Civil War, the various legal tender decisions, have already been treated of.14

§ 267. The last three amendments.-The Civil War was not only the occasion, directly or indirectly, for many important Supreme Court decisions, but also brought about the passage of the three last amendments.

$268. The thirteenth amendment. The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was submitted by Congress to the legislatures of the several States on the 1st of February, 1865, and on December 18, 1865, was declared by a proclamation of the Secretary of State to have been ratified by the legislatures of the requisite number of States. The text of this amendment is as follows:

"Sec. I. Neither slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

"Sec. II. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

The scope and meaning of this amendment was thus discussed by the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights cases:15 "This amendment, as well as the fourteenth, is undoubtedly self-executing without any ancillary legislation, so far as its terms are applicable to any existing state of circumstances. By its own unaided force and effect it abolished slavery and established universal freedom. Still, legislation may be necessary and proper to meet all the various cases and circumstances to be affected by it and to prescribe proper modes of redress for its violation in letter or spirit. And such legislation may be primary and direct in its character, for the amendment is not a mere prohibition of State laws establishing or upholding slavery, but an absolute declaration that slavery or involuntary service shall not exist in any part of the United States.

"It is true that slavery cannot exist without law, any more than property in lands and goods can exist without law; and, therefore, the thirteenth amendment may be regarded as nullifying all State laws which establish or uphold slavery. But it "See Chapter VIII.

1109 U. S. 3.

has a reflex character also, establishing and decreeing universal civil and political freedom throughout the United States; and it is assumed that the power vested in Congress to enforce the article by appropriate legislation clothes Congress with power to pass laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery in the United States; and upon this assumption. it is claimed that this is sufficient authority for declaring by law that all persons shall have accommodations and privileges in all inns, public conveyances and places of public amusements, the argument being that the denial of such equal accommodations and privileges is, in itself, a subjection to a species of servitude within the meaning of the amendment. Conceding the major proposition to be true, that Congress has a right to enact an necessary and proper laws for the obligation and prevention of slavery, with all its badges and incidents, is the minor proposition also true that the denial of any person of admission to the accommodations and privileges of an inn, public conveyance or a theatre, does subject that person to any form of servitude or tend to foster upon him any badge of slavery? If it does not, then power to pass the law is not found in the thirteenth amendment. After giving to these questions all the consideration which their importance demands, we are forced to the conclusion that such an act of refusal has nothing to do with slavery or involuntary servitude, and that if it is violative of any right of the party, his redress is to be sought under the laws of the State; or if those laws are adverse to his rights and do not protect him, his remedy will be found in the corrective legislation which Congress has adopted, or may adopt, for counteracting the effect of State laws or State action prohibited by the fourteenth amendment. It would be running the slavery argument into the ground to make it apply to every act of discrimination which a person may see fit to make as to the guests he will entertain, or as to the people he will take into his coach or cab or car, or admit to his concert or theatre, or deal with in other matters of intercourse or business. Innkeepers and public carriers, by the laws of all the States, as far as we are aware, are bound, to the extent of their facilities, to furnish proper accommodation to all unobjectionable persons who in

good faith apply for them. If the laws themselves make any unjust discrimination amenable to the prohibition of the fourteenth amendment, Congress has full power to afford a remedy under that amendment and in accordance with it."

A further limitation was placed upon the application of the thirteenth amendment by the Supreme Court in the Slaughter House Cases,16 where it was decided that this amendment only applied to personal servitude and did not affect servitudes of property.

This amendment is intended to protect all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States, to the fullest extent, from all forms of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime. "It is clear that this amendment, besides abollishing forever slavery and involuntary servitude within the United States, gives power to the Congress to protect all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States from being in any way subjected to slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, and in the enjoyment of that freedom which it was the object of the amendment to secure."1

This amendment did not invalidate contracts made to pay money for slaves when the contracts were valid when made.1 This amendment by its express terms applies not only within the United States itself, but also in all the territory belonging to the United States.

$269. The fourteenth amendment.-The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several States by Congress on June 16, 1866. It was declared duly ratified by the requisite number of States in a proclamation issued by the Secretary of State on July 26, 1868. This amendment, which has sometimes been called the "Omnibus Amendment," was adopted for the protection of the freed negro, and for the settlement of various questions left unsettled after the Civil War. The text of the amendment is as follows:

16 Wallace, 36.

United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629.

18 Boyer v. Tabb, 18 Wallace, 546; White v. Hart, 13 Wallace, 646; Osborn v. Nicholson, 13 Wallace, 654.

"Sec. 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.

"Sec. 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 the 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 members of such State, being twenty-one 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.

"Sec. 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 and comfort to the enemies thereof, but Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

"Sec. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for service in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debts or obliga

tions 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.

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

The fourteenth amendment has given rise to more litigation than all of the other amendments to the Constitution combined; already nearly three hundred cases coming before the Supreme Court of the United States have involved the construction of some portion of this amendment. Upon its face the first section of this amendment would seem to entirely change the relations which had previously existed between the United States and its component States; and although the Supreme Court in the Slaughter House Cases1 gave to this section a restricted application, the amendment has nevertheless had a great influence upon these relations.

"The following pages will fully sustain the statement that the fourteenth amendment has vastly widened the powers of the Nation over the States. It has 'centralized' the government, to use the expression of those who, in the formation of the Constitution and in the many and continuous subsequent contestations upon its construction, opposed the policy of depositing with the Union so many vital powers directly operating upon the people. This amendment has made the national government federal as distinguished from confederate. The mere change from the government instituted after the Revolution by the Articles of Confederation really altered its structure from that of the confederate to that of the federal character, and on this score mainly the adoption of the Constitution in its original form was intensely opposed; but the adoption of the fourteenth amendment has still very much further widened the federal power over that of the States. The amendment could never have been adopted prior to the Civil War. It could not have been adopted but for that war."20

10 16 Wallace, 36.

20 Brannon's "The Fourteenth

Amendment,"

Introduction.

In

other portions of this introduction the effect of this amendment is probably over-estimated.