es and immunities of citizens of the United States, and declared
that no state should deprive any person of his life, liberty, or
property without due process of law. Not yet satisfied, Congress
attempted to give social equality to negroes by the second civil rights
bill of 1875 which promised to them, among other things, the full and
equal enjoyment of inns, theaters, public conveyances, and places of
amusement--a law later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The matter of political rights was even more hotly contested; but the
radical Republicans, like Charles Sumner, asserted that civil rights
were not secure unless supported by the suffrage. In this same
fourteenth amendment they attempted to guarantee the ballot to all negro
men, leaving the women to take care of themselves. The amendment
declared in effect that when any state deprived adult male citizens of
the right to vote, its representation in Congress should be reduced in
the proportion such persons bore to the voting population.

This provision having failed to accomplish its purpose, the fifteenth
amendment was passed and ratified, expressly declaring that no citizen
should be deprived of the right to vote "on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude." To make assurance doubly secure,
Congress enacted in 1870, 1872, and 1873 three drastic laws, sometimes
known as "force bills," providing for the use of federal authorities,
civil and military, in supervising elections in all parts of the Union.
So the federal government, having destroyed chattel slavery, sought by
legal decree to sweep away all its signs and badges, civil, social, and
political. Never, save perhaps in some of the civil conflicts of Greece
or Rome, had there occurred in the affairs of a nation a social
revolution so complete, so drastic, and far-reaching in its results.

SUMMARY OF THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT

Just as the United States, under the impetus of Western enterprise,
rounded out the continental domain, its very existence as a nation was
challenged by a fratricidal conflict between two sections. This storm
had been long gathering upon the horizon. From the very beginning in
colonial times there had been a marked difference between the South and
the North. The former by climate and soil was dedicated to a planting
system--the cultivation of tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar cane--and in
the course of time slave labor became the foundation of the system. Th