History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States Part 15

Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, made a speech, in which he expressed himself as in favor of conferring citizenship upon the negro, and yet unable to vote for this bill from the opinion he entertained on "the question of power." He referred to the Dred Scott and other decisions, and showed their bearing upon the legislation now proposed. He said: "I have been exceedingly anxious individually that there should be some definition which will rid this cla.s.s of our people from that objection. If the Supreme Court decision is a binding one, and will be followed in the future, this law which we are now about to pa.s.s will be held, of course, to be of no avail, as far as it professes to define what citizenship is, because it gives the rights of citizenship to all persons without distinction of color, and, of course, embraces Africans or descendants of Africans."

He referred to a precedent when Congress had conferred the rights of citizenship: "The citizens of Texas, who, of course, were aliens, it has never been doubted became citizens of the United States by the annexation of Texas; and that was not done by treaty, it was done by legislation. If the power was in Congress by legislation to make citizens of all the inhabitants of the State of Texas, why is it not in the power of Congress to make citizens by legislation of all who are inhabitants of the United States, and who are not citizens? That is what this bill does, or what it proposes to do. There are within the United States millions of people who are not citizens, according to the view of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ought they to be citizens? I think they ought. I think it is an anomaly that says there shall not be the rights of citizenship to any of the inhabitants of any State of the United States.

"While they were slaves, it was a very different question; but now, when slavery is terminated, and by terminating it you have got rid of the only obstacle in the way of citizenship, two questions arise: First, whether that fact itself does not make them citizens? Before they were not citizens, because of slavery, and only because of slavery. Slavery abolished, why are they not just as much citizens as they would have been if slavery had never existed? My opinion is that they become citizens, and I hold that opinion so strongly that I should consider it unnecessary to legislate on the subject at all, as far as that cla.s.s is concerned, but for the ruling of the Supreme Court to which I have adverted."

Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, spoke against the propriety and const.i.tutionality of making all negroes citizens of the United States.

He said: "There never was a colony before the Declaration of Independence, and there never was a State after the Declaration of Independence, up to the time of the adoption of the Const.i.tution, so far as I have been able to learn by the slight historical examination which I have given to the subject, that ever made or attempted to make any other person than a person who belonged to one of the nationalities of Europe a citizen. I invoke the chairman of the committee to give me an instance, to point to any history or any memento, where a negro, although that negro was born in America, was ever made a citizen of either of the States of the United States before the adoption of this Const.i.tution. The whole material out of which citizens were made previous to the adoption of the present Const.i.tution was from the European nationalities, from the Caucasian race, if I may use the term. I deny that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the negro race. I deny that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the Mongolian race.

I controvert that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the Chinese race, out of the Hindoos, or out of any other race of people but the Caucasian race of Europe.

"I come, then, to this position: that whenever the States, after the Declaration of Independence and before the present Const.i.tution was adopted, legislated in relation to citizenship, or acted in their governments in relation to citizenship, the subject of that legislation or that action was the Caucasian race of Europe; that none of the inferior races of any kind were intended to be embraced or were embraced by this work of Government in manufacturing citizens."

Mr. Trumbull inquired, "Will the Senator from Kentucky allow me to ask him if he means to a.s.sert that negroes were not citizens of any of these colonies before the adoption of the Const.i.tution?"

"I say they were not," said Mr. Davis.

"Does the Senator wish any authority to show that they were?" asked Mr. Trumbull.

"When I get through," said Mr. Davis, "you can answer me."

Mr. Trumbull replied: "I understood the Senator to challenge me to produce any proof on that point, and I thought he would like to have it in his speech. I can a.s.sert to him that by a solemn decision of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, they were citizens before the adoption of the Const.i.tution."

"If the honorable Senator will allow me," said Mr. Davis, "I will get along with my remarks."

"I think you will get along better," replied Mr. Trumbull, "by not being exposed in your statements."

"The honorable Senator is full of conceit, but I have seen less conceit with a great deal more brains," said Mr. Davis, who then proceeded "to throw up" what he termed "the main b.u.t.tress for the defense of the positions" that he took.

"My main position," said he, "is, that no native-born person of the United States, of any race or color, can be admitted a citizen of the United States by Congress under the power conferred in relation to naturalization by the Const.i.tution upon Congress."

After reading some authorities, the Senator proceeded to say: "A grave hallucination in this day is to claim all power; and a minor error is that every thing which pa.s.sion, or interest, or party power, or any selfish claims may represent to the judgment or imagination of gentlemen who belong to strong parties, to be necessary or useful for the good and the domination of such parties, is seized upon in defiance of a fair construction of language, in outrage of the plain meaning of the Const.i.tution. That is not the rule by which our Const.i.tution is to be interpreted. It is not the rule by which it is to be administered. On the contrary, if the able, honorable, and clear-headed Senator from Illinois would do himself and his country the justice to place himself in the position of the framers of the Const.i.tution; if he would look all around on the circ.u.mstances and connections of that day, on the purposes of those men not only in relation to forming a more perfect Union, but also in relation to securing the blessings of life, liberty, and property to themselves and their posterity forever; if the honorable Senator would construe the Const.i.tution according to the light, the sacred and bright light which such surrounding circ.u.mstances would throw upon his intellect, it seems to me that he would at once abandon this abominable bill, and would also ask to withdraw its twin sister from the other House that both might be smothered here together upon the altar of the Const.i.tution and of patriotism."

At the close of Mr. Davis' speech, much debate and conversation ensued among various Senators upon a proposed amendment by Mr. Lane, of Kansas, by which Indians "under tribal authority" should be excluded from the benefits conferred by this bill. After this question was disposed of, Mr. Davis was drawn out in another speech by what seemed to him to be the necessity of defending some positions which he had a.s.sumed. He said:

"I still reiterate the position that the negro is not a citizen here according to the essential fundamental principles of our system; but whether he be a citizen or not, he is not a foreigner, and no man, white or black, or red or mixed, can be made a citizen by naturalization unless he is a foreigner."

Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, interposed: "I wish the Senator from Kentucky would tell us what const.i.tutes a citizen under the Const.i.tution."

"A foreigner is not a citizen in the fullest sense of the word at all," said Mr. Davis.

"The Senator is now telling us," said Mr. Clark, "who is not a citizen, but my question is, What const.i.tutes a citizen?"

"I leave that to the exercise of your own ingenuity," replied Mr.

Davis.

"That is it," said Mr. Clark. "Washington is dead; Marshall is dead; Story is dead; I hoped the Senator from Kentucky would have enlightened us. He says a negro is not a citizen, and a negro is not a foreigner and can not be made a citizen. He says that a person who might be and was a citizen before the Const.i.tution, is not a citizen since the Const.i.tution was adopted. What right was taken away from him by the Const.i.tution that disqualifies him from being a citizen? The free negroes in my State, before the Const.i.tution was adopted, were citizens."

Mr. Davis, having admitted that free negroes were citizens before the Const.i.tution in New Hampshire, Mr. Clark said:

"I desired that the Senator should tell me what, in his opinion, const.i.tuted a citizen under the Const.i.tution."

Mr. Davis replied: "I will answer the honorable Senator. We sometimes answer a positive question by declaring what a thing is not. Now, the honorable Senator asks me what a citizen is. It is easier to answer what it is not than what it is, and I say that a negro is not a citizen."

"Well, that is a lucid definition," said Mr. Clark.

"Sufficient for the subject," said Mr. Davis.

"That is begging the question," Mr. Clark replied. "I wanted to find why a negro was not a citizen, if the gentleman would tell me. If he would lay down his definition, I wanted to see whether the negro did not comply with it and conform to it, so as to be a citizen; but he insists that he is not a citizen."

"I will answer that question, if the honorable Senator will permit me," said Mr. Davis. "Government is a political partnership. No persons but the partners who formed the partnership are parties to the government. Here is a government formed by the white man alone. The negro was excluded from the formation of our political partnership; he had nothing to do with it; he had nothing to do in its formation."

"Is it a close corporation, so that new partners can not be added?"

asked Mr. Stewart, of Nevada.

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Davis; "it is a close white corporation. You may bring all of Europe, but none of Asia and none of Africa into our partnership."

"Let us see," said Mr. Clark, "how that may be. Take the gentleman's own ground that government is a partnership, and those who did not enter into it and take an active part in it can not be citizens. Is a woman a citizen under our Const.i.tution?"

"Not to vote," said Mr. Davis.

"I did not ask about voting," said Mr. Clark. "The gentleman said awhile ago that voting did not const.i.tute citizenship. I want to know if she is a citizen. Can she not sue and be sued, contract, and exercise the rights of a citizen?"

"So can a free negro," said Mr. Davis.

"Then, if a free negro can do all that," said Mr. Clark; "why is he not a citizen?"

"Because he is no part of the governing power; that is the reason,"

Mr. Davis replied.

"I deny that," said Mr. Clark, "because in some of the States he is a part of the governing power. The Senator only begs the question; it only comes back to this, that a n.i.g.g.e.r is a n.i.g.g.e.r." [Laughter.]

"That is the whole of it," said Mr. Davis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hon. Reverdy Johnson.]

"That is the whole of the gentleman's logic," said Mr. Clark.

