(1914) to be unconstitutional as creating "involuntary servitude" in violation of this Amendment.

A person who hired another under a contract by which the hirer had the right to imprison the worker or keep him under guard until the contract should be performed was held (1903) by a Federal court to violate the Peonage Act of Congress (1909) passed under this Amendment. And so it was held (1907) of a State law making it a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for one to agree to perform service and then, after receiving a part of the consideration in advance, refuse to perform.

Thus it is seen from very late cases that this provision is still vital and active.

But in many cases it has been held that city ordinances requiring persons committed to the city prison to work out their fines in the streets or elsewhere do not violate this Amendment.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.170

170 Congress passed under this constitutional authority the Civil Rights Act of March 1, 1875, another act prohib iting peonage, and some other statutes. The first and second sections of the Civil Rights Act of Congress were held (1888) by the Supreme Court in contravention of this Amendment, which is a regulation of the States with regard to slavery, and which does not authorize Congress to regulate the conduct of individuals who prevent Negroes from having the full and equal enjoyment of hotels, theatres, and other public places. Legislation of this kind comes within the police power of the State. In many of the States there has been legislation requiring the providing of separate but equal accommodations for white persons and Negroes. Such regulations have been held valid as essential to public order.

The Supreme Court has said that while the object of this Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, "in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either." The Court said that laws permitting and even requiring separation did not imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and such laws had been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of State legislatures in the exercise of their police powers.

ARTICLE XIV.

Proposed by Congress June 16, 1866; proclaimed adopted July 21, 1868.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.171

171 The Thirteenth Amendment was found to be not enough. Reviewing the history of the times, the Supreme Court pointed out that in some States the former slaves were "forbidden to appear in the towns in any other character than menial servants"; that they were required to reside upon and cultivate the land "without the right to purchase or own it"; that they were excluded from many occupations of gain and were "not permitted to give testimony in the courts in any case where a white man was a party"; that laws were passed imposing heavy fines on vagrants and loiterers, who, if unable to pay the fines, were sold to the highest bidder. "These circumstances," said the Supreme Court, "whatever of falsehood or misconcep

tion may have been mingled with their presentation, forced upon the statesmen who had conducted the Federal Government in safety through the crisis of the rebellion and who supposed that by the Thirteenth Article of Amendment they had secured the result of their labors, the conviction that something more was necessary in the way of constitutional protection to the unfortunate race who had suffered so much."

Hence the Fourteenth Amendment.

It

This Amendment made the Negro not only a citizen of the United States but also of the State of his residence. struck the word "white" from the constitutions of northern States which had limited citizenship to white males. In North and South the Negro became possessed in law of all the rights of citizenship.

The citizen was not, under the theory of States' rights, in contact with the National Government. He owed allegiance to his State, and the State dealt with the Nation. That theory was definitely set aside by this Amendment, which made all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof citizens of both the Nation and the State, owing allegiance to both authorities. James Wilson of Pennsylvania stated (Note 19) this doctrine clearly in the Constitutional Convention. The contention was made in the first great case to arise under this Amendment, which did not involve the Negro at all, the controversy being between rival business houses, that the Amendment originated a new citizenship for all, which supplanted former State citizenship and changed the rights attending it. That would mean that the National Government would now be the source of all those rights of a fundamental character which belong to the citizens of all free governments by virtue of their manhood, and for the protection (not creation) of which all just governments are formed. The Supreme Court rejected (1873) the contention and said that the Amendment did not dis

close "any purpose to destroy the main features of the general system." It held that the command that "no State shall . . . abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" does not prevent a State from abridging privileges of State citizenship as distinguished from privileges of National citizenship. This momentous decision, involving the preservation of State citizenship and State rights, was, like that upholding the power of the President in the Civil War to blockade ports and take any steps necessary to preserve the life of the Nation, rendered by a majority of one vote.

In the Dred Scott case (1856), brought by a negro servant of a surgeon in the United States army, who had been taken into Illinois and other free territory and who claimed for that reason the right to liberty, as the negro slave Somerset had by the decision of Lord Mansfield been liberated when he was taken from Virginia to England, the Supreme Court held that the Negro was "not intended to be included under the word 'citizen' in the Constitution", for which reason he had no standing in court. By this Amendment he became a citizen of the Nation and a citizen of his State, and possessed of the benefits of all State and National constitutions and laws. The fugitive slave provision (Note 121) was inserted in the Constitution to prevent the application in this country of the rule announced in the Somerset case.

"While the Fourteenth Amendment was intended primarily for the benefit of the negro race," said a Federal court, "it also confers the right of citizenship upon persons of all other races, born or naturalized in the United States." But a person born in the United States and not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" does not become a citizen, such as the child of a foreign minister or consul.

The refusal of Congress to permit the naturalization of Chinese was held by the Supreme Court (1898) not to ex

clude from the benefit of this Amendment a Chinese "born . . . in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." While the parents were subjects of the Emperor of China, they were permanently domiciled in the United States and carrying on business. The definition of "citizen" in this Amendment is only an affirmation of the ancient rule of citizenship by birth within the territory of allegiance. The alien owes allegiance to the country of his residence he is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" - and therefore his children become citizens by birth.

Notwithstanding this Amendment, it was held by the Supreme Court (1915) to be within the power of Congress to pass the Act of 1907 declaring that an American woman marrying a foreigner should forfeit her citizenship in the United States; and this although she remained in the United States.

After the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted a woman in Missouri, where the right to vote was limited to males, sued the registrar because he refused (1872) to put her name on the list of voters. She contended that as she was a “citizen of the United States" under the Amendment, the State could not "abridge" her right as such citizen to vote for the presidential electors. The Supreme Court, denying her claim (1874), said that as she was a citizen born of citizen parents before the Amendment, her status with respect to voting was not changed by it, because the right to vote before the Amendment was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship. That was demonstrated by the necessity for the Fifteenth Amendment, which protected the Negro from being excluded from voting because of color. That Amendment did not affect the Negro's wife, who remained debarred on account of sex. But she became entitled to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment removed that bar.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall