My investigations relating to them have been far from complete; I will relate, however, what I’ve observed on the subject. The Amendment was undoubtedly suggested by the reasoning of the Federalist on the subject of a common invoice of rights and trial by jury. Not a syllable. Quite the opposite, every safeguard is thrown round them; “no State shall go any bill of attainder,” or “grant any title of nobility.” So, too, in terms of the practical recognition of these rights on the ballot-field, all are included. Either we should hand over the rules announced in the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive their simply powers from the consent of the governed; and are formed by the folks to protect their rights, to not withhold them; or we must acknowledge the truth contended for by the plaintiff, that citizenship carries with it each incident to every citizen alike. And we invoke the interposition of of this Court to impact, by its decree, that which the Supreme Court of Missouri should have achieved, and declare that this objectionable word must be omitted, or considered as omitted from the Constitution and registration legislation of stated State.
But, other than the effectively-recognized historical past of this Amendment, as shown by the debates in Congress, of which this courtroom will take discover when obligatory, and which show that the only real object and purpose of this Amendment was to nonetheless additional protect the negro race, the IX. Although the purpose is just not alluded to by the Supreme Court of Missouri, yet, as we want to meet every possible objection, we expect this a proper place to notice an argument typically put forward, primarily based upon the XV. Take one illustration, evidenced by a current choice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, in Clark vs. We ask the courtroom to contemplate what it is to be disfranchised; not this plaintiff solely, but a whole class of people, utterly deprived of all voice in the federal government underneath which they stay! It could be unattainable for us to give any better motive for woman’s want of the ballot than the court docket has here given for that of the negro, besides that lady’s condition is even more helpless than his-“until these folks had the right to vote, and thus protect themselves towards oppression, their freedom from slavery can be a mockery.” How an American judge, with the declare of an American citizen before him, for the safety, which, as he really says, this ballot alone may give, might see its lawfulness and justice within the one case, and never in the opposite, passes our comprehension.
It was to compel the previous slave States to offer these freedmen the right of suffrage, and to provide them all the rights of other residents of the respective States, and thus make them equal with different residents earlier than the regulation. Or, to use the extra forcible language of this Court, within the Slaughter-home cases (sixteen Wall., 71), “the negro having, by the XIV. Amendment, been declared a citizen of the United States, is thus made a voter in every State of the Union.” If this be true of the negro citizen of the United States, it’s equally true of the girl citizen. They, as “residents of the United States,” are embraced in, and protected by, the broad language of the Amendment; a right that’s basic, can’t be taken away by implication. But, even if it might be held to acknowledge a right on the part of the State to disfranchise any one, it would solely prolong to “males,” to not females. So that, while the negro votes to-day in Missouri, there is just not a syllable of affirmative legislation by the State conferring the fitting upon him.
The discrimination, therefore, made and continued by the State of Missouri, of which we complain, is an unjustifiable act of arbitrary energy, not of right, and can be designated by no other term. The National Bank of the State of Missouri, 47 Mo. It was only intended to provide the freedmen the same rights that had been secured to all different lessons of citizens within the State, and that if the opposite male inhabitants of the State over the age of twenty-one years loved the precise of suffrage, so should the males among the many freedmen over the age of twenty-one years take pleasure in the same proper; it was not meant that females, or individuals under the age of twenty-one years, ought to have the appropriate of suffrage conferred on them. Amendment. It’s of the character of what is termed in law a adverse pregnant, or, the acquainted maxim of “the expression of 1 factor is the exclusion of one other.” As this Amendment says, that the suitable of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, coloration, or previous condition of servitude, it is claimed by some that it may be abridged on different grounds.