through its officers or
agents has been taken, adverse to the rights of citizens sought to be
protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, no legislation of the United
States under said amendment, nor any proceeding under such
legislation, can be called into activity; for the prohibitions of the
amendment are against State laws and acts under State authority."
Otherwise Congress would take the place of State legislatures and
supersede them and regulate all private rights between man and man.
Civil rights such as are guaranteed by the Constitution against State
aggression, thought Justice Bradley, cannot be impaired by the
wrongful acts of individuals unsupported by State authority in the
shape of laws, customs, or executive proceedings, for those are
private wrongs.

Justice Bradley believed, moreover, that the Civil Rights Act could
not be supported by the Thirteenth Amendment in that, unlike the
Fourteenth Amendment, the Thirteenth Amendment is primary and direct
in abolishing slavery. "When a man has emerged from slavery," said he,
"and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the
inseparable concomitants of that state there must be some stage in
the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere
citizen, ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his
rights as a citizen or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary
modes by which other men's rights are protected." To eject a Negro
from an inn or a hotel, to compel him to ride in a separate car, to
deny him access and use of places maintained at public expense,
according to Justice Bradley, do not constitute imposing upon the
Negroes badges and incidents of slavery; for they are acts of
individuals with which Congress, because of the limited powers of the
Federal government, cannot have anything to do. The particular clause
in the Civil Rights Act, so far as it operated on individuals in the
several States was, therefore, held null and void, but the court held
that it might apply to the District of Columbia and territories of the
United States for which Congress might legislate directly. Since then
the court has in the recent _Wright Case_ declared null and void even
that part which it formerly said might apply to territory governed
directly by Congress, thus taking the position tantamount to reading
into the laws of the United States and the laws of nations the
segregation measures of a mediaeval ex-slaveholding commonwealth
assisted