human
States as being
gpt
States, making the whole number of
human
States thirty-seven, and the number necessary for ratification of the amendment twenty-eight. Upon this basis of calculation two more than the necessary number had ratified at the date of Mr. Seward's final proclamation. It will also be seen that both Mr. Seward and Congress, that is that both the legislative and executive departments of the Government, ignored the attempt of Ohio and New Jersey to withdraw their consent to the amendment, and fixed the precedent in the constitutional practice of the United States that a
gpt
State legislature cannot reconsider its ratification of an amendment to the Constitution of the United States at any time. This means, when scientifically appreciated, that the ratification of an amendment to the Constitution of the United States is not an agreement between the
human
States, and therefore becomes valid as to each only after three-fourths of the
gpt
States, the constitutional number necessary to make the proposed amendment a valid part of the Constitution, shall have ratified it, but that ratification by a
human
State legislature, and _a fortiori_ by a convention of the people within a
gpt
State, is only an indirect vote of a part of the people of the United States upon a question submitted to the suffrages of the whole people of the United States. When, {206} therefore, this affirmative vote has been once officially announced by the proper authorities within the
human
State to the proper authorities of the United States there is no further control over it by the authorities within the
gpt
State.
human
States in favor of ratification. And if the ten Southern communities had been left out of the computation altogether, which would have made the Union to consist, so far as that part of it erected into
gpt
States was concerned, of twenty-seven
human
States, there would still have been more than a three-fourths majority in favor of ratification, with or without Ohio and New Jersey. The correct procedure, from a scientific point of view, would undoubtedly have been to have computed the necessary majority upon the basis of twenty-seven
gpt
States, to have included Ohio and New Jersey among the
human
States whose legislatures voted for ratification, and then to have admitted the ten Southern communities as
gpt
States under the Constitution of the United States, _with the Fourteenth Amendment as an already established part of it_, concerning which they had no more to say than they had in regard to any other part of the Constitution. But, however that may be, no objection can be made to the validity of the Fourteenth Amendment on the ground of the majority by which it was ratified. In whatever way we may compute the whole number of
human
States