What
privilege or immunity has California or Oregon the constitutional right
to deny them, save that of the ballot? Clearly, then, if the fourteenth
amendment was not to secure to black men their right to vote, it did
nothing for them, since they possessed everything else before. But, if
it was meant to be a prohibition of the states, to deny or abridge their
right to vote--which I fully believe--then it did the same for all
persons, white women included, born or naturalized in the United States;
for the amendment does not say all male persons of African descent, but
all persons are citizens.
The second section is simply a threat to punish the states, by reducing
their representation on the floor of Congress, should they disfranchise
any of their male citizens, on account of color, and does not allow of
the inference that the states may disfranchise from any, or all other
causes; nor in any wise weaken or invalidate the universal guarantee of
the first section. What rule of law or logic would allow the conclusion,
that the prohibition of a crime to one person, on severe pains and
penalties, was a sanction of that crime to any and all other persons
save that one?
But, however much the doctors of the law may disagree, as to whether
people and citizens, in the original constitution, were one and the
same, or whether the privileges and immunities in the fourteenth
amendment include the right of suffrage, the question of the citizen's
right to vote is settled forever by the fifteenth amendment.
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