Amidst the embarrassment of riches, it is difficult to make selections. A few of the precious stones and jewels, some of the broken fragments of the ivory and porphyry in these vessels of silver and gold, may serve as illustrations of the whole, and prove just as competent and sufficient legal witnesses to show the spirit of the earlier civil-rights construction of the Supreme Court, as if the whole mass of their adjudications had been "heaped up, Ossa on Pelion."
On April 14, 1872, Mr. Justice Miller says,—
"We repeat, then, in the light of this recapitulation of events, almost too recent to be called history, but which are familiar to us all; and on the most casual examination of the language of these amendments, no one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in them all, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave-race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him. It is true that only the Fifteenth Amendment, in terms, mentions the negro, speaking of his color and his slavery. But it is just as true that each of the other articles was addressed to the grievances of that race, and designed to remedy them, as the Fifteenth." And quoting from the language of Chief-Justice Taney, in another case, the court said, "that, for all the great purposes for which the Federal government was established, we are one people, with one common country, we are all citizens of the United States;" "and it is as such citizens that their rights are supported in this court."[1]
Mr. Justice Field, same case, says, "The fundamental rights, privileges, and immunities which belong to him" (i.e., the colored man) "as a free man and a free citizen, now belong to him as a citizen of the United States, and are not dependent upon his citizenship of any State. The exercise of these rights and privileges, and the degree of enjoyment received from such exercise, are always more or less affected by the conditions and the local institutions of the State or city or town where he resides. They
- ↑ Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall., 71-79.
