of Representatives itself was concerned with it, we should respect their wishes in that particular.

One is given to wonder the extent to which this latter remark was an uncalled-for attempt at graciousness on Case’s part. If the present session of Congress was indeed nearing its end, this was no doubt in keeping with the intentions of those who desired to reduce S.J. Res. 39 to little more than a symbolic gesture.

    As originally dispatched to the House from the Senate, the relevant initiative would have granted D.C. meaningful representation in the halls of Congress and vastly expanded the franchise to include those of severely limited financial means. Granted, the individual ultimately elected to represent the District in the House would not, as a given, have had the right to a vote. But they would at least have been in a position to speak on behalf of their fellow D.C. residents in the only decision-making body to which that community could lay claim. As the majority of sitting House members were unwilling to permit this to occur, however, they instead sought to engineer an outcome more to their liking by simultaneously eliminating the resolution’s most significant provisions and then withholding their input until such time had passed as to make another round of reconciliation impossible. Evidently unwilling to permit the relevant senators to make their case in full, they accordingly changed the terms of the discussion to something very much like an ultimatum. That is, the choice afforded to the Senate was reduced down to either approving what was left of S.J. Res. 39 – which proposed to do nothing more that permit the inhabitants of the District of Columbia to appoint presidential electors – or letting the whole initiative lapse. Bearing in mind the impassioned plea made some months earlier by Senator Keating and Senator Case for the final erasure of the “blot” that was the continued disenfranchisement of the District of Columbia, Case’s admission that he, “Recognized that in that particular matter, since the House of Representatives itself was concerned with it, we should respect their wishes in that particular” would accordingly seem likely to have been more than a little disingenuous. Or at the very least, if sincere, it would seem likely to have been somewhat forced. Knowing full well that he and his colleagues in the Senate would have to continue working with the House on other matters in the future, Case doubtless did his best to put as positive a spin on the matter as he could.

    It was at this point – perhaps unsurprisingly, given how late into the session the whole affair was taking place – that things got…interesting. After Jennings Randolph of West Virginia (1902-1998) rose to make the point that, “The platforms of both major parties have spoken out again and again affirmatively for this desirable ideal. I should like to leave the thought – and I know it is shared by Senators who believe as we who are speaking tonight believe – that this is not a partisan issue in any sense [,]” Senator Case opted to respond in such a way as to expand upon the notion that party affiliation was not necessarily relevant to the issue at hand. The reason, he explained, that certain members of Congress took a particular interest in the goings-on of the District of Columbia was not just an outgrowth of either partisan policy or physical proximity. Yes, it was the case that the Democratic Party, since the creation of the New Deal Coalition in the 1930s, had increasingly become the party of civil rights and the expansion of the franchise. And yes, it was true that people like the aforementioned Joel Broyhill, due to the fact that many of their constituents worked in the District, had a vested interest in ensuring that the nation’s capital was livable and well-maintained. But as often, Case affirmed, senators and congressmen grew to regard the well-being of D.C. and its inhabitants as being of personal interest to themselves simply because of their service on the relevant congressional committees. Case himself was one such member, having served as the chairmen of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia from 1953 to 1955. Randolph was another, having chaired the House Committee on the District of Columbia from 1939 to 1947. And another, spoken of reverently by Case, was a West Virginia senator by the name of Matthew Mansfield Neely (1974-1958).

