The Civil War News & Views Open Discussion Forum

Interesting Email ---LONG!!!!
In Response To: Re: Hey George ()

I have no idea who researched and wrote this article,all data has been removed. I received it in an email today, that I also find a bit strange also.

GP

The question--

"Could someone comment how things "would be" if there WERE no US Constitution but ONLY the Articles of Confederation?"

The answer---

DELETED ALL AFOREHAND DATA TO PROTECT ORIGINATOR…

Of course, the main difference between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution was that Congress was granted the Article I Power to legislate directly upon individual white state-citizens in every state as explained by Daniel Webster:

"The people, then, Sir, erected this government. They gave it a Constitution, and in that Constitution they have enumerated the powers which they bestow on it. They have made it a limited government. They have defined its authority. They have restrained it to the exercise of such powers as are granted; and all others, they declare, are reserved to the States or the people. But, Sir, they have not stopped here. If they had, they would have accomplished but half their work. No definition can be so clear, as to avoid possibility of doubt; no limitation so precise, as to exclude all uncertainty. Who, then, shall construe this grant of the people? Who shall interpret their will, where it may be supposed they have left it doubtful? With whom do they repose this ultimate right of deciding on the powers of government? Sir, they have settled all this in the fullest manner. They have left it with the government itself, in its appropriate branches. Sir, the very chief end, the main design, for which the whole Constitution was framed and adopted, was to establish a government that should not be obliged to act through State agency, or depend on State opinion and State discretion. The people had had quite enough of that kind of government under the Confederation. Under that system, the legal action, the application of law to individuals, belonged exclusively to the States. Congress could only recommend; their acts were not of binding force, till the States had adopted and sanctioned them. Are we in that condition still? Are we yet at the mercy of State discretion and State construction? Sir, if we are, then vain will be our attempt to maintain the Constitution under which we sit."

Daniel Webster’s second reply to Robert Y. Hayne (January 26-27, 1830) http://www.history-quest.com/questions/DBQ/manifestdestinydbq.htm

Another important aspect of the Constitution, is that the US Constitution of 1787 provided some significant Limitations of the Power of States over individual white state-citizens. Concerning the Limitations on State Power aspect, the US Constitution contains the following Prohibitions that are not found in the Articles of Confederation:

"Section. 10. No State shall ... pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts...."

Text of Articles of Confederation http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/articles/text.html

A Bill of Attainder is a Common Law statute enacted by the Legislature that names a particular person or persons and imposes a penalty or loss upon them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder "he could no longer own property or pass property to his family by will or testament. His property could consequently revert to the [state]" "Bills of attainder were sometimes criticized as a convenient way for the King to convict subjects of crimes and confiscate their property without the bother of a trial—and without the need for a conviction or indeed any evidence at all. The first use of attainder was in 1321..."

Thus, under the Articles of Confederation, every state was free to imposed Act of Attainder against named white state-citizens stripping them of their property rights of their state-citizenship, and enslaving, executing, or exiling them. The States typically passed Bills of Attainder to identify and remove "Tories" (those who remained loyal to the British) from the states. Their land was confiscated, and they were exiled to Canada, and were forbidden to be Naturalized as citizens by Congress.

You can look up the meaning of "ex post Facto" laws that the states were free, under the Articles of Confederation, to enact and enforce against white state-citizens.

The states were also not forbidden by the Articles from enacting "Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts", nor was there any Power to grant Nationwide Patents to inventors of new and useful inventions, which meant that capitalism might not have flourished and there might not have been "the Industrial Revolution" in America, and thus America might not have won the World Wars of the 20th Century.

And, under both the Articles and the Constitution, the States were not forbidden from establishing a state-religion, nor enacting laws forbidding the exercise of certain sects of religion. The First Amendment later expressly forbade Congress to interfere with any State's Establishment of an official Religion, or with any state's laws regulating or prohibiting the exercise of any particular religion. Thus before and during the civil war the southern states abused and exiled preachers who dared to preach that sex slavery of white-skinned people was immoral or inconsistent with the teachings of the Gospel, or who dissented against any official policy of the states.

Also, under the Articles, the people in the states were not guaranteed a "republican form of government" and so each state could adopt a Limited Monarchy like in England wherein the people are not citizens but only subjects, or at the other extreme a cumbersome Democracy in which each citizen has a right to vote directly on all proposed legislation.

