of the State wherein they reside. 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, or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Mr. Flack[8] says that the purpose in the adoption of this Amendment was (1) to make the Bill of Rights (the first eight Amendments) binding upon the States as well as upon the Nation; (2) to give validity to the Civil Rights Bill of 1866; and (3) to declare who were citizens of the United States. As he shows by an analysis of the debates in Congress, the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 was doubted by many of its able advocates, and it was natural that they should desire to make their tenets secure by incorporating them into the Constitution itself. It is worth remarking that on May 1, 1870, the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 was practically re-enacted.[9]
The words "Negro," "race," or "color" do not appear in the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment; but a study of the speeches before the House and Senate would show that the legislators had the Negro primarily in mind, and so the court understood. In the Slaughter-House Cases[10] of 1872, cases not having to do with the Negro in the slightest degree, Mr. Justice Miller gave an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment which has stood as a landmark. He said: ". . . on the most casual examination of the language of these Amendments [Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth], no one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in them all, laying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them