    Though Neely had died some two years prior – indeed, Randolph had been elected to serve out what remained of his final term in office – even a brief survey of his career would seem to more than justify his admiring mention by Case. Not only had Neely, a native of West Virginia, represented that state in both houses of Congress for a combined total of thirty-five years between 1913 and his death in 1958, but he had also been elected governor of the same for a four-year term beginning in 1941. And while his status, particularly in his early career, as an avowed Wilsonian Democrat would otherwise indicate that his politics roughly amounted to a combination of economic liberalism and unswerving support for segregation, in actual fact Neely was one of the most consistently progressive members of the Senate throughout his tenure in office. In the 1930s, during his second Senate term, he sponsored anti-lynching legislation at a time when many of his fellow Southern Democrats were still proudly touting their affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1940s, at the height of the New Deal Coalition’s power, he positioned himself as an ardent champion of both organized labor and civil rights. And in the 1950s, after returning to the Senate for the final time and being assigned to chair the Committee on the District of Columbia, he accordingly became the preeminent spokesman for home rule in the District. Though a Democrat and a Southerner, his position was clear and unambiguous: at a time when Washington was on the cusp of becoming the nation’s first and only major city with a majority Black population, it was imperative that Congress turn over control to the inhabitants thereof.

    Neely himself did not live to see this particular goal accomplished, of course. But his example would seem to have been keenly felt by the likes of fellow Senators Case, Randolph, Keating, and Beall. Though none of them, materially speaking, had the least investment in what transpired in the District of Columbia, Neely had shown them – and their service on the relevant congressional committees had surely served to affirm – that the nation’s capital was no more the plaything of Congress than were the millions of otherwise disenfranchised and disadvantaged Americans who relied on the federal government to define the nature and extent of the opportunities afforded to them as citizens. The result was arguably just as Randolph had described it. Though Keating, Case, and Beall were all Republicans while Randolph was a Democrat, they were nevertheless all united in their common advocacy for the enfranchisement of the District of Columbia. Some members of Congress, it was true, wished to limit the extent to which this enfranchisement was accomplished. But this position, likewise, was not necessarily tied to partisan affiliation. Many a Southern Democrat, for reasons of purest racial animus, had reason to believe that granting too much self-government to the District was a mistake. But for that matter, so did Joel Broyhill, a lifelong Republican who nevertheless believed wholeheartedly in segregation and in maintaining congressional control over D.C. The relevant divide, it seemed, was not political or ideological so much as regional, cultural, or personal. Some people, because of where they grew up or the nature of their education, simply didn’t believe that vesting the administration of the nation’s capital in the hands of its majority Black inhabitants was particularly wise. And just so, certain other people, because of how they were raised or their experiences in public service, had come to the unshakeable conclusion that justice could only be served by treating the inhabitants of the District of Columbia the same as every other community of American citizens.

    Having initially allowed his colleague, Senator Case, to take the lead in expressing the disappointment felt by the cosponsors of S.J. Res. 39 at its butchering by the House, Senator Keating at length decided to lend his own voice to what was fast becoming a kind of legislative eulogy. “This proposed constitutional amendment [,]” he said,

Should restore to the people of the District of Columbia some measure – but certainly not a full measure – of democracy. The amendment certainly represents an advance over the present un-American condition imposed on the residents of the Nation's Capital, but it still falls far short of what I feel we should do.

Case had already said as much himself, of course, but this turned out to be only the beginning of what Keating desired to express. Because whereas Case was quite gracious in his evaluation of the resolution’s fate, Keating was positively accusatory. “Under these circumstances,” he continued,

Although I shall support the joint resolution, I must express my concern because of the fact that this historic step in the development of our democratic institutions has been marred by the “take it or leave it” attitude with which this limited amendment has been presented to us. As is so often true when District of Columbia problems are before us, we have relegated this important measure to consideration during the twilight hours of the day, in the twilight weeks of the session.

This lament was arguably rendered all the more poignant by the fact that Keating was admitting defeat in the same breath that he pointed the finger of blame. “I shall support the joint resolution,” he said, in spite of the “‘take it or leave it” attitude with which the limited amendment had been presented to us.” But while the vandals in the House had evidently succeeded in their attempt to force the sponsors of S.J. Res. 39 to accept far less than total victory, Keating was not about to let them walk away unmarred.

