IVILEGES GUARANTEED.

_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.[1] No state shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall 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.[2]_

[1] This provision defines citizenship. It was worded with the special
view of including the negroes. It embodies the principle of the Civil
Rights Bill, and is intended to guarantee to the negroes the protection
implied in citizenship.

[2] Some of the amendments impose limitations only on the general
government. Lest the states in which slavery had recently been abolished
should endeavor to oppress the ex-slaves this provision was made as a
limitation upon the states.

But this provision is general in it nature, and by means of it the United
States can protect individuals against oppression on the part of the
states. Pomeroy [Footnote: Constitutional Law, p. 151.] regards this as
the most important amendment except the thirteenth.

SECTION II.--BASIS of REPRESENTATION.

_Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according
to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each
state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any
election for the choice of electors for president and vice-president of
the United States, representatives in congress, the executive and judicial
officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied
to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of
age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for
participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation
therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male
citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years
of age in such state._

Each state determines who may vote within its borders. This provision was
intended as an _inducement_ to the former slave states to grant franchise
to the colored men. It does not _compel_ them to do this. But granting the
franchise increases their representation. The fifteenth amendment is more
_imperative_ in this direction.

SECTION III.--DISABILI