CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



191 



tain great personal rights. It is true these 

 amendments are limitations on the powers of 

 Congress as against the States ; but yet they 

 are fundamental guarantees to the people. 

 Kead those amendments. I may as well refer 

 here to the case reported in 5 Howard, of 

 Fox vs. The State of Ohio, referred to by my 

 colleague. The decision there does not say 

 that a State of this Union can by implication 

 punish counterfeiting of the coin of the United 

 States, but only that it may punish the passing 

 or circulation of that coin. 



"In that decision the court expressly recog- 

 nize the true doctrine of the division of power 

 between the Federal and the State govern- 

 ments, which concedes to all the States the 

 exclusive regulation and control of all their 

 domestic and police affairs in their own way, 

 according to their own judgment, under their 

 own constitutions and laws. The protection 

 of their own citizens, of public morals in the 

 respective States, of all the rights of person 

 and property, of all the domestic relations, 

 belongs to the States alone. All that vast 

 residuum of power not granted to the United 

 States, which embraces every element of local 

 self-government, whether civil or criminal, 

 whether to regulate local government or police, 

 or popular privileges and immunities, or to 

 punish offenders against them, belongs to the 

 States. 



"Now, Mr. Speaker, I must come to the con- 

 sideration of the bases alleged for the enact- 

 ment of this bill. I think I do not misunder- 

 stand the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Shellabar- 

 ger) when I state to the House that he assumes 

 that the substantial authority for this enact- 

 ment must be found in the first section of the 

 fourteenth amendment of the Constitution; and 

 I will therefore proceed briefly to analyze that 

 section. I beg the attention of gentlemen on 

 both sides of the House while I attempt this 

 analysis. 



"What, then, is the language of that sec- 

 tion? I will, for convenience, break it into 

 paragraphs, and consider them in their order. 

 It declares that 



All persons born or naturalized in the United 

 States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are 

 citizens of the United States and of the State where- 

 in they reside. 



" Now, does this provision confer upon the 

 Congress of the United States any new or ori- 

 ginal grant of power ? I say no. It is no grant 

 of power; it gives no new power to Congress ; 

 it takes no preexisting power from the State. 

 It simply declares who shall be citizens of the 

 United States. But the fact that certain per- 

 bons are citizens, and the number of them, and 

 the definition of citizenship or of its constituent 

 elements, were just the same before the ratifi- 

 cation of the fourteenth amendment that they 

 are now. Neither is more certain or better 

 settled than it was before. 



"The thirteenth amendment had made all 

 persons of color citizens of the United States if 



they were not hitherto. Then the body of the 

 citizens is in no way materially changed by this 

 fourteenth amendment. On this point I do not 

 wish to stand without great and worthy author- 

 ity ; and I shall therefore incorporate in my re- 

 marks an extract from Chancellor Kent directly 

 sustaining my position in reference to this pro- 

 vision. 



Citizens, under our Constitution and laws, mean 

 free inhabitants born within the United States or 

 naturalized under the laws of Congress. If a slave 

 born in the United States be manumitted or other- 

 wise lawfully discharged from bondage, or if a black 

 man be born within the United States and born free, 

 he becomes thenceforward a citizen, but under such 

 disabilities as the laws of the States respectively may 

 deem it expedient to prescribe to free persons of color. 

 2 Kent, 259 ; Hobbsvs. Fogg, 6 'Watts, 553 ; The State 

 vs. Claiborne, Meigs, 331 ; Opinions of Attorneys- 

 General, vol. i., 382. 



" I also invite attention to another opinion, 

 which possibly may be better authority with 

 some than Chancellor Kent. I refer to the 

 opinion of the late Attorney-General of the 

 United States, Mr. Bates, given to President 

 Lincoln, at the request of the then Secretary of 

 the Treasury, Mr. Chase, in 1862. In defining 

 the meaning of the expression ' citizen of the 

 United States,' Attorney-General Bates said: 



The phrase " a citizen of the United States," with- 

 out addition or qualification, means nothing more 

 nor less than a member of the nation, and all such 

 are politically and legally equals. The child in the 

 cradle and its father in the Senate are equally citi- 

 zens of the United States, and it needs no argument 

 to prove that every citizen of the United States is a 

 citizen of the particular State in which he is domi- 

 ciled. 



" In this connection I must be permitted to 

 ask gentlemen to consider the suggestive lan- 

 guage of the late venerable Chief- Justice Taney, 

 in a very important case. I do not indorse all 

 that was said or decided in that case, but this 

 I do, as being in harmony with the spirit and 

 philosophy of our Government : 



We must not confound the rights of citizenship 

 which a State may confer within its own limits and 

 the rights of citizenship as a member of the Union. 

 He may have all the rights and privileges of the citi- 

 zen of a State, and yet not be entitled to the rights 

 and privileges of a citizen of any other State. I^or 

 have the States surrendered the power and privilege 

 of conferring the rights and privileges of citizens by 

 adopting the Constitution of the United States. Each 

 State may still confer them upon an alien or any one 

 it thinks proper, or upon any class or description of 

 persons ; yet he would not be a citizen in the sense 

 in which the word is used in the Constitution of the 

 United States, nor entitled to sue as such in one of its 

 courts, nor to the privileges and immunities of a citi- 

 zen in the other States. A State cannot make a man 

 a member of the community of the United States by 

 making him a member of its own. Scott vs. Sanford, 

 19 Howard, 405. 



" But I recur to the precise words of the 

 fourteenth amendment, which I have quoted, 

 and I say, neither does the paragraph under 

 consideration define citizen, or the constituent 

 elements of citizenship of the United States or 

 of the States. It leaves both where it found 

 them, to rest upon the common law and the 