George Washington refused the title of "King" and said:

"For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principle. You have, in a common cause, fought, and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess, are the work of joint councils, and joint efforts -- of common dangers, sufferings and success."
George Washington, "Farewell Address", delivered September 17, 1796. (Emphasis added.)

Meanwhile, the United States acquired new territories for the benefit of "citizens of the United States". Sometimes the white people already living in those acquired territories were Naturalized as "citizens of the United States": For example, Article III of the 1803 Treaty between the U S of A and the French Republic provided:

"The inhabitants of the ceded territory-shall be incorporated in Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess."

The mingling of citizens from different states in the new territories solidified the view that American citizens were first citizens of the United States free to become state-citizens in any state of their choice, rather than perpetual citizens of the state of their birth (as under the common law rule).

The Americans adopted the view that it is their "Manifest Destiny" to acquire all the territory west of the original 13 colonies.

Yet, neither the Articles nor the original Constitution contained any "Law Clauses" requiring the states to establish and maintain a system of Just and Equal Laws securing the life, liberty and property of white state-citizens. See Part 1: Law, a Revolutionary Idea for Peace at http://billstclair.com/ferran/
Similarly, neither the Articles nor the original Constitution contained any limitations on the power of the states to deprive state-citizens of their state-citizenship, and thus during the civil war the southern states abused and exiled state-citizens who remained loyal to the Union, and any who dissented against the rebellion.

The Articles of Confederation also contained no Definition of "Treason" and so, according to the flexible Common Law definition, any exercise of Speech contrary to official State-Policy (e.g., any anti-war protest, any demand for civil rights) could be punished as Treason Against the State:

"During the American Civil War there were few Southern Unionists better known in the North than Rev. William G. "Parson" Brownlow of East Tennessee. A regionally prominent figure before the war, the controversial Methodist minister and newspaper editor became something of a national celebrity during the conflict itself. Brownlow denounced "the vile heresy of secession" in the Knoxville Whig for as long as Tennessee remained in the Union. After the state voted in favor of separation in June 1861--against the wishes of a large majority of East Tennesseans, though not of Knoxvillians--he shifted his focus to a vitriolic critique of the "so-called Confederacy" and its "reign of terror" over Southern Unionists. (1) Local authorities finally arrested him and charged him with treason in late 1861; and after an imprisonment of three months, he was banished beyond Confederate lines in March 1862. Shortly thereafter he began a triumphal speaking tour of the North, addressing large and enthusiastic audiences from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Portland, Maine."

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=MNnTPpvHcz993vGJwJQJLVL9T27FphLbLzqF1zn8xGgpr5L3q3C2!1446720761!-1754635462?docId=5000665049

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-983283/Contesting-secession-Parson-Brownlow-and.html

During the Civil War, thousands of freed blacks aided the Union's effort to suppress the dissolution of the "perpetual Union" referred to in the Articles.

"The slaves no longer feared slave patrols, empty threats from the plantation mistresses, and movements of Confederate armies. By the fall of 1862, a flood of fugitive slaves caused the federal government to begin a contraband camp system at Grand Junction. Throughout Tennessee, tens of thousands of contraband camp dwellers became an essential labor force for the Union army. They helped to build huge forts, like Nashville's Fort Negley and Memphis' Fort Pickering. From Memphis to Nashville, to Chattanooga, to Knoxville, and even to Bristol, black men and women laborers repaired roads, bridges, and railroads, and served as teamsters, common laborers, military hospital workers, servants to officers, cooks, laundresses, cattle herders, assistant surgeons, blacksmiths, and military spies AND ARMED SOLDIERS TO FIGHT AS THE WHITE SOLDIERS, NO SEGRAGATION WAS ALLOWED! THE BLACKS WERE TREATED THE SAME AS THE WHITE SOLDIERS.. In the spring of 1863, the Union began to recruit and organize black soldiers INTO SEGRAGATED UNITS, MOST TIME, WITHOUT EVEN BEING PAID!. By war's end, some 20, 133 black Union army soldiers served in Tennessee...." (All highlighted ITEMS were added by CLM Sr.)

