Recalling Samuel Hoar’s expulsion from Charleston, he argued that the Constitution’s privileges and immunities clause had never worked as it was supposed to. There was “something down in South Carolina higher than Constitutional provisions,” he said.3 And so the abolitionists’ work was not complete. They had to keep fighting for the repeal of racist laws, for the protection of the privileges and immunities of citizens, and ultimately for Black men’s right to vote.
