ious, and all classes of citizens who are to be governed by them are admitted also to participate in their administration.1 § 1974. The question may indeed be raised, whether it be not possible that we have plunged into new dangers in laying thus broadly the basis of responsible citizenship. There are those who foresee only evil, and who prophesy only calamity. But evil is always prophesied when concession is made to democracy: when kings are set aside, when hereditary privileges are abolished or restricted, when the press is unmuzzled, when the conscience is set free. It was prophesied in England, when toleration was extended to dissenters from the Established Church, and again when the Catholics were emancipated, and again when political rights were extended to the Jews. Every step in that country towards making the Parliament a truly representative body of the whole nation, every disfranchisement of decayed or corrupt boroughs, and every extension of the franchise to the people, has been earnestly opposed as fraught with danger to the state. Every step in America in the same direction has met with the like opposition. The rulers, whether they be kings or lords or privileged classes, always believe they rule by right divine. Power is safe in their hands, but it would be dangerous in the hands of the people at large: this is the assumption always when the demands of new classes for a voice in the government are to be resisted. The American people have assumed that that which is most just is also the wisest and safest, and they trust to time and experience to justify their confidence. It is beyond question that many unfit persons will demand and exercise the right of suffrage, but no test that could be prescribed — whether of education, property, experience, race, or color could be completely effectual in separating out the fit from the unfit, the vir tuous from the vicious, the patriotic and public-spirited from the selfish, mercenary, and mean. § 1975. It may be well for the country and for the experiment we enter upon that a new generation is already coming upon the stage, whose political training was going on while the artillery 1 It was proposed in Congress to make the amendment embrace the right to hold office also, but this was finally omitted. It was doubtless believed that when the ballot was given, the very numbers and strength of the class would constitute a sufficient protection against any exclusion. But even if the disposition should exist to establish any, we doubt if it could be supported in view of the provisions of the fourteenth amendment. of civil war was battering down old prejudices, and the nation was staking its existence upon the emancipation of a race it had before despised. To such a training there were different surroundings from those which in some particulars operated to narrow the ideas and shape the action of the founders of the government. Liberty to those who are henceforth to govern America has a broader meaning than formerly, and they accept the equality of man as a practical fact, and not as being, in any particular, merely a beautiful theory. To them all the evils and all the discredit of slavery, and all the jealousies, prejudices, and heart、 burnings which sprung from it, are only things which have served to darken a page of our national history, as the executions for witchcraft and the persecutions for the unlicensed worship of the Supreme Being have darkened others; but upon that page has been turned over a new and unsullied leaf, upon which a nation, purified by suffering, may hereafter record a history inspired by the impulses of enlightened and impartial humanity. The compromises between right and wrong under the pretence of expediency have disappeared; the house is no longer divided against itself; a new corner-stone is built into the edifice of liberty, and those who now guard and support the structure accept without the mental reservation of their fathers the truth of its legend, that all men are created equal, and that governments are established among men to defend and protect their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. From henceforth in America there is in the inheritance of freedom no invidious distinction, no right of primogeniture; its blessings descend and its privileges are conferred impartially upon all, and all must assume its duties and bear their share in its responsibilities. the duties shall be assumed with intelligence, and performed with rectitude; if the responsibilities shall be borne in the same spirit of justice and humanity which now finds expression in the Constitution, we may confidently believe and trust that, under the protection of Divine Providence, our institutions shall be perpetual. "The nation, under God, [has] a new birth of freedom, and [now] the government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."1 1 President Lincoln, at Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863. Holland's Life of Lincoln, 423; Raymond's Administration of Lincoln, 381; Draper's Civil War, III. 152; Lossing's Civil War, III. 80. VOL. II. — 46 APPENDIX. WHILE the last of the foregoing sheets were passing through the press, appeared the decisions of the Supreme Court in two exceedingly important cases, giving a construction to the three new amendments to the Constitution. The editor greatly regrets that his own work was so far advanced as to preclude their being made use of and freely copied from in the preparation of the text of his three supplementary chapters; but as the views he has expressed are fortunately in harmony with those opinions, perhaps the general purpose which would have been had in view in incorporating them in the body of the work, may be sufficiently accomplished by a reference to them here, and by liberal quotations from the most important. The leading case was that of The Live Stock Dealers and Butchers Association v. The Crescent City Live Stock Landing and Slaughter House Company, and was brought to the court by writ of error to the Supreme Court of Louisiana. A case in the circuit court involving the same questions is