States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, thus making the freed slave a citizen. It forbids the states to make any laws abridging the privileges of citizens, depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person the equal protection of the laws

provisions likewise intended primarily to secure federal protection for the freedman. By section 2 of the amendment an attempt was made also to secure political rights for the negro, by providing that any state denying to male citizens twenty-one years old the right to vote should have its representation in Congress cut down in proportion to the number of citizens thus debarred from voting. This provision has never been made effective. The amendment also imposed some political disabilities upon certain classes of participants in the war. All state or United States officers who had taken part in the Rebellion were rendered incapable of further officeholding until such disability should be removed by Congress. An act of 1898 finally removed the last disability imposed by this section.

By the Fifteenth Amendment, proposed by Congress in 1869 and declared in force a year later, a direct attempt was made to secure full political rights for the negro. It had become clear that the indirect plan embodied in the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment was destined to remain ineffective for a long time, if not forever. The Fifteenth Amendment provided that the right of citizens to vote should not be abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The wisdom of the policy that dictated the amendment has been much discussed. Like the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment, it has proved ineffective, for wherever the political consequences of the negro vote have been displeasing to the white citizens, the states have found means of suppressing it.

Library References. Dawes, pp. 413-417; Hinsdale, chaps. xliii, xlvi, xlviii; Fiske, pp. 269–270; Wilson, §§ 1045-1046; Bryce, Vol. I, chaps. xxxii; Curtis, Vol. I, chap. xxxii; Vol. II, chaps. xi–xii; Lalor, Article on Constitution; Woodburn, pp. 154, 338, 356.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT

1. In what two ways may amendments to the Constitution be proposed? State one mode of ratification of an amendment. 2. How long after its adoption before any amendments were made to the Constitution? Give the substance of any of these amendments.

3. How many amendments have been made to the Constitution? Explain the purpose of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments.

4. What amendments are included in the Bill of Rights?

5. What are the principal provisions of the amendments of the Constitution which have been adopted since the close of the Civil War?

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION

Development of the Unwritten Constitution. In the foregoing description of our national government, reference has more than once been made to the existence of wellestablished political institutions and usages for which our written Constitution makes no provision, but which have nevertheless become as fixed a part of the governmental machinery as have any of the institutions provided for by the written instrument. Such institutions and usages exist by the law of the unwritten constitution. By a study of Chapter XXX it will be seen that constitutional government may exist under an unwritten constitutiona constitution consisting of a mass of well-established precedents, usages, and statutes as under a written one, in which such fundamental laws find expression in a single written document. Not only is this true, but it should be noted also that wherever a written constitution remains long in use without undergoing more or less extensive revision, it does so by virtue of the fact that there grows up beside it or within it an unwritten constitution, changing and expanding with the needs of the nation living under it. This unwritten constitution has been called the flesh and blood of the Constitution rather than its skeleton. Such a growth has taken place in the United States. Our real constitution to-day consists not only of the document so carefully elaborated by the Convention of 1789, but of

numerous judicial decisions, legislative acts, and political customs, which have originated in attempts to interpret or supplement it. Thus, while our Constitution has undergone very little change by way of amendment or revision of the written document, it has, by means of its unwritten portion, readily adapted itself to the ever-changing needs of a rapidly expanding people.

Original and Inherent Powers. One of the most important changes brought about by the growth of our unwritten constitution is the enlargement of the powers of the national government. It has been frequently averred that our national government is one of strictly enumerated powers that it can do only those things which it has been given the right to do by an express grant of power, or at most by implication. This is unquestionably what the makers of the written constitution intended. As a matter of fact, however, the national government does exercise other powers than those expressly delegated to it or implied in the exercise of its delegated powers. In other words, the national government exercises not only delegated and implied powers, but original and inherent powers as well; and the exercise of such powers has been held by the courts to be constitutional. In making the Louisiana purchase and in passing the legal-tender acts of the Civil War the national government was exercising powers neither delegated to it by the Constitution nor clearly implied in such grants of power as it had received. A more recent example of the exercise of original powers by the national government is to be seen in the acquisition of territory as a result of the Spanish-American War and in the establishment of governments for the acquired territory.

Presidential Electors only Party Agents. Other instances of practices and precedents that have all the force

of constitutional provisions have been noticed in the preceding pages but may be briefly recalled here. In our discussion of the electoral college the fact was noted (p. 296) that presidential electors are required by party custom to vote in the electoral college for the candidates selected by their party at the nominating convention and at the polls. This custom, though it does not transgress the letter of the written constitution, nevertheless defeats the purposes of the framers in creating the electoral college. It was intended that this body should be made up of men versed in public affairs and acquainted with the merits of public men, and that it should exercise a wise discretion in its choice of the chief executive. In the first two presidential elections this ideal was more or less fully attained, though even in the second election party influence began to make itself felt in the selection of the vice president. There was a somewhat general expectation at least that for vice president the federalists would vote for John Adams and the antifederalists for George Clinton. By the time of the third presidential election, party organization was sufficiently developed and party influence sufficiently strong to control the votes of most of the electors, and by the time of the fourth it had become so clearly understood that the elector's duty was merely to ratify his party's choice, that the struggle centered about the formally nominated candidates for president and vice president rather than about the electors. Gradually the elector lost every vestige of the discretionary power with which the framers. of the Constitution had intended to endow him, and became the merest party agent. It is conceivable that an elector might be found rash enough to exercise his undoubted legal right to vote contrary to the wishes of those who elected him, and no legal penalty could be inflicted