jurisdiction covered by these
enumerated rights. In no one of these can any State ever exercise any
power of discrimination between the different races. In the exercise of
State policy over matters exclusively affecting the people of each State
it has frequently been thought expedient to discriminate between the
two races. By the statutes of some of the States, Northern as well
as Southern, it is enacted, for instance, that no white person shall
intermarry with a negro or mulatto. Chancellor Kent says, speaking of
the blacks, that--

Marriages between them and the whites are forbidden in some of the
States where slavery does not exist, and they are prohibited in all the
slaveholding States; and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are
revolting, and regarded as an offense against public decorum.

I do not say that this bill repeals State laws on the subject of
marriage between the two races, for as the whites are forbidden to
intermarry with the blacks, the blacks can only make such contracts as
the whites themselves are allowed to make, and therefore can not under
this bill enter into the marriage contract with the whites. I cite this
discrimination, however, as an instance of the State policy as to
discrimination, and to inquire whether if Congress can abrogate all
State laws of discrimination between the two races in the matter of real
estate, of suits, and of contracts generally Congress may not also
repeal the State laws as to the contract of marriage between the two
races. Hitherto every subject embraced in the enumeration of rights
contained in this bill has been considered as exclusively belonging to
the States. They all relate to the internal police and economy of the
respective States. They are matters which in each State concern the
domestic condition of its people, varying in each according to its own
peculiar circumstances and the safety and well-being of its own
citizens. I do not mean to say that upon all these subjects there are
not Federal restraints--as, for instance, in the State power of
legislation over contracts there is a Federal limitation that no State
shall pass a law impairing the obligations of contracts; and, as to
crimes, that no State shall pass an _ex post facto_ law; and, as to
money, that no State shall make anything but gold and silver a legal
tender; but where can we find a Federal prohibition against the power
of any State to discriminate, as do most of them, between a