reported in 1 Abb. U. S. Rep. 388, to which a reference is made for the facts. In this place it will be sufficient to say that the plaintiff in error denied the right of the defendant in error to certain exclusive privileges which had been granted to the latter by the legislature of Louisiana, and which had been sustained by the Supreme Court of the State. The statute conferring these privileges, it is said by Mr. Justice Miller, delivering the opinion of the majority of the court, "is denounced not only as creating a monopoly and conferring odious and exclusive privileges upon a small number of persons at the expense of the great body of the community of New Orleans, but it is asserted that it deprives a large and meritorious class of citizens the whole of the butchers of the city of the right to exercise their trade, the business to which they have been trained, and on which they depend for the support of themselves and their families; and that the unrestricted exercise of the business of butchering is necessary to the daily subsistence of the population of the city." -- The opinion proceeds to consider this position, and to discuss the question whether it is competent for a State to grant exclusive privileges, which it decides in the affirmative, and declares the right of the State courts to decide finally whether any such exclusive privileges are forbidden by the State constitutions. It then proceeds to say that the plaintiffs in error "allege that the statute is a violation of the Constitution of the United States in these several particulars: That it creates an involuntary servitude forbidden by the thirteenth article of amendment; that it abridges the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; that it denies to the plaintiffs the equal protection of the laws; and that it deprives them of their property without due process of law, contrary to the provisions of the first section of the fourteenth article of amendment. This court is thus called upon for the first time to give construction to these articles. "We do not conceal from ourselves the great responsibility which this duty devolves upon us. No questions so far reaching and pervading in their consequences, so profoundly interesting to the people of this country, and so important in their bearing upon the relations of the United States and of the several States to each other and to the citizens of the States and of the United States, have been before this court dur. ing the official life of any of its present members. We have given every opportunity for a full hearing at the bar; we have discussed it freely and compared views among ourselves; we have taken ample time for careful deliberation, and we now propose to announce the judgments which we have formed in the construction of those articles, so far as we have found them necessary to the decision of the cases before us; and beyond that we have neither the inclination nor the right to go." After then making brief reference to the first twelve amendments to the Constitution, the court proceed to consider the last three. "The most cursory glance at these articles discloses a unity of purpose, when taken in connection with the history of the times, which cannot fail to have an important bearing on any question of doubt concerning their true meaning. Nor can such doubts, when any reasonably exist, be safely and rationally solved without a reference to that history; for in it is found the occasion and the necessity for recurring again to the great source of power in this country, the people of the States, for additional guaranties of human rights, additional powers to the federal government, additional restraints upon those of the States. Fortunately that history is fresh within the memory of us all, and its leading features, as they bear upon the matter before us, free from doubt. The institution of African slavery as it existed in about half the States of the Union, and the contests pervading the public mind for many years between those who desired its curtailment and ultimate extinction and those who desired additional safeguards for its security and perpetuation, culminated in the effort on the part of most of the States in which slavery existed to separate from the federal government and to resist its authority. This constituted the war of the rebellion; and whatever auxiliary causes may have contributed to bring about this war, undoubtedly the overshadowing and efficient cause was African slavery. "In that struggle slavery, as a legalized social relation, perished. It perished as a necessity of the bitterness and force of the conflict. When the armies of freedom found themselves upon the soil of slavery they could do nothing less than free the poor vic. tims whose imposed servitude was the foundation of the quarrel. And when hard pressed in the contest, these men (for they proved themselves men in that terrible crisis) offered their services, and were accepted by thousands to aid in suppressing the unlawful rebellion, slavery was at an end wherever the federal government succeeded in that purpose. The proclamation of President Lincoln expressed an accomplished fact as to a large portion of the insurrectionary districts, when he declared slavery abolished in them all. But the war being over, those who had succeeded in re-establishing the authority of the federal government, were not content to permit this great act of emancipation to rest on the actual results of the contest, or the proclamation of the Executive, both of which might have been questioned in after-times; and they determined to place this main and most valuable result in the Constitution of the restored Union, as one of its fundamental articles. Hence the thirteenth article of amendment of that instrument. Its two short sections seem hardly to admit of construction, so vigorous is their expression and so appropriate to the purpose we have indicated: ·- "1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. "2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.' "To withdraw the mind from the contemplation of this grand yet simple declara |