Louisiana had failed to achieve self-government unhampered by federal
force.

In the meantime the enforcement acts were being slowly weakened by the
Supreme Court in several decisions bearing upon the Fourteenth
Amendment. The significant portion of Section I of the Amendment is as
follows:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In several cases involving the enforcement acts, the Court found
portions of the laws in conflict with the Constitution and finally, in
1883, the decision in United States _v._ Harris completed their
destruction. Here the court met a complaint that a group of white men
had taken some negroes away from the officers of the law and ill-treated
them. Such conduct seemed to be contrary to that part of the Ku Klux Act
which forbade combinations designed to deprive citizens of their legal
rights. The Court, however, called attention to the important words, "No
_State_ shall make or enforce," and was of opinion that the
constitutional power of Congress extends only to cases where _States_
have acted in such a manner as to deprive citizens of their rights. If
_individuals_, on the contrary, conspire to take away these rights,
relief must be sought at the hands of the state government. As the great
purpose of the Ku Klux Act had been to combat precisely such individual
combinations, it appeared that the Court had, at a blow, demolished the
law. Not long afterwards the Court declared unconstitutional the Civil