Before all of the Southern communities had been admitted to representation in Congress, and before any of them except Tennessee had gotten fairly under way with their new "State" governments, a bill was presented in Congress to provide for the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. It will be remembered that these Amendments authorized the exercise of power by the United States Government against "State" action only. They read: "No _State_ shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of a citizen of {254} 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"; and "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." It is entirely clear from this language that, in the enforcement of these new provisions of the Constitution, the United States Government must direct its powers against the action of the "States," respectively, through their legislators and officials, and against that only. But in this bill which became law on the 31st of May, 1870, Congress enacted penalties not only against "State" officers and agents for the violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, but severe penalties against any _person_ within the "States," as well as the Territories, who should undertake to deprive by unlawful means any other person of his right to qualify and vote at any election, and against any _person_ who under color of any law, statute or ordinance, regulation or custom, should undertake to deprive any other person of his civil rights and civil equality. Congress also, in this Act, vested the jurisdiction over such cases in the United States courts and authorized the President of the United States to enforce their decisions by the aid of the United States army and navy if necessary. Now, while it may probably be rightly claimed that the _Thirteenth_ Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or in any place subject to their jurisdiction," empowers Congress to make laws protecting the civil rights and civil equality of persons {255} within the "States" against infringement by other _persons_, and to invest the officers of the United States, both judicial and executive, with the power to enforce these laws, since in this Amendment the prohibition of slavery or involuntary servitude is not directed against "State" action solely, but against any attempt made by anybody to create an involuntary servitude, it cannot on the other hand be claimed, with any show of correct interpretation, that the