United States v. Cruikshank

United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court , ruling that the U.S. Bill of Rights did not limit the power of private actors or state governments despite the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment . It reversed the federal criminal convictions for the civil rights violations committed in aid of anti-Reconstruction murders. Decided during the Reconstruction Era, the case represented a major defeat for federal efforts to protect the civil rights of African Americans .

The case developed from the strongly contested 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election and the subsequent Colfax massacre , in which dozens of black people and three white people were killed. Federal charges were brought against several whites, led by William J. Cruikshank, using the Enforcement Act of 1870 , which prohibited two or more people from conspiring to deprive anyone of his constitutional rights. Charges included hindering the freedmen's First Amendment right to freely assemble and their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms .

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Morrison Waite reversed the convictions of the defendants, judging that the plaintiffs had to rely on Louisiana state courts for protection. Waite ruled that neither the First Amendment nor the Second Amendment limited the powers of state governments or individuals. He further ruled that the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limited the lawful actions of state governments, but not of individuals. The decision left African Americans in the South at the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments dominated by white Democratic legislatures, and allowed groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to continue to use paramilitary force to suppress black voting.

Cruikshank was the first case to come before the Supreme Court that involved a possible violation of the Second Amendment. Decades after Cruikshank, the Supreme Court began incorporating the Bill of Rights to apply to state governments. The Court incorporated the First Amendment's freedom of assembly in _De Jonge v. Oregon _ (1937), while the Second Amendment was incorporated in _McDonald v. City of Chicago _ (2010).

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Opinion of the Court

  • 2.1 Majority opinion

  • 2.2 Dissenting opinion

• 3 Aftermath

• 4 Continuing validity

• 5 See also

• 6 References

• 7 Further reading

• 8 External links

Background

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Main article: Colfax massacre

On Sunday, April 13, 1873, an armed white militia, led by William J. Cruikshank overpowered Black freedmen and state militia occupying the Grant Parish courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana after the contested 1872 election for governor of Louisiana and local offices. The election results were still undetermined at the beginning of spring, and both Republican and Fusionists had certified their own candidates for the local offices of sheriff and justice of the peace . Federal troops reinforced the election of the Republican governor, William Pitt Kellogg .

At the massacre, most of the freedmen were killed after surrendering, and nearly another 50 were killed later that night after being held as prisoners for several hours. Estimates of the number of dead have varied over the years, ranging from 62 to 153; three whites died but the number of Black victims was difficult to determine because many bodies were thrown into the Red River or removed for burial, possibly at mass graves.

Some members of the white gangs were indicted and charged by the Enforcement Act of 1870 . The Act had been designed primarily to allow Federal enforcement and prosecution of actions of the Ku Klux Klan and other secret vigilante groups against blacks, both for violence and murder and for preventing them from voting. Among other provisions, the law made it a felony for two or more people to conspire to deprive anyone of his constitutional rights. The white defendants were charged with sixteen counts, divided into two sets of eight each. Among the charges included violating the freedmen's rights to lawfully assemble, to vote, and to bear arms.

Opinion of the Court

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Majority opinion

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The Waite Court in 1876

The Supreme Court ruled on March 27, 1876, on a range of issues and found the indictment faulty. It reversed the convictions of the white defendants in the case. Chief Justice Morrison Waite authored the majority opinion.

In its ruling, the Court did not incorporate the Bill of Rights to the states. The Court opined about the dualistic nature of the U.S. political system:

There is in our political system a government of each of the several States, and a Government of the United States. Each is distinct from the others, and has citizens of its own who owe it allegiance, and whose rights, within its jurisdiction, it must protect. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of those governments will be different from those he has under the other.

The ruling said that all U.S. citizens are subject to two governments, their state government and the other the national government, and then defined the scope of each:

The Government of the United States, although it is, within the scope of its powers, supreme and beyond the States, can neither grant nor secure to its citizens rights or privileges which are not expressly or by implication placed under its jurisdiction. All that cannot be so granted or secured are left to the exclusive protection of the States.

The Court found that the First Amendment right to assembly "was not intended to limit the powers of the State governments in respect to their own citizens, but to operate upon the National Government alone," thus "for their protection in its enjoyment ... the people must look to the States. The power for that purpose was originally placed there, and it has never been s

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