Senator Howard's speech stating that one of the purposes of the first section was to give Congress power to enforce the Bill of Rights, as well as extracts and digests of other speeches were published widely in the press. Flack summarizes his observation that
"The declarations and statements of newspapers, writers and speakers, . . . show very clearly, . . . the general opinion held in the North. That opinion, briefly stated, was that the Amendment embodied the Civil Rights Bill and gave Congress the power to define and secure the privileges of citizens of the United States. There does not seem to have been any statement at all as to whether the first eight Amendments were to be made applicable to the States or not. Whether thedue process of law.'
"This is copied from the fifth article of amendments, with this difference: as it stood in the fifth article it operated only as a restraint upon Congress, while here it is a direct restraint upon the governments of the States. The addition is very valuable. It realizes the full force and effect of the clause in Magna Charta, from which it was borrowed; and there is now no power in either the State or the national Government to deprive any person of those great fundamental rights on which all true freedom rests, the rights of life, liberty, and property, except by due process of law; that is, by an impartial trial according to the laws of the land. . . ." Cong. Globe, supra, at