ts of the
Constitution, or in some other way, the States would still be
authorized, notwithstanding the provisions of the first section,
to deny to the citizens the privilege of voting, as mentioned in
the second section; but their mistake can not be held to add to,
or to take from the other provisions of the Constitution. It is
very clear that they did not intend, by this section, to give to
the States any such power, but, believing that the States
possessed it, they designed to hold the prospect of a reduction
of their representation in Congress _in terrorem_ over them to
prevent them from exercising it. They seem not to have been able
to emancipate themselves from the influence of the original
Constitution which conceded this power to the States, or to have
realized the fact that the first section of the Amendment, when
adopted, would wholly deprive the States of that power.

But those who prepare constitutions are never those who adopt
them, and consequently the views of those who frame them have
little or no bearing upon their interpretation. The question for
consideration here is, what the people, who, through their
representatives in the legislatures, adopted the Amendments,
understood, or must be presumed to have understood, from their
language. They must be presumed to have known that the
"privileges and immunities" of citizens which were secured to
them by the first section beyond the power of abridgment by the
States, gave them the right to exercise the elective franchise,
and they certainly can not be presumed to have understood that
the second section, which was also designed to be restrictive
upon the States, would be held to confer by implication a power
upon them, which the first section in the most express terms
prohibited.

It has been, and may be again asserted, that the position which I
have taken in regard to the second section is inadmissible,
because it renders the section nugatory. That is, as I hold, an
entire mistake. The leading object of the second section was the
readjustment of the representation of the States in Congress,
rendered necessary by the abolition of chattel slavery [not of
political slavery], effected by the XIII. Amendment. This object
the section accomplishes, and in this respect it remains wh