203 U.S. Argument for Plaintiffs in Error. The right to pursue or follow any of the ordinary vocations of life are not created by the Constitution or laws of the United States, but are among the inherent and inalienable rights of man, and are, therefore, not dependent for their existence. upon the Constitution. Butchers' Union v. Crescent City Co., 111 U. S. 746; Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 13. Admitting the facts alleged in the indictment to be true, it does not follow that the conspiracy upon a part of certain individuals to intimidate or interfere with a Negro citizen in the performance of his contract fastens upon the Negro any badge of slavery any more than it would be held to fasten a badge of slavery upon a white man if his right to contract. should be interfered with by intimidations or threats. The most that can be said of the acts alleged in the indictment is that they are a violation or in violation of the criminal laws of the State of Arkansas. The Thirteenth Amendment has respect not to distinction of race or class or color, but to slavery. The Constitution prohibits a State from passing a law impairing the obligation of a contract. This did not give Congress power to provide laws for general enforcement of contracts, nor power to invest the courts of the United States with power over contracts so as to enable parties to sue upon them in these courts. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3. Examples of some of the rights guaranteed or secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States are those such as patents, trade-marks, right to homestead public lands, to vote in Federal elections, etc. United States v. Waddell, 112 U. S. 76. But a conspiracy to intimidate and compel officers of a mining company to discharge their employés, or to compel the employés to leave the service of the company, is not an offense against the laws of the United States. Pettibone v. United States, 149 U. S. 202. The Emancipation Proclamation by removing the disability of slavery made the Negro a citizen and placed him upon Argument for Plaintiffs in Error. 203 U.S. United the same plane before the law as the white race. States v. Rhodes, 1 Abb. (U. S.) 28; 1 Kent Com., 298 and note; State v. Manuel, 4 Dev. & Batt. (N. C.) 28. In the last-mentioned authority will be found an unanswerable argument upon that proposition. In discussing the question of a free Negro, Judge Gaston, speaking for the court, said: "Under the laws of this State, all human beings within it who are not slaves fall within one of two classes, aliens or citizens. Slaves manumitted here become free men, and all free persons born within the State are citizens." This case was cited and approved in State v. Newsom, 5 Ired. (N. C.) 250. If, on the other hand, the African citizen acquired his rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, which include the right to contract, from the statutes under consideration or the Thirteenth Amendment, he has acquired rights, privileges and protection by virtue of that instrument which the white man, by whom it was made, did not and could not secure to himself. According to the theory of the Government in this case, when the color is changed and the white man becomes the conspirator, and the citizen of African descent the victim, the strong arm of the Government can and will be stretched forth to protect the citizen of African descent. It cannot be possible that the Thirteenth Amendment can give to the Congress of the United States the right to enact a code of municipal laws merely for the purpose of protecting citizens of African descent in their right to contract. If individuals should undertake to enforce upon citizens of African descent or upon any other persons any form or badge of slavery, it cannot be doubted that this would make a cause of action cognizable in the United States courts. The Peonage Cases, 197 U. S. 207, are all illustrations of the applicability of the laws under discussion. As to the constitutionality of section 5519 of the Revised Statutes, see United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 626. 203 U. S. Argument for the United States. The Attorney General, with whom Mr. Milton D. Purdy, Assistant to the Attorney General, and Mr. Otis J. Carlton, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, were on the brief for the United States. The question of law is: Has a colored citizen of the United States of African descent a right secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States to work at any particular occupation or calling-as, for example, in the capacity of a common laborer in the manufacture of lumber-and, therefore, free from injury, oppression, or interference on the part of individual citizens, when the motive for such injury, oppression, or interference arises solely from the fact that such laborer is a colored person of African descent? This question does not involve the constitutionality of § 5508, Rev. Stat., which is not open to doubt, Motes v. United States, 178 U. S. 458, but simply whether the phrase "any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States," includes the right charged in this indictment as having been secured to the colored citizens who were driven away from work by the unlawful acts of individuals. In view of