CONGKESS, UNITED STATES. 



211 



No State shall make or enforce any law which shall 

 bridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of 

 the United States. 



"That is substantially what the Constitution 

 was before, and I do not know that it enlarged 

 at all the provision of the Constitution as it 

 before existed, which declared that 



The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all 

 privileges and immunities of citizens in the several 

 States. 



" In my judgment, that amounts to the same 

 thing. It is a repetition of a provision in the 

 Constitution as it before existed. It states it 

 in a little different language, by saying that 

 ' no State shall make or enforce any law which 

 shall abridge the privileges or immunities of 

 citizens of the United States.' The section, as 

 it originally stood in the Constitution, read : 



The citizens of each State shall he entitled to all 

 privileges and immunities of citizens in the several 

 States. 



" The protection which the Government 

 affords to American citizens under the Con- 

 stitution as it was originally formed is pre- 

 cisely the protection it affords to American 

 citizens under the Constitution as it now 

 exists. The fourteenth amendment has not 

 extended the rights and privileges of citi- 

 zenship one iota. They are right where they 

 always were. The citizen of the United States 

 was to be defended as against foreign aggres- 

 sion, as against foreign nations, in all his rights 

 of a national character, under the old Consti- 

 tution. The fourteenth amendment has not 

 defined what the privileges and immunities of 

 citizenship are. Was not Martin Van Buren, 

 or Zachary Taylor, or James K. Polk, just as 

 much a citizen, and a native-born citizen, of 

 the United States before the fourteenth amend- 

 ment as the Senator from "Wisconsin is to-day 

 since the adoption of the fourteenth amend- 

 ment? They were citizens, and they were 

 clothed with all the rights of American citi- 

 zenship, and the Federal Government was 

 bound to protect them in whatever immunity 

 and privilege belonged to them as citizens of 

 the nation ; but that did not have reference 

 to the protection of those persons in individual 

 rights in their respective States, except so far 

 as being citizens of one State entitled them to 

 the privileges and immunities of citizens in 

 every other." 



Mr. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, said: "I un- 

 derstand him to maintain that a colored man 

 born in Massachusetts, under the old Consti- 

 tution, was a citizen of the United States." 



Mr. Trumbull : " That was my opinion, but 

 not the opinion of others." 



Mr. Carpenter : " I am trying your opinions, 

 nobody else's. The Senator says the colored 

 man born in Massachusetts was a citizen of 

 the United States under the old Constitution. 

 If he moved from Massachusetts into South 

 Carolina, he did not carry with him the rights 

 of citizenship of the State of Massachusetts, 

 and the Constitution in South Carolina only 



protected him in the rights which belonged to 

 a colored citizen of that State. If these rights 

 which we are now speaking of are the rights 

 of an American citizen, apart from the citizen- 

 ship of the State, and they were protected by 

 the old Constitution, then, whatever those 

 privileges and immunities were, they would 

 have been the same in South Carolina as they 

 were in Massachusetts ; and yet we all know 

 that every privilege that can be assigned to a 

 man the right to be a party in court, the right 

 to be a witness all those privileges which are 

 personal, and which pertain to every free man 

 everywhere, were denied to that citizen just 

 as soon as he got into South Carolina, and the 

 Constitution of the United States did not reach 

 him, and did not profess to reach him. It 

 simply said to South Carolina, * You shall give 

 this colored man coming from Massachusetts 

 just as much right as you give the colored 

 men of South Carolina.' The Constitution 

 now says to South Carolina, 'You shall no 

 longer enforce a law that abridges the privi- 

 leges of any citizen.' " 



Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois, said : " The Sen- 

 ator is entirely mistaken. This Constitution 

 says no such thing as that a State shall not 

 abridge the privileges of any citizen. It speaks 

 of citizens of the United States, and you have 

 not advanced one step in the argument unless 

 you can define what the privileges and immu- 

 nities of citizens of the United States are. If 

 the Senator from Wisconsin had honored me 

 with his attention when I commenced, he 

 would have observed that I stated at the 

 commencement that this national Government 

 was not formed for the purpose of protecting 

 the individual in his rights of person and of 

 property." 



Mr. Carpenter : " That is what I understand 

 to be the very change wrought by the four- 

 teenth amendment. It is now put in that as- 

 pect, and does protect them." 



Mr. Trumbull : " Then it would be an anni- 

 hilation entirely of the States. Such is not 

 the fourteenth amendment. The States were, 

 and are now, the depositaries of the rights of 

 the individual against encroachment." 



Mr. Carpenter : " And that Constitution for- 

 bids them to deny them, and authorizes Con- 

 gress to legislate so as to carry that prohibition 

 into execution." 



Mr. Trumbull: "If the Constitution had 

 said that the privileges and immunities of citi- 

 zens of the United States embraced all the 

 rights of person and property belonging to an 

 individual, then the Senator would be right ; 

 but it says no such thing. In my judgment, 

 the fourteenth amendment has not changed an 

 iota of the Constitution, as it was originally 

 framed, in that respect. I take the Senator's 

 case of the colored man in Massachusetts. 

 That colored man in Massachusetts before the 

 fourteenth amendment was adopted, in my 

 judgment, was a citizen of the United States 

 as well as a citizen of Massachusetts. That 