    It wasn’t just that the House had reduced the aforesaid resolution to a pale shadow of its former self by stripping out what were arguably its most substantial provisions, Keating went on to avow. It was that the congressmen in question had rewritten even the central provision that remained so as to render it, in practice, a grotesque mockery of its authors’ intention. “The amendment,” Keating continued,

As approved by the House of Representatives […] limits the representation of the District of Columbia in the electoral college to a maximum of three, regardless of the population of the District of Columbia. However, Mr. President, inasmuch as the District of Columbia, under the present method of apportionment, would be entitled to either four, or possibly five, members of the electoral college if the District of Columbia were a State, the House amendment in effect would make a three-fourths citizen or a three-fifths citizen of every resident of the District of Columbia. This concept of "fractional" citizenship is a new one, which to me is abhorrent.

Notwithstanding Keating’s declaration to the contrary, “fractional citizenship” has actually had a long and problematic history within the context of the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 2 of that selfsame document famously permitted enslaved peoples to be counted in terms of congressional apportionment and electoral votes to the tune of three-fifths of each person. The 14^th Amendment later rendered this particular clause null and void, of course, and the comprise which produced the three-fifths ratio actually represented a victory for those who opposed slavery and its attendant economic advantages. But the notion of weighing certain human as something less than equal to others has nevertheless cast a long shadow across the American political discourse concerning the nature and limits of citizenship. By invoking the three-fifths ratio exactly, Keating was therefore almost assuredly seeking to draw a critical comparison between the manner in which the United States Constitution had once regarded enslaved peoples and the manner in which the modified version of S.J. Res. 39 would end up treating the residents of the District of Columbia.

    Consider, if not the practical implications, then the apparent moral significance of the original three-fifths clause. As far as the Constitution was concerned, an enslaved person was the equivalent of only three-fifths of a free person. Notwithstanding what this meant in practice as far as apportionment was concerned, what other conclusions must it have forced generations of Americans to draw? That enslaved peoples were not entitled to all of the same rights as free peoples? That their lives were worth only a fraction of those of free peoples? That their interests, as a community, were less important than those of the free community? Functionally speaking, all of these questions were answered in the affirmative by the manner in which enslaved peoples were treated both in public and private setting until at least the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction. It was not always so stated in law, of course. In many jurisdictions, for example, it was illegal to kill an enslaved person even if the defendant could convincingly claim to have owned the victim in question. In practice, however, this protection amounted to little more than a genteel façade. The sanctity of private property being among the core concepts at the heart of American republican philosophy, American slaveowners in the 18^th and 19^th centuries were generally free to dispose of those they claimed to own in whatever manner they saw fit. And because American slavery, while likewise rarely described as such in print, was absolutely grounded upon an unequal evaluation of race and racial value, the sense of comparative worthlessness with which members of the white majority viewed the enslaved Black minority most definitely transferred over to the free Black community in turn.

    Case in point, recall the sheer number of recorded instances over the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries in which a free Black person – whom the law formally regarded as the equal of any white person – was accused of some manner of offense, kidnapped by a vigilante mob, and summarily executed without trial. Such instances were extremely – one might say horrifyingly – common in the decades preceding the Civil War, continued throughout and after Reconstruction, and remained alarmingly frequent well into the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Where these expressions of violence against members of the Black community motivated solely by the apparent moral implications of the three-fifths clause? Of course not. The white mobs who committed these abhorrent acts did not do so out of some misplaced sense of fealty to a clause of the United States Constitution. But the three-fifths clause did undeniably become tied up with prevailing white opinions about the relative moral worth of the nation’s Black inhabitants. Granting, as aforementioned, that the 14^th Amendment formally nullified the relevant passage of the Constitution in 1868, those inclined to assert the supposed worthlessness of their Black fellow citizens could – and did, and still do – point to the three-fifths clause as evidence that the Framers never intended Black people to be treated as the equals of their white counterparts. Logically speaking, this makes for an exceptionally poor argument. Not only does it ignore the fact that a free Black community existed at the time that the Constitution was drafted to which the three-fifths clause did not apply, but it likewise entirely overlooks the simple truth that, had the Southern, pro-slavery Framers had their way in 1787, enslaved peoples would have been counted as whole persons rather than fractionally. The kind of people who are inclined to attempt to weaponize the three-fifths clause will not be moved by such arguments, of course. As far as they are concerned, the words mean – and have always meant – what they want them to mean. Namely, that Black people are morally and legally inferior to white people.                 

    Bearing all of this in mind, what would it mean, in practice, for the inhabitants of the District of Columbia to be granted representation in the Electoral College in the early 1960s by an effective ratio of three-fifths? Doubtless, on all counts, it would amount to something of a disaster. From the perspective of D.C.’s majority Black population, it would surely be a source of humiliation and disgust to once more be subject to a fractional counting of their numbers within the context of the federal power structure. Granted – and as Keating would go on to point out – possessing even three-fifths of the influence to which they were entitled in the Electoral College was arguably better than continuing to be completely voiceless. But to once again be subject to a statutory undercounting, solely for the purpose of satisfying the almost exclusively white power brokers who then controlled the United States Congress, would surely prove to be a thoroughly degrading experience, and one which would almost certainly worsen the already fraught relationship which then existed – arguably, has always existed – between Congress and the District. For the predominantly Southern segregationists then serving in Congress, of course, the opposite was almost certainly bound to be the case.

    Having loudly and unambiguously made clear their belief that the Black community could not be trusted to govern itself effectively, the Joel Broyhills, Strom Thurmonds, and James Eastlands of the world – the latter two, senators from South Carolina and Mississippi, respectively, being among the upper house’s most vehement segregationists – would doubtless praise the resulting electoral arrangement as a kind of twisted, twofold victory. On the one hand, having granted representation in the Electoral College to a jurisdiction previously excluded from any manner of democratic participation, the segregationists would doubtless claim for themselves the mantle of generous benefactor to the community living therein. After all, who could possibly call them bigots once they’d made a point of granting the nation’s first city with a Black majority a role in disposing of the highest office in the land? On the other hand, of course, would be the reality of the situation. The aforementioned Southern segregationists would indeed be partly responsible for granting the inhabitants of the District of Columbia a role to play in the election of the President of the United States. Just not the role to which this selfsame community was entitled. They would be able to send delegates to the Electoral College, indisputably. Just not as many delegates at their numbers would otherwise indicate. Not only would this more or less guarantee that D.C. would never play a decisive role in any subsequent presidential election, but it would also arguably represent a symbolic victory on the part of the aforementioned segregationists. For though they might appear to have caved to the supporters of S.J. Res. 39 by agreeing to grant the inhabitants of the District a voice in national political affairs, they will have done so only after having ensured that the influence of the community in question was so diluted as to be functionally inconsequential. Petty though such a claim to victory might seem, bigots and hatemongers have historically been known to rapturously celebrate far less.

    Senator Keating’s fear that such a scenario was about to come to pass still did not stop him from offering the modified resolution his continued support, however. “Three-fourths citizenship or three-fifths citizenship is better than no citizenship at all [,]” he accordingly affirmed.

Therefore no Member who has at heart the interests of the District of Columbia could vote against the amendment, particularly in view of the circumstances with which we are faced and the realization that at this time the question is either this or nothing at all. However, Mr. President, I can only voice my sorrow because of the fact that we have missed this opportunity to bestow full citizenship rights on our fellow Americans, the residents of the District of Columbia.

Keating, it seemed, agreed with his colleague Senator Case. While it was very much a tragic occurrence that the fate of the relevant resolution had been left to the last possible moment to decide – and that it had been so modified as to force its former supporters to either accept a severe compromise or else dispense with it entirely – there didn’t seem to be any choice but to support it all the same. An incremental victory was better than no victory at all, in essence. And so, while the likes of Keating, Case, and Beall would continue to labor on behalf of the inhabitants of the District of Columbia, they would also, in the meantime, contribute their votes to this half-measure. Better to establish even a modest precedent in favor of reform than to rob D.C. of the hope of a better future.