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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



fundamental, winch belong of right to the citizens 

 of all free governments, and which have at all times 

 been enjoyed by citizens of the several States which 

 compose this Union from the time of their becoming 

 free, independent, and sovereign. 



What these fundamental privileges are it would 

 perhaps be more tedious than difficult to enumerate. 

 They may, however, be all comprehended under the 

 following general heads : protection by the Govern- 

 ment; 



"Mark that: 



protection by the Government ; the enjoyment of 

 life and liberty, with the right to acquire and possess 

 property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain 

 happiness and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such 

 restraints as the Government may justly prescribe 

 for the general good of the whole. 



"Now, Mr. Speaker, keeping these as the 

 fundamental rights of citizenship in our minds, 

 I point you once more to the terms of this 

 second section. It makes criminal, attacks of 

 conspirators. It punishes, not individual crime, 

 hut only banded, mastering, confederated vio- 

 lence. Then also it must be directed against 

 the rights, privileges, or immunities of a citizen. 

 Then the crime can be committed against no 

 other rights than those which come clearly, 

 plainly, and without controversy, within those 

 rights defined by the authority I have read to 

 belong to citizenship as such. In this regard 

 the bill goes nowhere beyond the protection 

 of rights clearly and unquestionably funda- 

 mental, and belonging to citizenship in every 

 free government as an element and attribute 

 of that national citizenship which he carries 

 with him wherever he goes throughout the 

 world. 



" Of course, Mr. Speaker, the constitutional 

 objection to this section is that the acts it 

 seeks to punish, being committed within a 

 State, can only be defined and punished as 

 crime under State law. It assumes that in at- 

 tempting this legislation Congress blots out 

 the jurisdiction and power of the States. It 

 also seems thereby to assume that there are no 

 classes of acts which both the State govern- 

 ments and the national Government may de- 

 fine and punish concurrently as constituting a 

 crime against each government. Mr. Speaker, 

 I deny the soundness of each of these assump- 

 tions. 



" Let me now state what my reply is to this 

 charge that the second section invades the ex- 

 clusive and reserved powers of the States. The 

 major proposition of my reply I choose to state 

 in the words of the Supreme Court of the 

 United States in Jones vs. Van Zandt (5 How- 

 ard, 230), where the court uses these words: 

 Congress is charged with the duty of ' enfor- 

 cing by legislation every constitutional provi- 

 sion. This grows out of the position and nature 

 of such a Government as ours, and is as im- 

 perative in the cases not enumerated specially 

 in respect to such legislation as in others.' In 

 shorter words, Congress is bound to execute, 

 by legislation, every provision of the Constitu- 

 tion, even those provisions not specially named 

 as to be so enforced. 



" My next proposition is historical, and one 

 simply in aid and support of the truth of the 

 first. It is that the United States always has 

 assumed to enforce, as against the States, and 

 also persons, every one of the provisions of the 

 Constitution. Most of the provisions of the 

 Constitution which restrain and directly re- 

 late to the States, such as those in tenth sec- 

 tion of first article, that 'no State shall make 

 a treaty,' 'grant letters of marque,' 'coin 

 money,' 'emit bills of credit,' etc., relate to 

 the divisions of the political powers of the 

 State and General Governments. They do not 

 relate directly to the rights of persons within 

 the States and as between the States and such 

 persons therein. These prohibitions upon the 

 political powers of the States are all of such 

 nature that they can be, and even have been, 

 when the occasion arose, enforced by the 

 courts of the United States declaring void all 

 State acts of encroachment on Federal powers. 

 Thus, and thus sufficiently, has the United 

 States 'enforced' these provisions of the Con- 

 stitution. But there are some that are not of 

 this class. These are where the court, secures 

 the rights or the liabilities of persons within 

 the States, as between such persons and the 

 States. 



"These three are: first, that as to fugitives 

 from justice; second, that as to fugitives from 

 service (or slaves) ; third, that declaring that 

 the ' citizens of each State shall be entitled to 

 all the privileges and immunities of citizens in 

 the several States.' 



"And, sir, every one of these the only pro- 

 visions where it was deemed that legislation 

 was required to enforce the constitutional pro- 

 visionsthe only three where the rights or 

 liabilities of persons in the States, as between 

 these persons and the States, are directly pro- 

 vided for, Congress has by legislation affirm- 

 atively interfered to protect or to subject such 

 persons. In the case of the two clauses in 

 relation to fugitive slaves and fugitives from 

 justice, by a law passed early in the morning 

 of the republic's life, four years after the Con- 

 stitution was adopted, on 12th February, 1793, 

 the Congress 'enforced' the requirements by 

 prescribing the methods of such enforcement. 

 In the other case also (see 6 United States 

 Statutes at Large, 645) Congress passed a law, 

 in admitting Missouri, enacting that the con- 

 stitution of Missouri should 'never be con- 

 strued to authorize the passage of any law, 

 and no law shall ever be passed in conformity 

 thereto, by which any citizen of either of the 

 States of the Union shall be excluded from the 

 enjoyment of privileges or immunities to which 

 such citizens are entitled under the Constitu- 

 tion of the United States.' 



" Here is an express, direct law of Congress, 

 enacting, in so many words, that Missouri 

 should 'never pass' any law by which any 

 citizen of the Union should be excluded from 

 any of his privileges! And yet we are told 

 that, even with the new provisions of the new 



