United States v. Cruikshank

92 U.S. 542 (1876), argued 30–31 Mar. and 30 Apr. 1875, decided 27 Mar. 1876 by vote of 9 to 0; Waite for the Court, Clifford concurring. The Cruikshank case arose after an armed white force in Reconstruction Louisiana killed more than one hundred black men over a disputed gubernatorial election. Three white men involved in the 1873 Colfax Massacre were found guilty of violating section 6 of the Enforcement Act of 1870, which forbade conspiracies to deny the constitutional rights of any citizen. The convicted defendants appealed on the grounds that the indictments were faulty.

The case came before a Supreme Court that had evinced a growing concern about congressional efforts to broaden federal power. Emphasizing the distinctions between the rights of federal and state citizens, the Court found the indictments deficient because they did not allege the denial of federal rights (see Citizenship). The right to assemble (see Assembly and Association, Citizenship, Freedom of) and to bear arms in the First and Second Amendments, respectively, only protected citizens from congressional interference. The right to due process and equal protection in the Fourteenth Amendment limited actions by states, not those by individuals (see State Action). Finally, interference with the right to vote was not an actionable offense because the indictment did not allege that the defendants' actions were motivated by the victims' race.

The Court concluded that punishment for the offenses committed in the Colfax Massacre lay with the state. Unfortunately, the likelihood that Southern states would prosecute such offenses was small. The Cruikshank opinion encouraged violence in the Reconstruction South and is one of several Supreme Court decisions that marked the nation's retreat from Reconstruction.

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See also Race and Racism; Reconstruction; Vote, Right to

— Lucy E. Salyer

United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876). The Enforcement Acts of 1870 forbade interference with a citizen's constitutional rights on the basis of race and were designed to protect African American voters from Ku Klux Klan violence. However, in 1876 the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the conviction of a number of whites who had rioted to prevent African Americans from voting. The Court ruled that the Constitution did not grant the rights of assembling peaceably and bearing arms; it merely prohibited Congress from infringing upon those rights. The Fourteenth Amendment's due process and equal protection clauses guaranteed citizens protection against encroachment by the states, but not against encroachment by other citizens, the Court ruled.

Bibliography

Gillette, William. The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965.

Rogers, Donald W., and Christine Scriabine, eds. Voting and the Spirit of American Democracy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

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