d
immunities of citizens, contained in the fourteenth amendment, applies
only to the States, and leaves the United States government free to
abridge the political privileges and immunities of citizens of the
United States, as such, at its pleasure. By the fifteenth amendment both
the United States and the State governments, are prohibited 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 fourteenth
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, but it gives none, and 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 cannot 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,