United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 545, and Logan v. United States, 144 U. S. 263, 293, it is vain to contend that the Federal Constitution secures to a citizen of the United States the right to work at a given occupation or particular calling free from injury, oppression, or interference by individual citizens. Even though such right be a natural or inalienable right, the duty of protecting the citizen in the enjoyment of such right, free from individual interference, rests alone with the State. Unless, therefore, the additional element of infliction of an injury upon one individual citizen by another, solely on account of his color, be sufficient ground to redress such injury the individual citizen suffering such injury must be left for redress of his grievance to the state laws. In what may be called the old Constitution-the Constitution as it Argument for the United States. 203 U.S. stood before the war amendments-there were no provisions which could be invoked to support § 1977. Art. IV, section 2, provided: "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." If this section were not inapplicable on other grounds, it could not be invoked here, for it is prohibitive only of state action. Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168; Ward v. Maryland, 12 Wall. 418; Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36; United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629, 643; Blake v. McClung, 172 U. S. 236. And for a similar reason the power can not be sought in the Fourteenth Amendment. United States v. Reese, 92 U. S. 214; United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542; Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313; Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339; Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3; United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629; James v. Bowman, 190 U. S. 127. Under the Thirteenth Amendment, however, Congress may enact laws operating primarily upon individuals, United States v. Clyatt, 197 U. S. 207, and if § 1977 can not be sustained under that Amendment the Government's case must fail. The Thirteenth Amendment was intended to secure to the colored race practical freedom. For its history, and history of the Civil Rights Bill, see Cong. Globe, Vol. 69, pp. 474, 503; speeches of Mr. Howard, Mr. Trumbull, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Mr. Cowan. And as to the scope of the Amendment and the legislation under it see Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36; United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629, 641; Clyatt v. United States, 97 U. S. 207. The Civil Rights Act of 1875, provided that the Negro, equally with the white man, should have accommodation in public places of amusement, hotels, and public conveyances, but this court held in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, that the denial of the social rights attempted to be secured by the act of 1875, as distinguished from the fundamental rights secured by the act of 1866, did not amount to the imposition of a badge of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment has been considered in some 203 U.S. Argument for the United States. other cases in this court, but an examination of them is not material to the discussion of this case. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537; Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275. This court has never held that the Thirteenth Amendment was not broad enough to permit of legislation such as is contained in § 1977, Rev. Stat. We have seen, on the contrary, that Mr. Justice Field and Mr. Justice Harlan have given the support of their opinions to the validity of the parent enactment. Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 90, 91; Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 35. The validity of the act of April 9, 1866, was sustained in several cases in the lower courts of the United States, and in the state courts. United States v. Rhodes, 1 Abb. (U. S.) 28; Matter of Elizabeth Turner, 1 Abb. (U. S.) 84; Smith v. Moody, 26 Indiana, 299, 306; People v. Washington, 36 California, 658; United States v. Cruikshank, 1 Woods, 308, 319. The act of 1866, was held to be unconstitutional in a dissenting opinion in People v. Washington, supra, and in Bowlin v. Commonwealth, 2 Bush (Ky.), 5. From the above authorities and extracts from speeches in Congress, the Government contends that the people, having clear notions of the status of the colored race and of what attempts would be made to return it to its servile condition, intended by the Thirteenth Amendment to grant and secure practical freedom. It outrages our feelings of humanity to believe that the men who had fought to free the slaves merely intended to sever the legal ligament which bound the slave to his master, leaving the latter at liberty to cut him off from the fundamental rights which white men enjoyed. Such a narrow construction leaves the black race in a state made worse by their emancipation by the breaking of the cord of self-interest which bound the slaveholder to take care of his property. That motive would disappear with the adoption of the Amendment, and the people must have foreseen that the former slaveholders would strive, by individual action and through the reconstructed legislatures |