The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, issued as a military expedient, declared that, unless the seceding States were back in the Union by January 1, 1863, all slaves in those States should be emancipated. This did not apply to the Union States, as Delaware, which still had slaves. But immediately upon the cessation of hostilities, Congress set to work to make emancipation general throughout the Union and to give the Negro all the rights of a citizen. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified December 18, 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime. The following April, the first Civil Rights Bill[5] was passed, which declared that “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, ... and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings in the security of persons and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishments and penalties, and to none other....” These rights were enlarged by the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, which provides that: “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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Though the word “Negro” is not mentioned in this Amendment nor in any of the subsequent Federal enactments, it is not open to dispute that the legislators had in mind primarily the protection of the Negro. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 was reënacted[6] in 1870, with the addition that it extended to all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States, and that it provided that all persons should be subject to like taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind. The same year, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, which declared that the right of citizens of the United States to vote should not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any States on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.