While the origins of this are assumed to begin with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the truth is that the end of the right of association was enabled with the 16th Amendment (the income tax), and the 17th Amendment (the direct election of US senators).
Take the 17th Amendment for example. There was so much corruption and power mongering in state level in selecting those senators something had to change. Can you imagine how bad it must have been to get enough people behind the idea of changing the constitution? The 17th amendment did not solve the problem but did defer the problem. Do not speak so despairingly about it, even today, many conservatives want to pass more laws to solve problems.
Lets take another perspective on it. There is local corruption (judge, sheriff, or mayor) so what do the people do? They go around the corruption to a higher authority, state laws to change it. Then there is state corruption and what do the people do? They go to a higher authority, the federal government, to solve it, thinking a direct vote by the people will stop the corruption and power concentration because the senator is responsible directly to the people, not the state legislature.
Now we have a corrupt federal government. Make sure we understand the REAL CAUSE of the problem before we comment about the past or propose a solution for the future.
And also reflect on who is the next higher authority ..............
The problem with the 17th Amendment is that the appointment of senators was part of one the grand balances of power found in the constitution.
The founding fathers realized that words on paper become invalid almost as soon as they are written, and that bodies of men invariably become corrupt. So their idea was to make many balances of bodies of men with competing interests, in groups of three or sometimes four.
The most well known of these balances of power is with the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government. The idea was, assuming one of the three is corrupt, the other two will gang up against it, to get it under control.
But this had to interact with “the powers behind the throne”. In this case, the people had their democratic body in the House of Representatives. The states had their federal body in the senate. An artificial, ad hoc body, the Electoral College, was created to choose the president, based on the selection of electors by the people, via their states.
And finally, the president would nominate justices to the Supreme Court, who would be confirmed by the senate (at the direction of the states, who appointed the senators). So justices would also be inclined to support federalism.
The “federal senate” also had control over foreign treaties and presidential cabinet officers.
But, using the excuse of senate corruption, the 17th Amendment threw a lug wrench into the process. By making senators directly elected by the people, states were stripped of a LOT of power. The senators themselves became “free agents”, who only had to be concerned with what their state wanted every six years, to be reelected. In effect, they have become like the senate of ancient Rome.
And perhaps worst of all, the states no longer had their senators to block federal intrusiveness into the lives of the people. Before the 16th Amendment (Income Tax) and the 17th Amendment, the only direct interface of the federal government with the people was through the census. (And the Post Office, if you want to count that.)
And even that was *supposed* to be limited to just an actual enumeration, not an opportunity to compile huge dossiers on citizens. Even the military draft had to go through the states. The federal government could make laws about the people, but it was up to the states to enforce them, unless they crossed state lines, which make them part of national jurisdiction.