_Fourteenth_ Amendment warrants the exercise of any such power by the United States Government, and it is entirely out of the question to claim that the Fifteenth Amendment protects the right of a person, within a State, to vote against the attempt of another person or of other persons to infringe the same, or even against the "State" itself to do so, except it be on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. [Sidenote: Criticism of the Act.] There is not the slightest doubt in the mind of any good constitutional lawyer, at the present time, that Congress overstepped its constitutional powers in that part of the Enforcement Act of May 31st, 1870, which related to the exercise of the suffrage, and trenched upon the reserved powers of the "States." The excuse for it was that lawless bands of white men, the Ku-Klux Klans and the like, were intimidating the blacks, and in the approaching elections of the autumn of 1870 would prevent them from voting. But that was a matter for the "State" governments to look out for, and the "State" governments in the South were, at the time of the passage of this Act, with the exception of Tennessee, in the hands of the Republicans. [Sidenote: The corruption in the new "State" governments.] Meanwhile the new "State" governments had well begun their career of corruption, shame and vulgarity. They were plundering the treasury, increasing the taxes, selling franchises, issuing bonds, and celebrating {256} high carnival everywhere and all the time. The gentlemen and political leaders of the old school, and the old political class, of the South looked on aghast, with mingled feelings of bitter degradation and anger, and the hotspurs and desperadoes were stirred to deeds of intimidation and violence. There is little doubt that some negroes were terrified out of exercising the suffrage in the election of 1870. Not yet, however, had enough of the disqualified whites been amnestied, or enough intimidation been exercised, or sufficient unity among the whites been attained, to work the overthrow of "carpet-bag," negro rule. Enough, however, was threatened to influence the Republican Congress to proceed to more complete, if not more extreme, measures for the protection of the negro in his civil and political rights, and to move the President to garrison the principal points in the Southern "States" with United States soldiers. [Sidenote: The supplemental enforcement Act.]