From the Supreme Court of the United States, however, the Negroes received little encouragement, in as much as the right of suffrage, with its requirements of property ownership and the literacy test, could be withheld from the Negro without specifically discriminating against any one on account of race or color. In _Southy_ v. _Virginia_, 181 U. S., Revised Statutes, of the United States, Cont. St. 1901, pages 37-42, providing that every person who prevents, hinders, controls or intimidates another from exercising the right of suffrage, to whom that right is guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, by means of bribery, etc., shall be punished, was held invalid as it was considered to be beyond the constitutional power of Congress to act in such a case except in that of race discrimination. If the discrimination is in a State or municipal election, however, Congress may intervene, if the discrimination is shown, but not until then. In the case of _Giles_ v. _Harris_[64] there was brought to the Supreme Court a bill in equity, complaining that Negroes qualified to vote for members of Congress had been refused on account of their color by virtue of the Alabama constitution, whereas white men were registered to vote at such an election. Relief was asked for on the basis of the Revised Statutes, Sec. 1979, praying that the Supreme Court should order that the petitioner be registered and declare null and void the special clause of the Alabama constitution. The court answered this petition with certain observations disclaiming jurisdiction largely for "want of merit in the averments which were made in the complaint as to the violation of Federal rights." The court held that if the registrars acting at this election in Alabama had no authority under the new constitution, which the petitioner prayed that the court might declare null and void, they could not legally register the plaintiff. If they had authority, they were within their right to use their discretion. If this clause in the constitution should be struck down according to the prayer of the plaintiff, there would be no board to which the mandamus could be issued. The Supreme Court, therefore, held that no damage had been suffered because no refusal to register by a board constituted in defiance of the Federal Constitution could disqualify a legal voter otherwise entitled to exercising the electorate franchise, since this amounts to a decision upon an independent non-Federal ground sufficient to sustain the judgment without reference to the Federal question presented. It observed, moreover, that the bill imported that the great mass of the white population intended to keep the blacks from voting. To meet such an intent something more than ordering the plaintiff named to be inscribed upon the lists of 1902 would be needed.