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was revised in 1865, the new instrument disfranchised the sympathizers with the Confederates, and required a rigorous test oath, which was upheld by the United States Supreme Court.
In December, 1866, B. Gratz Brown, an ex-United States Senator, took the lead in a movement for universal amnesty and universal suffrage in the State, and he was warmly supported by Carl Schurz,1 who went to St. Louis in 1867 to edit a German newspaper, and was elected a United States Senator in 1869.
The Missouri Legislature of 1870 voted to submit to the people six amendments to the Constitution, which gave the right of suffrage to every male citizen of the United States, and abolished the test oath, and the oath of loyalty required of jurors.
The Democrats — a hopeless minority --held no State convention that year.
The Republican convention, by a vote of 439 to 342, adopted, instead of the report of the majority of the committee on resolutions (presented by its chairman, Senator Schurz)
1 Schurz, who was a vice-president of the National Republican Convention of 1868, moved an amendment to the platform, which was adopted, declaring in favor of “the removal of the disqualifications and restrictions imposed upon the late rebels in the same measure as the spirit of disloyalty will die out, and as may be consistent with the safety of the loyal people.”
New York, D. Appleton and Company, March 1903.
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