United States v. Cruikshank, decided by the Supreme Court in 1876, reversed the federal convictions of white supremacist militia members who took part in the 1873 Colfax Massacre and held that the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment restrict only government action, not the conduct of private individuals. Chief Justice Morrison Waite’s opinion left Black citizens dependent on the state governments that had refused to protect them, and its reasoning shaped the legal treatment of racial violence for decades.
What Happened at Colfax
The 1872 Louisiana governor’s race ended with two rival factions each claiming victory, and the resulting chaos played out violently in Grant Parish. Black residents and Republican officeholders gathered at the parish courthouse in Colfax to defend the local government they believed had been legitimately elected. On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, a white supremacist militia numbering in the hundreds attacked. An estimated 150 Black people were killed, many of them murdered after they had already surrendered. Only three white attackers died.
State authorities showed no interest in prosecuting anyone. Federal officials stepped in, arresting William Cruikshank and several other participants under a recently enacted federal civil rights statute. The case became an early test of whether the federal government could punish private racial violence that state courts ignored.
The Federal Charges
Prosecutors charged the defendants under the Enforcement Act of 1870, a statute designed to protect the voting rights guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment. The law made it a felony for two or more people to conspire to intimidate any citizen in the exercise of rights secured by the Constitution or federal law, with penalties of up to a $5,000 fine and ten years in prison.1Senate.gov. Enforcement Act, 1870
Rather than treating the massacre as a collection of state-law murders, federal officials framed it as a conspiracy to deprive Black citizens of their constitutional rights. The indictments accused the defendants of banding together to prevent residents from exercising rights including free assembly, the ability to bear arms, and equal protection under the law. Casting the violence as a federal civil rights violation was meant to bypass local courts that had no intention of holding anyone accountable.
What the Supreme Court Held
The Court reversed the convictions. Chief Justice Waite’s opinion did far more than dismiss one set of indictments; it built a framework that limited federal civil rights enforcement for generations.
The Fourteenth Amendment Reaches Only States, Not Private Actors
Waite wrote that the Fourteenth Amendment “adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another” and “simply furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by the States upon the fundamental rights which belong to every citizen as a member of society.”2Justia. United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875) The Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses applied only to actions taken by state governments, not to violence committed by private mobs.
Because the Colfax attackers were private citizens rather than state officials, the Court held that the federal government had no authority to prosecute them under the Fourteenth Amendment. Protecting citizens from each other, the Court said, belonged to the states. The federal government’s only role was to ensure that a state did not itself deny equal protection through its own laws or official conduct.3Library of Congress. United States v. Cruikshank This is the state action doctrine, and it meant a state could stand by while private groups terrorized its citizens without triggering any federal remedy, so long as the state itself had passed no discriminatory law.
The Fifteenth Amendment Reaches Only Racial Discrimination in Voting
Waite acknowledged that the Fifteenth Amendment created a new federal right, but defined it narrowly. The right to vote itself, the Court held, comes from the states. What the Fifteenth Amendment protects is only the right to be free from racial discrimination in voting: “The right to vote in the States comes from the States; but the right of exemption from the prohibited discrimination comes from the United States.”4Congress.gov. Amdt15.S1.1 Right to Vote Clause Generally – Constitution Annotated
Even this limited protection did not reach the Colfax defendants. The Court noted that the indictments never specifically alleged the defendants had acted because of the victims’ race. Without an explicit allegation of racial motive, neither the Fifteenth Amendment nor the Equal Protection Clause could reach the conduct.
Assembly and Arms Are Pre-Constitutional Rights the Federal Government Cannot Enforce Against Private Actors
The Court gave the same treatment to two rights from the Bill of Rights that prosecutors had invoked. The First and Second Amendments, Waite wrote, did not create the rights of assembly and to bear arms; they merely prevented Congress from interfering with them.
The right of assembly received federal protection only when the purpose of the gathering was connected to the national government, such as petitioning Congress. The indictments never alleged the Colfax gathering had any such purpose.2Justia. United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875) A later case summarized the holding this way: the right to peaceably assemble was “not protected by the [First Amendment] unless the purpose of the assembly was to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”5Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School). Doctrine on Freedoms of Assembly and Petition
The Second Amendment received identical treatment. “The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence,” Waite wrote. “The Second Amendment means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government.”3Library of Congress. United States v. Cruikshank If a private group disarmed someone, the victim’s only recourse was state law.
The Indictments Were Also Fatally Vague
The Court also found the indictments defective as a technical matter. The charges failed to specify which constitutional rights the defendants had allegedly conspired to violate, and the conspiracy counts did not allege that the defendants acted because of the victims’ race, which the Court deemed essential for federal jurisdiction.1Senate.gov. Enforcement Act, 1870 General allegations of large-scale violence, even a massacre of more than a hundred people, would not suffice. The convictions were reversed and the defendants walked free.
Why the Ruling Mattered for Reconstruction
Cruikshank arrived as national appetite for Reconstruction was already fading, and it gave legal cover to that retreat. By holding that the federal government could not prosecute private racial violence, the Court effectively signaled to white supremacist groups across the South that federal prosecution would not follow, so long as they operated without official state backing.
Seven years later, the same principle drove an even broader rollback. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations. The Court relied directly on Cruikshank, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment “is prohibitory upon the States only” and did not empower Congress to regulate private discriminatory conduct.6Justia. Civil Rights Cases Protection of Black citizens’ rights fell to southern state governments, where, as one historian put it, “few people sympathized with their cause.” The legal architecture of Jim Crow was built largely on the foundation Cruikshank laid.
What Survives Today
Most of the specific constitutional holdings in Cruikshank have been overtaken by later decisions. Beginning with Gitlow v. New York in 1925, the Court began applying the Bill of Rights against state governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, assuming that First Amendment freedoms are “among the fundamental personal rights and ‘liberties’ protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States.”7Justia. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925) This process, known as selective incorporation, directly contradicted Cruikshank’s central premise.
The right of assembly, which Cruikshank had confined to petitioning the federal government, was incorporated against the states in DeJonge v. Oregon in 1937. The Court held that free speech and peaceable assembly are “fundamental rights which are safeguarded against state interference by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”8Justia. DeJonge v. Oregon The Second Amendment followed in 2010 with McDonald v. City of Chicago, in which the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the right to keep and bear arms “fully applicable to the States.”9Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010)
The state action doctrine itself has proven more durable. Federal civil rights law still generally requires some form of government involvement before constitutional protections apply against private parties. The modern federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, allows lawsuits only against persons acting “under color of” state law.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1983 – Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights Congress has found other constitutional bases for reaching private conduct in specific contexts, including the Commerce Clause, but the core idea that the Fourteenth Amendment targets government action rather than private behavior remains embedded in constitutional law. Cruikshank’s reasoning about which amendments apply to which actors is largely dead. Its insight that the Constitution primarily regulates government rather than private citizens lives on.