familiar to all, was the first exercise of the authority conferred by the Thirteenth Amendment. It operated to enforce absolute and universal freedom in America. There seems to have been no dispute, nor is there even ground for debate, that Congress could legislate as it did by this act, in a direct and primary way, to secure to citizens of every race and color those fundamental rights which are the essence of civil freedom. If any such question could have arisen, it was effectually dissipated and laid to rest by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. After the latter became a constitutional provision, the Civil-Rights Bill of 1866 was re-enacted, with the modifications of the Enforcement Act of 1870. Subsequently "An act to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights," passed in 1875, gave rise to the famous Civil-Rights Cases,[1] in which Mr. Justice Bradley, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, declared that the provisions of the first and second sections of this act, which are familiar to all, were unconstitutional and void. This decision, as we shall hereafter show, was (somewhat prematurely) regarded by the pro-slaveryites as a decisive victory over the Fourteenth Amendment.
By that adjudication Jurisprudence, upon apparently constitutional grounds, had endeavored to put to the sword the entire childhood of African Civil Rights, and to pillorize six millions of its full-grown subjects. By this judgment of the Supreme Court, Jurisprudence, with dry eyes, and with all the precision and stateliness of constitutional argument, had essayed to demonstrate that the key-stone of the arch upon which rested those guarantees of civil liberty to humanity of all colors in America, henceforth and forever was defective in three great points, the beginning, the middle, and the end. The Congress which enacted this Civil-Rights Bill was composed mostly of the members of the Congress which had proposed the Fourteenth Amendment. The first and second sections, declared to be unconstitutional, were as follows:
Section 1. That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment
- ↑ 109 U. S. Reports, p. 11.
