"Citizenship," 1857

From New Orleans Daily Picayune, March 21 1857.

CITIZENSHIP.

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case is the theme of bitter comment in the anti-slavery journals of the North. There is enough in it, in fact, to overthrow their favorite theories and upset their political plans. It clears away the mists through which many honest men have had distorted views of the rights of the Southern people, and have mistakenly lent themselves to the cause of oppression and aggression, when they supposed themselves to be merely on their defense against attack. It gives the sanction of established law, and the guarantees of the constitution, for all that the South has insisted upon in the recent struggles, and forces her adversaries to surrender their political organization against her rights, or assume openly the position of agitators against the constitution. It is a heavy blow to Black Republicanism and its allies, the force of which they are attempting to break, in some slight degree, by raising a clamor against the judgment of its court for what it does not contain, and alarming the Northern mind for consequences which do not belong to it at all. It is pretended that it will work the necessity of extensive changes in the constitutions of the non-slaveholding States, and compel them to amend important provisions, and abolish old standing laws and take away long conceded rights, against their own declared views of internal policy. This complaint is made with most vehemence against that part of the decision which declares that Africans and their descendants cannot become citizens of the United States. It is stated with alarm that all the States where colored persons have any political rights must proceed immediately to make the changes in their systems which are necessary to make them conform to this role.

For our own part we should not at all lament to see such a result brought about: but there is no such compulsory effect in the decision of the court in this case. On the contrary, the capacity of every State to confer political rights within its own limits, on any class of persons, at discretion, is broadly affirmed by the court, and the distinction as broadly taken that these, while they may create citizenship for the State, do not give rights as citizens of the United States. The political part of this question was raised and debated at much length in the Senate of the United States at its recent session, on the passage of the bill for authorizing the people of the Territory of Minnesota to form a constitution preparatory to admission into the Union as a State. It was moved to amend the bill so as to require that no inhabitant should be a legal voter in the elections for the constitutional convention except such as are citizens of the United States.

The power of Congress to require citizenship of the United States as a qualification for voting in the Territories was not disputed. The debate on that part of the subject involved only the expediency of making such a requisition, and the final vote did not even draw a line distinctly on the subject as a measure of general policy. The right of voting in Minnesota was conceded to the "legal voters" of the Territory, which list includes a class of foreign born citizens not yet naturalized under the laws of the United States. Some votes were cast for this provision on the ground that, by the Territorial act, these persons had been made "legal voters," and it would be wanting in good faith to deprive them of the privilege by a new law. But out of this point grew collaterally a very able and protracted debate on the general question of the power of the States to bestow political rights upon any persons who are not citizens of the United States in fact. This embraces the case of unnaturalized foreigners, and of free negroes, who are since judicially pronounced incapable of being made citizens. It was maintained, on the one hand, that the constitutional power of the States is absolute over the political rights which each may concede, within its own limits to any class of persons whatever; that they may grant aliens, Indians, negroes, children and women, the most unlimited right of suffrage, and that there is neither power nor right in Congress, or in any other State, to interfere with, or dispute the right, it being conceded that these privileges have no force beyond the State lines. On the other hand, it was contended that the States are subject to the controlling principle in the constitution, that citizens in one State shall have the same general qualifications in their relation to the United States, as citizens to all the other States, and that all laws and provisions, which confer political rights, that are exercised on general affairs, upon others than citizens, are in violation of the constitution; and as the constituency in each State, in voting for President of the United States, and for members of the House of Representatives--both matters of high national import--is made by the State, in establishing a rule of qualification for her own voters, that of citizenship of the United States is necessary, in order to conform to the constitution.

It was not maintained that there is any compulsory authority lodged in Congress, or elsewhere, to enforce this condition upon the States; only that the obligation exists, to which the States ought to conform. This question of alienism within the States covered the case of free negroes, to whom some of the States refused to concede any of the rights of citizenship of the United States, acquired by virtue of citizenship in other States. Some of the States give free negroes the right of suffrage without qualification. In others, they possess it, under certain restrictions, as to the amount of a property qualification. Massachusetts and New York, which recognize them as "citizens," have demanded, in an urgent manner, that they shall be so received in Southern ports, where their presence is held to be against public policy. They claimed the right to give citizenship in South Carolina and Georgia by making free negroes citizens of Massachusetts or New York. The South resisted these pretensions; and the Supreme Court has now come in to decide that free negroes cannot, constitutionally, be made citizens of the United States at all.

But they have not decided that Massachusetts, Rhode Island or New York cannot confer the rights of citizenship within the State, for all State purposes, upon persons of African decent, any more than they have decided that Illinois or Wisconsin cannot confer the right of suffrage upon unnaturalized foreigners. On the contrary, the decision as reported in the papers is very emphatic in affirming on all points that the States have the unlimited power of conferring, within their own territory, what political rights they please, on any claim of persons; they may confer the right upon "an alien or any other description or class of persons" who would, to all intents and purposes, be a citizen of the State, but "not a citizen in the sense of the constitution of the United States," non-entitled to any immunities in other States; and lastly, that negroes and free blacks are under the constitutional disability that they cannot be or be made citizens of the United States. They may have fellowship and equality within a State with such as choose to consort with them on such terms, but these privileges do not transcend State boundaries, and have no efficacy to give privileges anywhere else. Rhode Island is an instance wherein the State defines citizenship of the United States as one of the qualifications of voters, and she has heretofore permitted her negroes to vote as citizens. But Rhode Island, if she desires to continue this privilege, is not restrained by the decision of the Supreme Court from making a new definition of qualified voters, which shall include all persons whom she pleases. The court does not limit her power: it may make a change of phraseology necessary in her constitution, in order to give effect to her own wishes, and that is the utmost force of the decision of the court.

But the Supreme Court decision does not affect any right of a State over its own internal regulations; it rather seems to concede more than has been claimed by some persons who think themselves rigid constructionists of Federal powers, and the clamor about the overthrow of State laws and State constitutions is entirely unnecessary.