because he was not admitted to all the privileges enjoyed by white citizens or because he was subjected to discriminations in the enjoyment of accommodations in inns, public conveyances and places of amusement. Mere discriminations on account of race or color were not regarded as badges of slavery. On the whole we are of opinion, that no countenance of authority for the passage of the law in question can be found in the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution."

In his charge to the grand jury, Emmons, C. J.,80 said: "The abolition of slavery placed the negro in the former slave States just where he had before stood in the free States. What Congress could not do in reference to a free negro in a Northern State, where slavery never existed, before the abolition of slavery, it could not afterwards do in regard to one living in the South. We conclude with confidence that the Thirteenth Amendment did not authorize Congress to interfere with the private and internal regulations of theater managers, hotel keepers, or common carriers within the State, in reference to colored persons, any more than it did in regard to their white fellow citizens."

31

So in United States v. Harris, it was held: "Congress by virtue of the Thirteenth Amendment declared in section 1 of the act of April 9, 1866, that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to none other.'

The General Assembly of Louisiana passed a law that, "All railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this State, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations.

30 Federal Cases No. 18, 260.

31 106 U. S., 629-640.

"No person or persons, shall be admitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them on account of the race they belong to.

The act further provided that the officers of passenger trains should assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which the passenger belonged; and that any passenger who insisted on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he did not belong should be liable to a fine, or imprisonment, and should any passenger refuse to occupy the coach or compartment to which he was assigned by the proper officers of the railway company the officer might refuse to carry him on his train, nor should he be liable for damages for refusal.

Under this act one Plessy, a resident of the State of Louisiana, of mixed descent in the proportion of seveneighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood, in whom the mixture of colored blood was not discernible, engaged and paid for a first-class passage on a train running from New Orleans to Covington in the State of Louisiana, and entered the passenger train and took possession of a vacant seat where passengers of the white race were accommodated. He was required by the conductor of the train, under penalty of ejectment and imprisonment, to leave the coach, and occupy a seat in a coach assigned to persons not of the white race and for no other reason than that he was of the colored race. Plessy refused to comply with the order and was forcibly ejected from the coach and imprisoned in the parish jail of New Orleans, where he was held to answer a charge that he had criminally violated an act of the Legislature of Louisiana. He was tried before the criminal district court for the parish, where he pleaded that the act of the legislature was in violation of the Constitution of the United States. The plea was overruled. The case was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States. It was claimed in behalf of Plessy that the act was in conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment. The court held. that the act in question did not violate the amendment, saying (p. 542):

32 163 U. S., 537, 540.

"This amendment was said in Slaughter House Cases (16 Wallace, 36) to have been intended primarily to abolish slavery as it had been previously known in the United States, and that the amendment equally forbade Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie trade, when they amounted to slavery, and that the use of the word 'servitude,' was intended to prohibit all forms of involuntary slavery, of whatever class or name.

"A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races-a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color-has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or reestablish a state of involuntary servitude."

Where an indictment charged that certain persons had conspired together in a State for the purpose of preventing certain citizens of that State of African descent from making or executing certain contracts and agreements to perform labor, because of their race and color, it was held that a United States court had no jurisdiction over the case under the Thirteenth Amendment.33

In delivering the opinion, Mr. Justice Brewer said (p. 18): "It does not appear from the record that the parties charged to have been wronged by the defendants had ever been slaves, or were the descendants of slaves. They took no more from the amendment than any other citizens of the United States. But if, as we have seen, that denounces a condition possible for all races and all individuals, then a like wrong perpetrated by white men upon a Chinese, or by black men upon a white man, or by any men upon any man on account of his race, would come within the jurisdiction of Congress, and that protection of individual rights which prior to the Thirteenth Amendment was unquestionably within the jurisdiction solely of the States, would, by virtue of that amendment, be transferred to the Nation and subject to the legislation of Congress.'

33 Hodges v. United States, 203 U. S., 1, 18.

CHAPTER LX.

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of 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.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twentyone years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But

Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The ratification of this amendment was certified by Mr. Seward as Secretary of State, July 20, 1868.

History of the Amendment.-This in many respects is the greatest of all the amendments to the Constitution. It is a limitation upon the power of the States, and in that respect is the counterpart of the original amendments, they being limitations on the power of the general government. Like the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments it was passed by Congress and ratified by the legislatures of a sufficient number of States in the interest of the colored race in the United States, though its language is not restricted to that race, but applies to citizens of the whole country.

Shortly after the close of the Civil War it became evident to the party dominant in Congress and in the country that it would be necessary for the federal government to legislate in the interest of the colored race if that race was to be protected in its personal and political rights. The legislatures of several States passed laws imposing great hardships upon those who had recently been slaves, and deprived them of rights which it was supposed had been secured to them by acts of Congress. Commenting upon this situation, Mr. Justice Miller, in his opinion in the Slaughter House Cases, said:

"The former slaves were in some States forbidden to appear in the towns in any other character than menial servants. They were required to reside on and cultivate