curred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.178

178 The debt incurred for the Union during the Civil War, including bounties and pensions, was by the adoption of this Amendment acknowledged and proportionately assumed by the southern States; and at the same time they were rendered incapable of paying any part of the debt (over $1,400,000,000) which they owed to their own citizens and to England, France, and other countries. The southern States lost also the value of the emancipated slaves.

This section deals only with what the Nation and the State shall do. An individual was held bound by the Supreme Court to pay after emancipation the rice which he had agreed before the Civil War to give for a slave, when such a contract was legal, for it was out of the power of a State to impair (Note 71), as it undertook to do, the obligation of such a contract.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.179

179 Appropriate legislation by Congress means such as is "adapted to the mischief and wrong which the Amendment was intended to provide against"- that is, to prevent oppressive action, not by individuals, but by State governments. Therefore the Civil Rights Act of March 1, 1875, which declared that all persons (meaning the emancipated Negroes) should be "entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities and privi

leges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of public amusement", was held (1883) by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional as to the sections which provided punishment for persons who should interfere with the rights mentioned, for the prohibition of the Amendment is directed only against action by States. "Until some State law has been passed," said the Supreme Court, "or some State action through its officers or agents has been taken adverse to the rights of the citizens sought to be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, no legislation of the United States under said Amendment, nor any proceeding under such legislation, can be called into activity."

ARTICLE XV.

Proposed by Congress February 27, 1869; proclaimed adopted March 30, 1870.

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.180

180 This is the last of the three Amendments arising from the Civil War. By these "the chains of the Constitution", as Jefferson called its limitations, were placed upon the States, as by the first ten Amendments they had been put upon the Nation.

"The Fifteenth Amendment," said the Supreme Court (1875), "does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one. It prevents the States, or the United States, however, from giving preference in this particular to one citizen of the United States over another on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Before its adoption this could be done. It was as much within the power of a State to exclude citizens of the United States from voting on ac

count of race, etc., as it was on account of age, property, or education. Now it is not."

A State which voted against the adoption of this Amendment left the word "white" in its constitution as descriptive of those entitled to vote. The Supreme Court said (1880) that the Amendment struck the word from the constitution of the State.

The "Grandfather's Clause" cases, as they were called, were decided by the Supreme Court in 1915. In 1908 a law was passed in Maryland giving the right to vote to all persons who, prior to January 1, 1868, were entitled to vote in that State "and to the lawful male descendants of any person" who was at that time entitled to vote. As the Negro was not at that time entitled to vote in the State, and as the Fifteenth Amendment forbidding restrictions upon him had not been adopted, the State law operated to exclude all his descendants from the polls. In 1910 a constitutional amendment in Oklahoma presented a literacy test (which may be legal if fair) and at the same time limited the right to vote to a person who was a voter on January 1, 1866, or a lineal descendant of such a person. In both of these instances the "previous condition of servitude" actually determined that a class could not vote. The Supreme Court held that the State law and the State constitutional provision were both violative of the Fifteenth Amendment, because they were based on standards which became illegal by the self-operating force of the Amendment. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XVI.

Proposed by Congress July 31, 1909; proclaimed adopted February 25, 1913.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes,181

181 The purpose of the Amendment, said the Supreme Court (1916), was, not to extend the taxing power of the government, but only to exclude the souree from which a taxed income is derived from being used as the criterion in determining whether it should be apportioned by Congress among the States on the basis of population in obedience to the clause explained by Note 10.

from whatever source derived,182 without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

182 But this does not authorize the taxing of the salaries of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States and of the judges of the inferior Federal courts, for it is forbidden (Note 98) that they be diminished. Therefore the Supreme Court held (1920) unconstitutional that clause of the Income Tax Act of 1919 which named such salaries as subject to taxation. The command that the salaries of judges be not reduced was given, not in any sense to favor the individuals who receive the salaries, but solely to protect the judicial officers of the Nation from being intimidated by the Legislative and Executive departments out of a state of independence into a condition of fear. If the justices of the Supreme Court and the judges of the Federal courts should have incomes from lands or from any other property, they must pay a tax upon those incomes as all other individuals do upon theirs. But the salaries paid to them by the Nation as its judicial officers are not to be diminished.

ARTICLE XVII.

Proposed by Congress May 15, 1912; proclaimed adopted May 31, 1913.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the peo

ple thereof, for six years; 183 and each Senator shall have one vote.

183 This Amendment changes the clause explained by Note 19. Senators are now elected by the people (as members of the House of Representatives always have been) instead of by the legislatures of the States. More than thirty States had declared for the direct election of senators. During the preceding twenty years so many protracted election contests had been conducted in State legislatures that legislation for the benefit of the States could not be carried on. In some instances no senator was elected and thus the State was deprived of its full vote in the Senate. The first resolution to amend the Constitution in this respect was introduced in Congress in 1826. Many others were introduced from time to time.

In 1869 President Johnson suggested to Congress an amendment for the direct election of senators.

Before this Amendment public opinion often affected or controlled the choice of a senator. Thus the famous debates throughout Illinois between Lincoln and Douglas (1858) were in quest of a senatorship.

The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies; Provided, that the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointment until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This Amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.