Every modification or substitute failed, until Senator Wilson offered the following: "No discrimination shall be made in any State among the citizens of the United States in the exercise of the elective franchise, or in the right to hold office in any State, on account of race, color, nativity, property, education, or religious creed." Mr.Trumbull declared that the adoption of this Amendment would abolish the constitutions of perhaps all, certainly of half, the States of the Union.

He then pointed out that the constitution of almost every State prescribed a qualification of age for the governor of the State, and of a certain length of residence, many of them requiring a natural-born citizen; and that the effect of Mr.Wilson's Amendment would be to level all the constitutions, and radically reverse the deliberate judgment of the people of the States who had ordained them.

Serious objections were also made against prohibiting an educational test, as would be the effect of Mr.
Wilson's Amendment.

Mr.Wilson frankly avowed his hostility to an educational test, and declared that the one existing in Massachusetts had never proved valuable in any sense.

Against all objections and arguments Mr.Wilson's Amendment was adopted by the Senate.
A proposition was now introduced and supported with equal zeal by Mr.
Morton of Indiana and Mr.Buckalew of Pennsylvania, proposing an amendment to the pending resolution, which should in effect be a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution.