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GIFT OF 
 

 CHARLES S. ELGUTTER 
 

 
 
 
 A Citizen of the 
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 An Address 
 Charles S. Elgutter 
 
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 Deliverei 
 
 i before the Nebraska State Bar Asi 
 at Omaha, December 29, 1909 
 
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 KLOPP & BARTLETT CO.. 
 
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A Citizen of the United States. 
 
 |URING the Civil War Edward Everett Hale, as an 
 incentive to patriotism, wrote the story, "A Man 
 Without a Country." The principal, Philip Nolan, 
 a naval officer in the service of the United States, 
 one day in a spirit of insubordination, damned 
 the United States of America. For this offense 
 he was tried and court-martialed. His punish- 
 ment was fixed that henceforth he should be confined on board a 
 naval vessel, and should be kept on the high seas, nevermore to 
 touch foot on American soil, hear the name America or see any 
 portion of the United States. 
 
 For many, many years, so the story goes, he passed his life a 
 prisoner on board ship somewhere on the restless waters of the 
 ocean. His country became a memory, its history a blank; no one 
 was permitted to speak to him of his native soil, and in no manner 
 did he learn from human lips the fateful crisis of the Civil War. 
 At the end he dies broken-hearted and repentant, indeed, a man 
 without a country. 
 
 It was not alone Philip Nolan in Edward Everett Hale's dra- 
 matic story who could exclaim in his anguish that he was a man with- 
 out a country. For almost a century after the establishment of the 
 Federal Government and the union of the States, every person of 
 the United States could have echoed Nolan's cry, not in the bitter- 
 ness of punishment, but in the realization of an unpleasant truth. 
 By one of those curious omissions in that almost faultless docu- 
 
 313968 
 
ment, the Federal Const! oution, when adopted in 1789 nowhere 
 defined citizenship or determined who was a citizen of the United 
 States. It failed to enumerate the qualifications required for 
 citizenship, yet the whole purport of that charter was concerned 
 with establishing a government for citizens of the United States. 
 
 The omission was not accidental. It was significant. It re- 
 flected the condition and temper of the times, when the making of 
 the nation was in embryo; and the forces of interdependence and 
 centralization, the steamship, the railroad, the telegraph, and the 
 daily newspaper were unknown; when Philadelphia was a fort- 
 night's distance from Boston; and when commerce between states 
 was insignificant and the little that took place was impossible, 
 except by sea, carried in vessels of light tonnage. 
 
 It was a matter of personal pride to be a citizen of a great state 
 like Virginia, Massachusetts, New York or South Carolina. To be 
 addressed as a citizen of the United States conveyed no meaning, 
 and was something to be resented as chimerical and unreal. We 
 must translate ourselves to that period to understand why, of all 
 statesmen, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall 
 alone conceived one land, one people, one law. 
 
 No straight line marks the historical development of the citizen 
 of the United States. He grew into political significance with the 
 commercial and industrial interdependence of the people, and a 
 realization that such people constituted a nation. His evolution 
 from the modest conception in the early days to his importance at 
 this time was gradual, for the idea of citizenship of the United 
 States as distinct from citizenship of the state, as the question came 
 before the country from time to time, was of slow growth and con- 
 fusing in application. To be candid, the full meaning of what is 
 implied in citizenship of the United States is not understood even in 
 our own day and generation. 
 
 Some time after the beginning of the young republic, the course 
 of events forced a conviction that the citizen of the United States 
 spoken of in the constitution was something more than a mere legal 
 fiction. His existence apart from citizenship of a state, however, 
 was denied. If his existence was admitted, it was said that he was 
 a citizen of the United States by courtesy, clothed with such politi- 
 cal significance only through and by reason of his being a citizen of 
 one of the. states composing the nation. 
 
 Congress at no time attempted to define his place by formal 
 legislation. It was left to the slow process of the courts to work out 
 and define national citizenship piecemeal in desultory, private 
 
decisions, affecting his status, his rights and his duties. When the 
 courts were called upon to pass on the legal and political rights of a 
 person born in the District of Columbia or residing in one of the 
 early territories like Michigan and Minnesota, greater embarrass- 
 ment arose. Such person was in a more precarious position because, 
 not being a citizen of a state, his relation to the nation was in greater 
 doubt. As a result, the status of the people of the territories with 
 respect to national citizenship has not been judicially determined as 
 a finality even to this day. It is still open to controversy, as we all 
 know, when the civil rights of the native inhabitants of our recent 
 colonial possessions in Porto Rico, the Pacific and elsewhere are 
 under discussion. 
 
