at they were believed to be in accord with the
other leaders and constitutional lawyers in the Republican party in
their construction of the 14th Amendment. The constitutional warrant
for the Civil Rights Bill is the clause which declares that "no state
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States." It was therefore held
that any law or ordinance which provided for, recognized or sanctioned
separate facilities for the two races in the exercise and enjoyment of
the rights and privileges that are supposed to be common to all
classes of persons, would be a violation of this provision of the 14th
Amendment; and since Congress was authorized to enforce the Amendment,
affirmative legislation for the enforcement of that provision was held
to be thus warranted. This view was held by such able and brilliant
constitutional lawyers as Edmunds and Conkling in the Senate, and
Butler, George F. and E. Rockwood Hoar, Lyman Tremaine, Garfield and
Wilson in the House. Senator Carpenter was the only Republican lawyer
of any note that took a different view of the matter. While he
believed the whole bill was unconstitutional, the section prohibiting
race discrimination in the selection of jurors in State courts he
believed to be especially obnoxious to the constitution. He declared
that if that section could stand the test of a judicial decision all
the others could and should. And yet the court, through a decision
handed down by Mr. Justice Strong, affirmed the constitutionality of
that section, but in a decision delivered by Mr. Justice Bradley the
section providing for equal accommodations in hotels, inns and places
of amusement was declared unconstitutional except in the District of
Columbia and the territories. In several subsequent decisions, giving
in the main the opinion of Chief Justice Waite, some of the most vital
and important sections of the enforcement acts, especially those
having for their object the protection of individual citizens, through
federal machinery, when necessary, against domestic violence, were
also declared to be unconstitutional and void.

I am of the opinion, shared in by many others, that if men of the type
of Edmunds and Conkling had been appointed Supreme Court Justices
instead of Waite and Bradley, the rulings of the court in the
important cases referred to might have been, and I think would have
been, different. The unfortunate thing ab