http://www.tnstate.edu/library/digital/BlacKs.htm

After the Civil War, millions of freed blacks were given the same birthright citizen status of the white man, and the state-citizenship of all citizens, black and white, became expressly guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. And, as L.B. Bork pointed out, the Fourteenth Amendment was written to secure voluntary state-citizenship and the Life, Liberty and Property of WHITES and blacks alike:

"the following evidence shows the intent of said amendment as stated by one of the proponents of the amendment:

QUOTE FROM: POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS, LEGISLATIVE, DIPLOMATIC, AND POPULAR, 1856-1886,

JAMES G. BLAINE, NORWICH, CONN. THE HENRY BILL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 1887

Page 64. The Reconstruction Problem, speech of James Blaine, Skowhegan, Maine (August 29, 1866)

"In the first place, we ask that they will agree to certain changes in the Constitution of the United States; and, to begin with, we want them to unite with us in broadening the citizenship of the Republic. The slaves recently emancipated by proclamation, and subsequently by Constitutional Amendment, have no civil status. They should be made citizens. We do not, by making them citizens, make them voters,—we do not, in this Constitutional Amendment, attempt to force them upon Southern white men as equals at the ballot-box; but we do intend that they shall be admitted to citizenship, that they shall have the protection of the laws, that they shall not, any more than the rebels shall, be deprived of life, of liberty, of property, without due process of law, and that “they shall not be denied the equal protection of the law.” And in making this extension of citizenship, we are not confining the breadth and scope of our efforts to the negro. It is for the white man as well. We intend to make citizenship National. Heretofore, a man has been a citizen of the United States because he was a citizen of some-one of the States: now, we propose to reverse that, and make him a citizen of any State where he chooses to reside, by defining in advance his National citizenship—and our Amendment declares that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside.” This Amendment will prove a great beneficence to this generation, and to all who shall succeed us in the rights of American citizenship; and we ask the people of the revolted States to consent to this condition as an antecedent step to their re-admission to Congress with Senators and Representatives.”

Thus, what was begun by the citizens who departed their birth-states to establish new states in the Territories was completed in the Constitution. Every white citizen of the United States had a CONSTITUTIONALLY secured right to become the state-citizen in any US state in which he choose to reside, a citizenship that no state could refuse or deprive him of, and thus he was no longer under the peretual allegience and control of the state of his birth.

Inalienable Rights do not enforce themselves. You have the same god-given rights as an Iraqi living under Sadam in the state of Iraq. The decision of a ruler to violate your god-given rights is either going to be resisted by force (en-forced) or the god-given rights have no practical enjoyment on Earth. Taking away the Protection of the United States Government and Courts from whites is the states is race-hatred,but their are many among the so-called Patriot movement who wish to strip whites of all "civil rights" and place them into the same inferior status of state-only citizens that was sometimes held by freed blacks before the 14th Amendment gave them the same citizenship status that whites held (i.e., citizens of the United States). They want whites to hold the same degraded legal status as Indians and black slaves did (non-citizens, or state-only citizens). Dred Scott v. Sandford. They are a race-traitors, and there is no other way to look at it. They hate their race and they want members of their own race to be violated by State governments and to be without remedy and without redress just as whites were before the civil war. And, it is a matter of historical FACT that the states did not, do not and will not magically obey all the inalienable rights of white people. The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to protect White State-Citizens from abuse by the states, to give them the constitutional right to "move about" (reside in) any other state. The whites of the 1860s were intelligent and they WANTED to be able to choose their state of residence, and not be stuck in any one state the way that a "state-only" citizen is.

Harper’s Weekly, for example, wrote in 1861 that while Unionists were fighting the civil war they were inspired to fight by what was going to happen afterward.45 That is, “the North, after conquering this rebellion, means to have guarantees for its rights.”46 One of the items set forth was the constitutional right “of going freely every where in the country, and of freely expressing every where his opinion.”47 How these views would play out after the war was made clear in a column on August 6, 1864:

The people of the United States, therefore, in their Constitution have forbidden Congress to abridge either of these rights [freedom of press and freedom of speech]; and what they would not suffer their supreme legislature to do, they will not permit to any local assembly.48

