>>> <JKSCHW at aol.com> 02/29/00 02:44PM >>>
> 113: "Long afterward Roscoe Conkling, the eminent corporation lawyer of New York, a colleague of Bingham on the congressional committee, confirmed this view. While arguing a tax case for a railway company before the Supreme Court in 1882, he declared that the protection of freedmen was by no means
> the sole purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment.
1882--almost two decades later. And anyone who would believe Roscoe Conkling about anything deserves what he gets. But even here, he says at most that protection of blacks was not the sole purpose of the 14A,a lthough it was clearly the main purpose. This kind of "evidence' is the sort of thing that makes me sympathetic to Justice Scalia's view that all legislative history should be consigned to the trask bin--much less post-hoc "legislative history." Btw the Beard's work is almost wholly discredited among historians.
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CB: Note here the purpose of the 14A was to protect "freedmen", i.e. black people. The current Sup. Ct.'s reverse discrimination doctrine, ignores that the 13th and 14th Amendments were for protection of Black people from White racism, not vice versa. The idea of a problem of Black discrimination against White people in 1867 would have been absurd. The 13th Amendment specifically mentions "the badges and incidents of slavery", which, of course, only Black people had.
CB