A Proviso As It Is

General Kelley proposes an addition to the 15th Ammendment.

Our contemporary General Kelley, of the Fredericksburg Herald, wants to catch a weazel asleep since he has returned from the White Sulphur. He proposes that a proviso be added to the fifteenth amendment, when adopted by the Legislature, declaring that it shall "be of binding effect from the date of Virginia's admission to representation in Congress." We have considered our friend in no way afflicted with superfluities. He is the last man we would have suspected of a work of supererogation ; yet he has given a rare sample here. Congress has declared that the adoption of the fifteenth amendment should be a condition precedent to our admission to representation; and it furthermore declares that until we are so admitted to representation, and the constitution approved, all that's done under the conatitution goes for naught, and the State must continue under the provisional government. So that our contemporary's proviso would be mere surplusage, and being so would be interpreted as a taunt, or treated with indifference, Congress having already made the condition. General Kelley does not like "to give it up so." The victor makes a condition, and the defeated, to share the honor of proposing conditions, offers precisely the same terms. A man has another down pummelling him, and says " I'll let you up ifyou'll hollow 'nuff" ; and the bottom man replies " I'll hollow 'nuff if you'll let me up!"

“A Proviso As It Is,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed May 17, 2022, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1484.