"slavery led to STATE repudiation of virtually every one of the Bill's rights and freedoms, most definitely including the Bill [of Right]'s "inestimable privilege" of juries-grand, petit, and civil-in cases involving liberty. As it had for Anti-Federalists in the 1780's, the Bill [of Rights] encompassed for Republicans in the 1860's an armory of indispensable weapons against a tyranny that people had seen with their own eyes." http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Amar1.html

By the end of the Civil War, the need for the Whole People of the United States to have a way to restrain tyranny of states from oppressing WHITES was painfully clear, as explained in the speech of John A. Bingham (the draftsman of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment) introducing the Fourteenth Amendment to Congress:

'As slaves were not protected by the Constitution, there might be some color of excuse for the slave States in their disregard for the requirement of the bill of rights as to slaves in refusing them protection in life or property. * * * 'But, sir, there never was even colorable excuse, much less apology, for any man North or South claiming that any State Legislature or State court, or State Executive, has any right to deny protection to any free citizen of the United States within their limits in the rights of life, liberty, and property. Gentlemen who oppose this amendment oppose the grant of power to enforce the bill of rights. Gentlemen who oppose this amendment simply declare to these rebel States, 'Go on with your confiscation statutes, your statutes of banishment, your statutes of unjust imprisonment, your statutes of murder and death against men because of their loyalty to the Constitution and Government of the United States." Cong.Globe. at 1089-1091. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=332&invol=46

Thus, an explicit intention of the Fourteenth Amendent was to prohibit every state from enacting "confiscation statutes" depriving WHITE STATE-citizens of their property.

It was intended by the Framers of the 14th Amendment to give white citizens protection of Life, Liberty and Property while they were inside their own state. Previously, a citizen of one state could only claim US government protection of his Life, Liberty or Property, while he was visiting a different state (not the one he was a citizen of), or visiting a foreign country. There was virtually no power in Congress or in the Federal Courts to protect the Life, Liberty or Property of anyone, white, or black, within their own state. That was changed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

"prior to the recent [14th] amendment,...The States were merely prohibited from passing bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, laws impairing the obligation of contracts, and perhaps one or two more. But others of the greatest consequence were enumerated, although they were only secured, in express terms, from invasion by the Federal Government; such as the right of habeas corpus, the right of trial by jury, of free exercise of religious worship, the right of free speech and a free press, the right peaceably to assemble for the discussion of public measures, the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, and above all, and including almost all the rest, the right of not being deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. These, and still others are specified in the original Constitution, or in the early amendments of it, as among the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, or, what is still stronger for the force of the argument, the rights of all persons, whether citizens or not.' 16 Wall. at pages 118, 119; see also 16 Wall. at pages 120-122. http://www.constitution.org/ussc/332-046c.htm

Mr. Justice Field in his dissenting opinion in O'Neil v. Vermont, 144 U.S. 323, 337, 361, 698, 707, said that

'While, therefore, the [first] ten amendments as limitations on power, and, so far as they accomplish their purpose and find their fruition in such limitations, are applicable only to the federal government and not to the states, yet, so far as they declare or recognize the rights of persons they are rights belonging to them as citizens of the United States under the constitution; and the fourteenth amendment, as to all such rights, places a limit upon state power by ordaining that 'no state shall make or enforce' any law which shall abridge them. If I am right in this view, then every citizen of the United States is protected from punishments which are cruel and unusual. It is an immunity which belongs to him, against both state and federal action. The state cannot apply to him, any more than the United States, the torture, the rack, or thumb-screw, or any cruel and unusual punishment, or any more than it can deny to him security in his house, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, or compel him to be a witness against himself in a criminal prosecution. These rights, as those of citizens of the United States, find their recognition and guaranty against federal action in the constitution of the United States, and against state action in the fourteenth amendment. The inhibition by that amendment is not the less valuable and effective because of the prior and existing inhibition against such action in the constitutions of the several states. * * *' 144 U.S. at page 363, 12 S.Ct. at page 708. http://www.constitution.org/ussc/332-046c.htm

The Supreme Court of the United States has granted certiorari in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago to consider this question:

Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities or Due Process Clauses.

