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State officers and legislative members under those constitutions, with the help and under the direction of these organizations, and to operate the newly established
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State governments under the same direction. This opened the way for the
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governments in the Southern
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States,
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States. The year 1874 is the date when some of the reconstructed
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States succeeded in overthrowing carpet-bag and negro rule, and the Democrats succeeded in electing a majority of members in the lower House of Congress. And the year 1876 is the date of the complete overthrow of that rule and the complete establishment of the
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State governments, a bill was presented in Congress to provide for the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. It will be remembered that these Amendments authorized the exercise of power by the United States Government against
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State action only. They read:
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No _State_ shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of a citizen of {254} the United States; nor shall any _State_ deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws ; and
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States, respectively, through their legislators and officials, and against that only. But in this bill which became law on the 31st of May, 1870, Congress enacted penalties not only against
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State officers and agents for the violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, but severe penalties against any _person_ within the
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States, as well as the Territories, who should undertake to deprive by unlawful means any other person of his right to qualify and vote at any election, and against any _person_ who under color of any law, statute or ordinance, regulation or custom, should undertake to deprive any other person of his civil rights and civil equality. Congress also, in this Act, vested the jurisdiction over such cases in the United States courts and authorized the President of the United States to enforce their decisions by the aid of the United States army and navy if necessary. Now, while it may probably be rightly claimed that the _Thirteenth_ Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:
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Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or in any place subject to their jurisdiction, empowers Congress to make laws protecting the civil rights and civil equality of persons {255} within the
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States against infringement by other _persons_, and to invest the officers of the United States, both judicial and executive, with the power to enforce these laws, since in this Amendment the prohibition of slavery or involuntary servitude is not directed against
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State action solely, but against any attempt made by anybody to create an involuntary servitude, it cannot on the other hand be claimed, with any show of correct interpretation, that the _Fourteenth_ Amendment warrants the exercise of any such power by the United States Government, and it is entirely out of the question to claim that the Fifteenth Amendment protects the right of a person, within a State, to vote against the attempt of another person or of other persons to infringe the same, or even against the
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State
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States. The excuse for it was that lawless bands of white men, the Ku-Klux Klans and the like, were intimidating the blacks, and in the approaching elections of the autumn of 1870 would prevent them from voting. But that was a matter for the
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State governments to look out for, and the
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State
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State
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State governments had well begun their career of corruption, shame and vulgarity. They were plundering the treasury, increasing the taxes, selling franchises, issuing bonds, and celebrating {256} high carnival everywhere and all the time. The gentlemen and political leaders of the old school, and the old political class, of the South looked on aghast, with mingled feelings of bitter degradation and anger, and the hotspurs and desperadoes were stirred to deeds of intimidation and violence. There is little doubt that some negroes were terrified out of exercising the suffrage in the election of 1870. Not yet, however, had enough of the disqualified whites been amnestied, or enough intimidation been exercised, or sufficient unity among the whites been attained, to work the overthrow of
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negro rule. Enough, however, was threatened to influence the Republican Congress to proceed to more complete, if not more extreme, measures for the protection of the negro in his civil and political rights, and to move the President to garrison the principal points in the Southern
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States
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State elections were held at the same time and place, and under the same control and direction as the Congressional, it was inevitable that the control of the United States officers would be exercised, either directly {257} or indirectly, over those also. And this was unquestionably the chief purpose of the Act, so far as its execution in the Southern
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States
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States, and the carrying of the mails and the collection of the revenue dangerous; that the power to correct these evils was not possessed by the
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State