1062 HASTINGS —POLICR POWER OF THE ATATR, (June 19, 
The sixth and fourteenth counts as to conspiring to prevent ene 
joyment of the right of suffrage are held bac beenuse the constitu. 
tion conters no right of suffrage as has been seen in the ease of 
Minor as, Happersett; it only guarantees against diserimination on 
account of color or previous servitude, and this is not alleged in the 
counts, ‘The seventh and fifteenth counts are held no better for 
they merely allege the putting in fear and oppression of the same 
persons on account of having exercised the right to vote and with- 
out stating faets of race diserimination to bring the ease within the 
lerma of the constitution, 
‘There remained the fifth and thirteenth, the eighth and sixteenth 
counts under which also the defendants had been found guilty, 
The fitth and thirteenth alleged a conspiracy on account of their 
Afriean race and color to deprive the persons named of their several 
rights and privileges and immunities granted and seeured to them 
by the constitution of the United States as eitizens of the country 
and of the state of Louisiana, ‘The eighth and sixteenth embraced 
substantially the same thing without the clause as to African de- 
seent and race and color, ‘These counts are held to be too vague to 
inform the court or the accused what specific rights were claimed to 
be invaded, or by what specific aets the invasion was accomplished, 
and from them it could not be determined whether or not there 
had been a specifie violation of law in any constitutional particular, 
The judgment was therefore arrested and the defendants discharged, 
The concurring opinion of Judge Clifford agrees in the eonelu. 
sion but would rest it upon other defeets in the indictment, and 
more particularly upon its indefiniteness, His view of the eonsti- 
tution and of the privileges or immunities of a citizen of the United 
Stites guaranteed by it apparently does not differ materially from 
that announced by the court through Chief Justice Waite, ‘These 
decisions together with the Slaughter-house cases have been some. 
times called reactionary decisions of the court, and have sometimes 
been thought, as was charged at the time, to have thrown away the 
results of the war; that they prevented at least some of the results 
of the constitutional amendments which were confidently expeeted 
by the Congresses which proposed them and which passed the eivil 
rights and enforcement aets is plain, Practically all the legisla. 
tion of Congress on the subject was thwarted by the narrow con. 
atruetion of the amendments adhered to by the court. 
Vhat the construction of the court was that of the people at large 