In a post-ratification explanation of the drafting process, Bingham indicated that upon re-reading Barron v. City of Baltimore59 he noticed Chief Justice Marshall’s suggestion that if the Bill of Rights had been intended to apply to the states it would have used the same formulation as Article I, Section 10 and began with “No State shall . . . .”60 Bingham indicated that he followed Marshall’s formulation when he drafted Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.61 In that same speech, Bingham further indicated that “the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States . . . are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States.”62

http://www.cardozolawreview.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=143:aynes2010170&catid=20:firearmsinc&Itemid=24

According to Professor Amar,:

"Reconstruction Republicans recast arms bearing as a core civil right . . . . Arms were needed . . . to protect one’s individual homestead. Everyone—even nonvoting, nonmilitia-serving women—had a right to a gun for self-protection."

Rep. John Bingham, the principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment, explained and advocated that the Fourteenth apply the first eight Amendments of the Bill of Rights to the States. After it was Ratified, everything was up to interpretation by the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently declined to interpret it that way (refused to enforce the Bill of Rights), BECAUSE they really did not want NEGROS to have the Right to Keep and Bear Arms!

A contemporary comment illustrates that the Slaughter-House interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment was made without full regard for the congressional purpose or popular understanding.

'It must be admitted that the construction put upon the language of the first section of this amendment by the majority of the court is not its primary and most obvious signification. Ninety nine out of every hundred educated men, upon reading this section over, would at first say that it forbade a state to make or enforce a law which abridged any privilege or immunity whatever of one who was a citizen of the United States; and it is only by an effort of ingenuity that any other sense can be discovered that it can be forced to bear. http://www.constitution.org/ussc/332-046c.htm

But, Justice Black copied the speaches from the Congressional Globe into his famous Appendix in ADAMSON V. PEOPLE OF STATE OF CALIFORNIA , 332 U.S. 46 (1947) http://www.constitution.org/ussc/332-046c.htm

The Supreme Court resisted the intention of the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment to enforce the Bill of Rights against the States, but later the Court abided by their intention, but using the Due Process Clause and a concept of "fundamental rights" instead of applying the Privileges/Immunities Clause:

"While in substantial agreement with the views of Mr. Justice BLACK, I have one reservation and one addition to make. I agree that the specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights should be carried over intact into the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. But I am not prepared to say that the latter is entirely and necessarily limited by the Bill of Rights. Occasions may arise where a proceeding falls so far short of conforming to fundamental standards of procedure as to warrant constitutional condemnation in terms of a lack of due process despite the absence of a specific provision in the Bill of Rights."

Mr. Justice MURPHY, with whom Mr. Justice RUTLEDGE concurs, dissenting. http://www.constitution.org/ussc/332-046c.htm

In Near v. Minnesota the Supreme Court agreed that "It is no longer open to doubt that the liberty of the press and of speech is within the liberty safeguarded by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment from invasion by state action." Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, 707 (1931) As Judge Black expressed the supposedly reigning view, "the Fourteenth Amendment applies the First, with all the force it brings to bear against the Federal Government, against the States." Smith v. People, 361 U.S 147, 157 (1959).

After the Civil War, Christians in Congress tried to find in the US Constitution a power to compel the states to respect the Bill of Rights, and to respect the rights of Life, Liberty and Property generally, and ultimately concluded their was no such power without a fourteenth constitutional amendment. http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Amar1.html

The Fourteenth Amendment's "original intent," and what it potentially means to you, was explicitly stated in the concurring opinions of Justice BRADLEY, SWAYNE and FIELD in Bartemeyer v. Iowa (1873) which included a tribute to the veterans of the civil war:

"By that portion of the fourteenth amendment by which no State may make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, or take life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it has now become the fundamental law of this country that life, liberty, and property (which include 'the pursuit of happiness') are sacred rights, which the Constitution of the United States guarantees to its humblest citizen against oppressive legislation, whether national or local, so that he cannot be deprived of them without due process of law. ...

