utional and void, not only the national civil rights
act, but also the principal sections of the different enforcement acts
which provided for the protection of individual citizens by the
Federal Government against domestic violence. National citizenship had
been created by the 14th Amendment and the Federal Government had been
clothed with power to enforce the provisions of that amendment.
Legislation for that purpose had been placed upon the statute books
and they were being enforced whenever and wherever necessary, as in
the case of the lawless and criminal organization called the Ku Klux
Klan. But the Supreme Court, very much to the surprise of every one,
stepped in and tied the hands of the national administration and
prevented any further prosecutions for violence upon the person of a
citizen of the United States, if committed within the limits of any
one of the States of the Union. In other words, if the State in which
a citizen of the United States may reside can not, does not or will
not protect him in the exercise and enjoyment of his personal, civil
and political rights, he is without a remedy. The result is that the
Federal Government is placed in the awkward and anomalous position of
exacting support and allegiance from its citizens, to whom it can not
in return afford protection, unless they should be outside the
boundaries of their own country. By those unfortunate and fatal
decisions the vicious and mischievous doctrine of States' Rights,
called by some State sovereignty, by others local self government,
which was believed to have perished upon the battlefields of the
country, was given new life, strength and audacity, and fostered by
the preaching of the fear of "Negro domination." The decision
declaring the Civil Rights Law unconstitutional was rendered by Mr.
Justice Bradley, and nearly all of those by which the principal
sections of the different enforcement laws were nullified, were
rendered by Chief Justice Waite.

If in every southern State today no attempt were made to violate or
evade the 15th Amendment and colored men were allowed free and
unrestricted access to the ballot boxes and their votes were fairly
and honestly counted, there would be no more danger of "Negro
domination" in any one of these States than there is of female
domination in States where women have the right to vote. All that
colored men have ever insisted upon, was not to dominate but to
participate, not to rule but to have