Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/701

Rh from exercising this power, "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" of the citizen.

The first remark to be made upon the second section of the XIV. Amendment is, that it does not give, and was not designed to give to the States any power to deny or abridge the right of any citizen to exercise the elective franchise. So far as it touches that subject, it was designed to be restrictive upon the States. It gives to them no power whatever. It takes away no power, and it gives none; but if the States possess the power to deny or abridge the right of citizens to vote, it must be derived from some other provision of the Constitution. I believe none such can be found, which was not necessarily abrogated by the first section of this Amendment. It may be conceded that the persons who prepared this section supposed that, by other parts of the Constitution, or in some other way, the States would still be authorized, notwithstanding the provisions of the first section, to deny to the citizens the privilege of voting, as mentioned in the second section; but their mistake can not be held to add to, or to take from the other provisions of the Constitution. It is very clear that they did not intend, by this section, to give to the States any such power, but, believing that the States possessed it, they designed to hold the prospect of a reduction of their representation in Congress in terrorem over them to prevent them from exercising it. They seem not to have been able to emancipate themselves from the influence of the original Constitution which conceded this power to the States, or to have realized the fact that the first section of the Amendment, when adopted, would wholly deprive the States of that power.

But those who prepare constitutions are never those who adopt them, and consequently the views of those who frame them have little or no bearing upon their interpretation. The question for consideration here is, what the people, who, through their representatives in the legislatures, adopted the Amendments, understood, or must be presumed to have understood, from their language. They must be presumed to have known that the "privileges and immunities" of citizens which were secured to them by the first section beyond the power of abridgment by the States, gave them the right to exercise the elective franchise, and they certainly can not be presumed to have understood that the second section, which was also designed to be restrictive upon the States, would be held to confer by implication a power upon them, which the first section in the most express terms prohibited.

It has been, and may be again asserted, that the position which I have taken in regard to the second section is inadmissible, because it renders the section nugatory. That is, as I hold, an entire mistake. The leading object of the second section was the readjustment of the representation of the States in Congress, rendered necessary by the abolition of chattel slavery [not of political slavery], effected by the XIII. Amendment. This object the section accomplishes, and in this respect it remains wholly untouched, by my construction of it. Neither do I think the position tenable which has been taken by one tribunal, to which the consideration of this subject was presented, that the constitutional provision does not execute itself. The provisions on which we rely were negative merely, and were designed to nullify existing as well as any future State legislation interfering with our rights. This result was accomplished by the constitution