"Before this amendment and the thirteenth amendment were adopted, the States had supreme authority over all these matters, and the National government, except in a few particulars, could afford no protection to the individual against arbitrary and oppressive legislation. After the civil war had closed, the same authority was asserted, and, in the States recently in insurrection, was exercised to the oppression of the freedmen; and towards citizens of the North seeking residence there, or citizens resident there who had maintained their loyalty during the war for nationality, a feeling of jealousy and dislike existed which could not fail soon to fined expression in discriminating and hostile legislation. It was to prevent the possibility of such legislation in future, and its enforcement where already adopted, that the fourteenth amendment was directed. It grew out of the feeling that a union which had been maintained by such costly sacrifices was, after all, worthless if a citizen could not be protected in all his fundamental rights everywhere- North and South, East and West-throughout the limits of the Republic. The [fourteenth] amendment was not, as held in the opinion of the majority [in the Slaughter-House Cases], primarily intended to confer citizenship on the negro race. It had a much broader purpose; it was intended to justify legislation [i.e., now codified as 42 USC sections 1983, 1985, 1986] , extending the protection of the National government over the common rights of all citizens of the United States, and thus obviate objections to the legislation [i.e., the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Freemen's Bureau Act] adopted for the protection of the emancipated race. It was intended to make it possible for all persons, which necessarily included those of every race and color, to live in peace and security wherever the jurisdiction of the nation reached. It, therefore, recognized, if it did not create, a National citizenship, and made all persons citizens except those who preferred to remain under the protection of a foreign government; and declared that their privileges and immunities, which embrace the fundamental rights belonging to citizens of all free governments, should not be abridged by any State. This National citizenship [85 U.S. 129, 141] is primary, and not secondary. It clothes its possessor, or would do so if not shorn of its efficiency by construction, with the right, when his privileges and immunities are invaded by partial and discriminating legislation, to appeal from his State to his Nation, and gives him the assurance that, for his protection, he can invoke the whole power of the government."

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=85&invol=129

That profound declaration of the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment is a correct and contemporaneous statement of the "original intent" of the First Section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and that view was correctly and fully embraced by the entire Supreme Court of the United States (up until the present, Rehnquist, Supreme Court). See, cases collected in "Law" (Part 1) and the recently created Doctrine of Unauthorized Deprivation (Part 2) at www.billstclair.com/ferran

As the Justices said, the Fourteenth Amendment "was intended to justify legislation [i.e., now codified as 42 USC sections 1983, 1985, 1986], extending the protection of the National government over the common rights of all citizens of the United States, and thus obviate objections to the legislation adopted for the protection of the emancipated race." The legislation effecting the purpose referred to, enacted by Congress (in 1871) to extend the "protection of the National government over the common rights of all citizens of the United States," was titled "An Act to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment" approved April 20, 1871 (now codified in 42 USC sections 1983, 1985, 1986):

42 U.S.C. Section 1983. Civil action for deprivation of rights:

"Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress."

Title 42, United States Code, Sec. 1983 (History: R.S. Sec. 1979 derived from act Apr. 20, 1871, ch. 22, Sec. 1, 17 Stat. 13. "An Act to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment."

This statute, enacted to aid in "'the preservation of human liberty and human rights'" Owen v. City of Independence, 445 US 622, 636 (1980), reflects a congressional judgment that a "damages remedy against the offending party is a vital component of any scheme for vindicating cherished constitutional guarantees." As remedial legislation, [the Act to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment] is to be construed generously to further its primary purpose.

Gomez v. Toledo, 446 US 635 (1980).

Mr. Garfield (later president), who had participated in the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 said during the debates to enact Section 1983:

'I come now to consider * * * for it is the basis of the pending bill, the fourteenth amendment. I ask the attention of the House to the first section of that amendment, as to its scope and meaning. I hope gentlemen will bear in mind that this debate, in which so many have taken part, will become historical, as the earliest legislative construction [332 U.S. 46, 111] given to this clause of the amendment. Not only the words which we put into the law, but what shall be said here in the way of defining and interpreting the meaning of the clause, may go far to settle its interpretation and its value to the country hereafter.' Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess. (App. 1871) 150.

'The next clause of the section under debate declares: 'Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.'

'This is copied from the fifth article of amendments, with this difference: as it stood in the fifth article it operated only as a restraint upon Congress, while here it is a direct restraint upon the governments of the States. The addition is very valuable. It realizes the full force and effect of the clause in Magna Charta, from which it was borrowed; and there is now no power in either the State or the national Government to deprive any person of those great fundamental rights on which all true freedom rests, the rights of life, liberty, and property, except by due process of law; that is, by an impartial trial according to the laws of the land. * * *' Cong. Globe, supra, at 152, 153.

http://www.constitution.org/ussc/332-046c.htm

And also in http://www.constitution.org/ussc/332-046c.htm

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