had been in the ward thirty days as required by the election law of the State, and the court[40] held that Negroes must satisfy the same requirements as to residence as other voters. In a State election in Louisiana, in 1872, it was claimed, upon the affidavits of four thousand voters, that the votes of ten thousand Negroes had been suppressed because of their race and color.[41] A tax collector in Delaware, in 1873, refused or failed to collect taxes from Negroes when the payment of taxes was a prerequisite to voting. The Federal court[42] held that it had jurisdiction because the tax collector was a State officer and, thus, it was the State denying and abridging the right to vote on account of race. Over one hundred men were indicted in the Federal court of Louisiana in 1874 for intimidating Negroes at the polls.[43] The same year the judges of the municipal election of Petersburg, Virginia, were indicted for refusing to allow a number of Negroes to vote.[44] In 1878, a Negro in Illinois who was denied the right to vote at a school election sued and recovered a hundred dollars damages.[45] In Georgia, in 1844, several white men were convicted in the circuit court of the United States for intimidating, beating, and maltreating Negroes to keep them from voting. The Supreme Court[46] held that Congress had power to regulate Federal elections and could prevent such intimidation.
It will be noticed that nearly all of the cases cited above are along the same line—intimidation of Negroes to keep them from voting. Several constitutional principles, however, relating to suffrage were evolved out of the cases decided during this period. In some of these cases a Negro was not a party at all. It was thought at
