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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



of the United States be in accordance with a 

 just judicial interpretation of the Constitution 

 in that regard. And how can there he a doubt 

 about a question like that ? To say in our 

 Constitution that all our people in the States 

 shall be United States citizens, and also citi- 

 zens of the States ; to add this as a curative, 

 new and additional part of the instrument, and 

 in it to.say that State laws shall not be made 

 or enforced to abridge these rights of United 

 States citizens nor the States deny protection 

 of these rights under law, and that Congress 

 may enforce these provisions securing these 

 rights, and then to say that Congress can do 

 no such thing as make any law so enforcing 

 these rights, nor open the United States courts 

 to enforce any such laws, but must leave all 

 the protection and law-making to the very 

 States which are denying the protection, is 

 plainly and grossly absurd. 



" The section being in its terms carefully con- 

 fined to giving a civil action for such wrongs 

 against citizenship as are done under color of 

 State laws which abridge these rights, it goes 

 directly to the enforcement of that provision 

 which says the State shall not make or enforce 

 any law which shall abridge any privileges or 

 franchises of citizens. 



" With these remarks in regard to the con- 

 stitutionality of the first section, I have a single 

 remark to make in regard to the rule of inter- 

 pretation of those provisions of the Constitu- 

 tion under which all the sections of the bill are 

 framed. This act is remedial, and in aid of 

 the preservation of human liberty and human 

 rights. All statutes and constitutional provi- 

 sions authorizing such statutes are liberally and 

 beneficently construed. It would be most 

 strange, and, in civilized law, monstrous, were 

 this not the rule of interpretation. As has 

 been again and again decided by your own 

 Supreme Court of the United States, and every- 

 where else where there is wise judicial inter- 

 pretation, the largest latitude consistent with 

 the words employed is uniformly given in con- 

 struing such statutes and constitutional pro- 

 visions as are meant to protect and defend and 

 give remedies for their wrongs to all the peo- 

 ple. These provisions of the fourteenth amend- 

 ment are wholly devoted to securing the equal- 

 ity and safety of all the people, as is this sec- 

 tion, and, indeed, the entire bill. In deciding 

 whether the section or the bill is warranted 

 by this fourteenth amendment, ought not the 

 fact that it is so eminently just and fair, so emi- 

 nently in accordance with the spirit of our in- 

 stitutions, so wholly devoted to the single and 

 sublime work of preserving the rights and lib- 

 erties and government of all the people, and 

 which gives not a power, except such as is, by 

 the language employed, carefully confined and 

 consecrated to the sacred duty of protecting 

 the people and their Government, to have 

 mighty weight in determining the question of 

 the power to make it ? Chief-Justice Jay and 

 also Story say : 



" Where a power is remedial in its nature there is 

 much reason to contend that it ought to be construed 

 liberally, and it is generally adopted in the interpre- 

 tation or laws." 1 Story on, Constitution, sec. 429. 



" I now come to the second section of the 

 bill. That section, in brief, is one which seeks 

 to supply the alleged deficiencies of the sixth 

 section of what is called the enforcement act 

 of May, 1870, enforcing the provisions of the 

 fifteenth amendment. It is alleged that that 

 act, where it defines and punishes criminally a 

 conspiracy of two or more persons to deprive 

 a citizen of the United States of any right to 

 which he is entitled under the Constitution and 

 laws of the United States, falls worthless, be- 

 cause of its too great generality and vagueness 

 in the description of the particular act that 

 shall constitute the crime. It is any conspir- 

 acy to deprive a citizen of any right. It is also 

 alleged as to that section, that, being found in 

 the body of an act which is confined in its gen- 

 eral scope to the enforcement of the fifteenth 

 amendment and the right to vote, it will be 

 construed in the light of the companionship in 

 which it is found, on the principle noscitur a 

 sociis ; and that, being so construed, it will be 

 held to apply only to rights of which the citi- 

 zen is deprived in regard to the matter of vot- 

 ing. For the purpose of removing both those 

 doubts and questions, if there be any (and I 

 think there is a just and fair ground of doubt 

 upon that matter), we have inserted this second 

 section of the bill. It provides 



That if two or more persons shall, within the lim- 

 its of any State, band or conspire together to do any 

 act in violation of the rights, privileges, or immu- 

 nities of another person, which, being committed 

 within a place under the sole and exclusive jurisdic- 

 tion of the United States, would, under any law of 

 the United States then in force, constitute the crime 

 of either murder, manslaughter,- mayhem, robbery, 

 assault and battery, perjury, subornation of perjury, 

 criminal obstruction of' legal process or resistance 

 of officers in discharge of official duty, arson, or lar- 

 ceny ; and if one or more of the parties to said con- 

 spiracy shall do any act to effect the object thereof, 

 all the parties to or engaged in said conspiracy, 

 whether principals or accessories, shall be deemed 

 guilty of a felony, and, upon conviction thereof, shall 

 be liable, etc., and the crime shall be punishable as 

 such in the courts of the United States. 



"I now proceed to the inquiry, where is the 

 constitutional power to enact that section into 

 law ? To those members of the House of Rep- 

 resentatives who are of opinion that the sixth 

 section of the act of 1870, called 'the enforce- 

 ment act,' is constitutional, I need make no 

 argument. Every gentleman who voted for or 

 approves that sixth section of the act of May, 

 1870, will need no persuasion to come to the 

 conclusion that this second section is constitu- 

 tional; for it rests upon exactly the same legal 

 ground, and is in its constitutional aspects 

 identical with it, the only difference being that 

 the section of this bill defines the offence with 

 greater exactness. It does so by requiring 

 that the act conspired to be done must be an 

 act which would, under the laws of the United 

 States, within places where the United States 



