“It will not be denied that before the adoption of the last three amendments, it was the settled interpretation of the Constitution that the protection of the life and property of private citizens belonged to the State governments entirely.... Now three amendments have been added to the Constitution, and it will not be denied that each of these amendments has changed the relation of Congress to the citizens of the States.”
Garfield spoke with his eye on the future: “This debate will become historic as the earliest legislative interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment,” he said. He reviewed the debates accompanying the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. Two propositions had been before Congress. The essential parts of the one adopted were—
“The Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation, the following provisions, to wit:
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
“And this is the rejected clause:
“The Congress shall have power to make all laws which may be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens in these several States equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property.
“The one exerts its force directly upon the States, laying restriction and limitations upon their power, and enabling Congress to enforce these limitations. The other, the rejected proposition, would have brought the power of Congress to bear directly upon the citizens, and contained a clear grant of power to Congress to legislate directly for the protection of life, liberty, and property within the States. The first limited, but did not oust the jurisdiction of the State over these subjects. The second gave Congress plenary power to cover the whole subject with its jurisdiction, and, as it seems to me, to the exclusion of the State authorities.
“Mr. Speaker, unless we ignore both the history and the language of these clauses we can not, by any reasonable interpretation, give to the section as it stands in the Constitution, the force and effect of the rejected clause.”
Then followed an exhaustive discussion of the different clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, after which he passed to the provisions of the pending bill. Southern outrages had been stated by the President to exist. The trouble was not unequal laws, but their maladministration and denial of protection under them. This demanded legislation. But Congress had no power to assume original jurisdiction of the matter. It could only define and declare the offense, and should employ no terms which asserted the power of Congress to take jurisdiction, until such denial of rights was clearly made. Passing then to the extreme and most objectionable parts of the bill he said:
“But, Mr. Speaker, there is one provision in the fourth section which appears to me both unwise and unnecessary. It is proposed not only to authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, but to authorize the declaration of martial law in the disturbed districts.