In answer to the statement insisted on by Mr. Davis, "You can not make a citizen of any body that is not a foreigner," Mr. Johnson said:

"That would be an extraordinary condition for the country to be in.

Here are four million negroes. They are not foreigners, because they were born in the United States. They have no foreign allegiance to renounce, because they owed no foreign allegiance. Their allegiance, whatever it was, was an allegiance to the Government of the United States alone. They can not come, therefore, under the naturalizing clause; they can not come, of course, under the statutes pa.s.sed in pursuance of the power conferred upon Congress by that clause; but does it follow from that that you can not make them citizens; that the Congress of the United States, vested with the whole legislative power belonging to the Government, having within the limits of the United States four million people anxious to become citizens, and when you are anxious to make them citizens, have no power to make them citizens? It seems to me that to state the question is to answer it.

"The honorable member reads the Const.i.tution as if it said that none but white men should become citizens of the United States; but it says no such thing, and never intended, in my judgment, to say any such thing. If it had designed to exclude from all partic.i.p.ation in the rights of citizenship certain men on account of color, and to have confined, at all times thereafter, citizenship to the white race, it is but fair to presume, looking to the character of the men who framed the Const.i.tution, that they would have put that object beyond all possible doubt; they would have said that no man should be a citizen of the United States except a white man, or rather would have negatived the right of the negro to become a citizen by saying that Congress might pa.s.s uniform rules upon the subject of the naturalization of white immigrants and n.o.body else; but that they did not do. They left it to Congress. Congress, in the exercise of their discretion, have thought proper to insert the term 'white' in the naturalization act; but they may strike it out, and if it should be stricken out, I do not think any lawyer, except my friend from Kentucky, would deny that a black man could be naturalized, and by naturalization become a citizen of the United States.

"But to go back to the point from which the questions of my honorable friend from Kentucky caused me to digress, we have now within the United States four million colored people, the descendants of Africans, whose ancestors were brought into the United States as chattels. It was because of that condition that they were considered as not ent.i.tled to the rights of citizenship. We have put an end to that condition. We have said that at all times hereafter men of any color that nature may think proper to impress upon the human frame, shall, if within the United States, be free, and not property. Then, we have four million colored people who are now as free as we are; and the only question is, whether, being free, they can not be clothed with the rights of citizenship. The honorable member from Kentucky says no, because the naturalization clause does not include them. I have attempted to answer that. He says no, because the act pa.s.sed in pursuance of that clause does not include them. I have answered that by saying that that act in that particular may be changed."

On the following day, February 1st, the discussion of the bill was resumed by Mr. Morrill, of Maine. He said of the bill: "It marks an epoch in the history of this country, and from this time forward the legislation takes a fresh and a new departure. Sir, to-day is the only hour since this Government began when it was possible to have enacted it. Such has been the situation of politics in this country, nay, sir, such have been the provisions of the fundamental law of this country, that such legislation hitherto has never been possible. There has been no time since the foundation of the Government when an American Congress could by possibility have enacted such a law, or with propriety have made such a declaration. What is this declaration? All persons born in this country are citizens. That never was so before.

Although I have said that by the fundamental principles of American law all persons were ent.i.tled to be citizens by birth, we all know that there was an exceptional condition in the Government of the country which provided for an exception to this general rule. Here were four million slaves in this country that were not citizens, not citizens by the general policy of the country, not citizens on account of their condition of servitude; up to this hour they could not have been treated by us as citizens; so long as that provision in the Const.i.tution which recognized this exceptional condition remained the fundamental law of the country, such a declaration as this would not have been legal, could not have been enacted by Congress. I hail it, therefore, as a declaration which typifies a grand fundamental change in the politics of the country, and which change justifies the declaration now.

"The honorable Senator from Kentucky has vexed himself somewhat, I think, with the problem of the naturalization of American citizens. As he reads it, only foreigners can be naturalized, or, in other words, can become citizens; and upon his a.s.sumption, four million men and women in this country are outside not only of naturalization, not only of citizenship, but outside of the possibility of citizenship. Sir, he has forgotten the grand principle both of nature and nations, both of law and politics, that birth gives citizenship of itself. This is the fundamental principle running through all modern politics both in this country and in Europe. Every-where, where the principles of law have been recognized at all, birth by its inherent energy and force gives citizenship. Therefore the founders of this Government made no provision--of course they made none--for the naturalization of natural-born citizens. The Const.i.tution speaks of 'natural-born,' and speaks of them as citizens in contradistinction from those who are alien to us. Therefore, sir, this amendment, although it is a grand enunciation, although it is a lofty and sublime declaration, has no force or efficiency as an enactment. I hail it and accept it simply as a declaration.