The majority of the court were not able to accept this construction of the Amendment which, as we have seen, would have opened such possibilities of increasing the federal powers at the expense of those of the States. Referring to "the history of the times" in which the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were adopted, the court found in them a unity of purpose, - the protection of the freed negroes, - and not an intention radically to alter the constitutional character of the Union. Attention is called to the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment implies and by its language recognizes a continuance of a distinction between federal and state citizenship, and that from this it follows that the privileges and immunities attaching to or growing out of each are to be distinguished. "Was it the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment," the court ask, "by the simple declaration that no State should make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, to transfer the security and protection of all the civil rights which we have mentioned, from the States to the Federal Government? And where it is declared that Congress shall have the power to enforce that article, was it intended to bring within the control of Congress the entire domain of civil rights heretofore belonging exclusively to the States? All this and more must follow, if the proposition of the plaintiffs in error be sound. For not only are these rights subject to the control of Congress whenever in its discretion any of them are supposed to be abridged by state legislation, but that body may also pass laws in advance, limiting and restricting the exercise of legislative power by the States, in their most ordinary and usual functions, as in its judgment it may think proper on all such subjects. And still further, such a construction followed by the reversal of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in these cases, would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the adoption of this amendment. . . . But when, as in the case before us, these consequences are so serious, so far reaching and pervading, so great a departure from the structure and spirit of our institutions; when the effect is to fetter and degrade the state governments by subjecting them to the control of Congress, in the exercise of powers heretofore universally conceded to them of the most ordinary and fundamental character; when in fact it radically changes the whole theory of the relation of the state and federal governments to each other and of both of these governments to the people; the argument has a force that is irresistible, in the absence of language which expresses such a purpose too clearly to admit of doubt. We are convinced that no such results were intended by Congress which proposed these Amendments, nor by the legislatures of the States, which ratified them."

With reference to the question that is immediately suggested, as to what are these distinctively federal rights which the States are not to infringe, the court says: "Having shown that the privileges and immunities relied on in the argument are those which belong to citizens of the States as such, and that they are left to the state governments for security and protection, and not by thig article placed under the special care of the Federal Government, we may hold ourselves excused from defining the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States which no State can abridge, until some case involving those privileges may make it necessary to do so. But lest it should be said that no such privileges and immunities are to be found if those we have been considering are excluded, we venture to suggest some which owe their existence to the Federal Government, its national character, its Constitution, or its laws. One of these is well described in the case of Crandall v. Nevada.5 It is said to be the right of the citizen of this great country, protected by implied guarantees of its Constitution, 'to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may have upon that government, to transact any business he may have with it, to seek its protection, to share its offices, to engage in administering its functions. He has the right of free access to its seaports, through which all operations of foreign countries arc conducted, to the sub-treasuries, land offices, and courts of justice in the several States.' And, quoting from the language of Chief Justice Taney in another case, it is said 'that for all the great purposes for which the Federal Government was established, we are one people, with one common country, we are all citizens of the United States,' and it is, as such citizens, that their rights are supported by this court in Crandall v. Nevada. Another privilege of a citizen of the United States is to demand the care and protection of the Federal Government over his life, liberty, and property when on the high seas or within the jurisdiction of a foreign government. Of this there can be no doubt, nor that the right depends upon his character as a citizen of the United States. The right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, are rights of the citizen guaranteed by the federal Constitution. The right to use the navigable waters of the United States, however they may penetrate the territory of the several States, all rights secured to our citizens by treaties with foreign nations, are dependent upon citizenship of the United States, and not citizenship of a State. One of these privileges is conferred by the very article under consideration. It is that a citizen of the United States can, of his own volition, become a citizen of any State of the Union by a bona fide residence therein, with the same rights as the other citizens of that State. To these may be added the rights secured by the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Articles of Amendment, and by the other clause of the Fourteenth, next to be considered."6

5 6 Wall. 35; 18 L ed. 745.