The Civil Rights Bill of 1875 was the last effort of Congress to guarantee to Negroes their civil rights. It is well now to turn back in point of time, and trace the action of the State legislatures on the subject. It has been deemed advisable to let the year 1883 be the dividing point in the history of the latter legislation. Before that time the States were moving in conjunction with the Nation; after, the impotence of the Nation having been declared by its Supreme Court, the burden of defining and securing civil rights to Negroes devolved upon the States. Moreover, it is well to treat the Southern States and the States outside the South separately, because of the abnormal conditions in the former occasioned by Reconstruction. _In States Outside of South_ Between 1865 and 1883 there was comparatively little legislation in the Northern, Eastern, and Western States as to civil rights. This was naturally so because these States were waiting to see what the Federal government meant to do. A brief examination of what little legislation there was will be made. On May 16, 1865, Massachusetts[228] declared that there should be no distinction, discrimination, or restriction on account of color or race in any licensed inn, public place of amusement, public conveyance, or public meeting, and imposed a fine of fifty dollars for the violation of this law. The next year it included theatres[229] within the prohibition, but weakened the force of the statute by saying that there should be no exclusion or restriction “except for good cause.” The attitude of Delaware[230] toward civil rights is probably the most interesting of any of the Northern States. On April 11, 1873, its legislature passed the following “joint resolution in opposition to making Negroes the equals of white men, politically or socially”: “That the members of this General Assembly, for the people they represent, and for themselves, jointly and individually, do hereby declare uncompromising opposition to a proposed act of Congress, introduced by Hon. Charles Sumner at the last session, and now on file in the Senate of the United States, known as the ‘Supplemental Civil Rights Bill,’ and all other measures intended or calculated to equalize or amalgamate the Negro race with the white race, politically or socially, and especially do they proclaim unceasing opposition to making Negroes eligible to public offices, to sit on juries, and to their admission into public schools where white children attend, and to the admission on terms of equality with white people in the churches, public conveyances, places of amusement, or hotels, and to any measure designed or having the effect to promote the equality of the Negro with the white man in any of the relations of life, or which may possibly conduce to such result.