1382 JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW [Vol. 11.5
torical background of the Fourteenth Amendment and the terrorism
that provoked efforts to enforce the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth
Amendments. By leaving out context, the Court has
obscured what
was at stake.
A broader context includes slavery and civil liberties, the suppres-
sion of free speech and effective democracy in the South before and
after
the Civil War, and the appeal to democratic values and to na-
tional Bill of Rights liberties before and after the Civil War. A broad-
er Reconstruction context includes the attack by political terrorists
on majority rule, speech, press and political association, and the right
to vote.
Simply reading Supreme Court opinions (then and later), one
would not understand that political terror during Reconstruction was
a key weapon used to undermine biracial democracy in the South.
One would certainly not understand the extent to which the United
States Supreme Court facilitated the result.
3
Though race was a cru-
cial factor, any account of the attack on Reconstruction is grossly mis-
leading to the extent that it emphasizes race to the exclusion of ma-
jority rule, democracy, and political freedom. These values were at
DISTRIBUTION OF ABOLITION LITERATURE, 1830–1860 (photo. reprint 1968) (1938); Mi-
chael Kent Curtis, The Fourteenth Amendment: Recalling What the Court Forgot, 56 D
RAKE L.
REV. 911, 941–55 (2008) (discussing, as a contribution to the Drake Symposium on For-
gotten Constitutional Provisions, how various government officials and judges thought
the Fourteenth Amendment should be applied); Michael Kent Curtis, John A. Bingham
and the Story of American Liberty: The Lost Cause Meets the “Lost Clause,” 36 A
KRON L. REV.
617 (2003) [hereinafter Curtis, Bingham] (discussing, as a contribution to the symposium
on John A. Bingham, different interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment around the
time of the Civil War); Clement Eaton, The Freedom of Thought Struggle in the Old South, cited
in R
USSELL BLAINE NYE, FETTERED FREEDOM: CIVIL LIBERTIES AND THE SLAVERY
CONTROVERSY, 1830–1860 (1972). For additional scholarship on application of the Bill of
Rights to the States,
see AKHIL REED AMAR, THE BILL OF RIGHTS: CREATION AND
RECONSTRUCTION (1998); Richard L. Aynes, On Misreading John Bingham and the Fourteenth
Amendment,
103 YALE L.J. 57 (1993); George C. Thomas III, The Riddle of the Fourteenth
Amendment: A Response to Professor Wildenthal,
68 OHIO ST. L.J. 1627 (2007) (arguing for a
negative to agnostic view of application); Bryan H. Wildenthal,
Nationalizing the Bill of
Rights: Revisting the Original Understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866–67, 68 O
HIO
ST. L.J. 1509 (2007) (citing sources on both sides of the debate but supporting applica-
tion).
For an outstanding article dealing with the attack on democracy during Recon-
struction, see Gabriel J. Chin & Randy Wagner, The Tyranny of the Minority: Jim Crow and
the Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty, 43 H
ARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 65 (2008) (focusing on the
victory of “Redemption” and disfranchisement ending Reconstruction as replacing major-
ity with minority rule).
3
The opinions themselves of course do not mention such facilitation. See, e.g., Harris, 106
U.S. 629; Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542; Reese, 92 U.S. 214; The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36.
For an account of the facts surrounding
Cruikshank, see CHARLES LANE, THE DAY FREEDOM
DIED: THE COLFAX MASSACRE, THE SUPREME COURT, AND THE BETRAYAL OF
RECONSTRUCTION (2008) [hereinafter LANE].