Page "Morrison Waite" Paragraph 18

In the cases that grew out of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and especially in those that involved the interpretation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, he sympathized with the general tendency of the court to restrict the further extension of the powers of the Federal government.

In a particularly notable ruling in United States v. Cruikshank, the court struck down the Enforcement Act, ruling that " The very highest duty of the States, when they entered into the Union under the Constitution, was to protect all persons within their boundaries in the enjoyment of these ' unalienable rights with which they were endowed by their Creator.

' Sovereignty, for this purpose, rests alone with the States.

It is no more the duty or within the power of the United States to punish for a conspiracy to falsely imprison or murder within a State, than it would be to punish for false imprisonment or murder itself.

" He concluded that " We may suspect that race was the cause of the hostility but is it not so averred.

" His belief was that white moderates should set the rules of racial relations in the South, which reflected the majority of the Court and the people of the United States, who were tired of the bitter racial strife involved with the affairs of Reconstruction.

This belief backfired when arch-segregationists in the South regained power and legislated the infamous Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised African-Americans in the South.

These laws lasted well into the 20th century.