Leading with “Congress shall have power,” the proposal sought to remedy what Bingham saw as the Constitution’s central problem—that it did not directly authorize Congress to enforce the privileges and immunities clause or the rights enumerated in the Fifth Amendment. His draft declared that Congress had power in both areas. It referred to both citizens and persons, because the privileges and immunities clause alluded to citizens and the Fifth Amendment promised rights to persons, as did the other amendments that we now know as the Bill of Rights. The proposal did not simply repeat the language
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