 From the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 1 789 to the 
 passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, and since that period, 
 extending for more than a century, citizenship of the United States 
 in various relations was a subject of vital discussion in Congress, was 
 a source of disagreement by the courts, a cause of embarrassment to 
 the executive department, and brought about momentous upheavals 
 among the people in their political status. 
 
 Citizenship of the United States assumed a significance never 
 before realized with the acquisition of Louisiana and the accession 
 of Texas and California and the increasing power of Federal govern- 
 ment by reason of territorial enlargement. Its significance soon 
 became serious, and its consideration grew virulent as the status of 
 the negro, when emancipated and finally freed as a race, pressed for 
 solution. 
 
 Speaking to Congress as late as 1833, John C. Calhoun, then a 
 senator from South Carolina, defined citizenship in the accepted 
 sense : 
 
 "If by a citizen of the United States is meant a citizen at large, 
 whose citizenship extends to the entire geographical limits of the 
 country without having a local citizenship in some state or territory, 
 a sort of citizenship of the world, such citizenship must be a perfect 
 nondescript." 
 
 The supreme test came with the famous Dred Scott decision, 
 when the Calhoun definition of 1833 was elaborated, and was given 
 the force of law by the Supreme Court. 
 
 John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, guiding spirit of his party 
 in the Senate and moulder of public opinion, voiced the popular con- 
 ception regarding citizenship of the United States; but it was not 
 until twenty -five years later, when in 1858 the Supreme Court set 
 its seal of approval on this dicta by construing the Constitution and 
 
declaring as law that a person was a citizen of the United States 
 only through his citizenship of one of the states. The generally 
 accepted theory of citizenship, received judicial affirmation in the 
 Dred Scott decision. 
 
 By a strange perversity, the question of citizenship arose in a 
 case to determine whether a black man had a right as a matter of 
 law, to bring suit in the United States courts, a privilege accorded to 
 citizens of the United States. This action, one of the most important 
 ever determined in its effect upon the history of our country, had a 
 most humble and remarkable origin. The parties in interest never 
 for a moment suspected the political volcano which slumbered in 
 its apparently innocent procedure. The suit at first attracted no 
 particular attention, as it apparently was a controversy between 
 private parties in which the public had no real concern. But by 
 the time the case reached the Supreme Court the real issues involved, 
 citizenship of the United States, status of the negro, free soil and 
 slave territory, the Missouri Compromise, loomed up with direful 
 forebodings behind the action of this humble black man. And there 
 was arrayed on one side the partisans of free soil and on the other 
 the champions of slavery throughout the country during its final 
 consideration by the highest court of the land called upon to con- 
 strue the rights of the negro, if any he had under the Constitution. 
 
 It may not be out of place to outline the facts involved in the 
 case. Dred Scott was a negro slave born in Missouri. His master, 
 an army officer, in 1834 took him to Illinois, a state where slavery 
 was prohibited by statute. In 1836 his master took him to Minne- 
 sota, at that time a territory in which slavery was prohibited by 
 Congress in 1820, in the act know^n as the Missouri Compromise. 
 From Minnesota his master was transferred in 1838 to Jefferson Bar- 
 racks, near St. Louis, and took Dred Scott and his family back to 
 Missouri. Here Scott was sold by his master as a slave to John 
 Sandford of New York. 
 
 Scott passed into the hands of his new master, and was whipped 
 for a trifling offense, an occurrence not unusual in those days. Some 
 sharp-witted lawyer, the ambulance-chaser of his day, who scented 
 a fee, probably induced Scott to bring suit for damages against 
 Sandford on the ground that by his residence in Illinois and Minne- 
 sota, free soil where slavery was prohibited, he was a free man; and 
 that his being held as a slave and the whipping constituted an assault, 
 for which Scott demanded damages against Sandford in the sum of 
 $5,000. Suit was filed in the circuit court of the United States for 
 the district of Missouri, alleging diverse citizenship, that practice 
 
being permitted by the Constitution for a citizen of one state to sue 
 a citizen of another state, provided of course Dred Scott was a 
 :itizen of the state of Missouri, and the defendant Sandford was a 
 citizen of the. state of New York, as set forth in the negro's declara- 
 tion. Sandford 's plea to the jurisdiction of the court denied that 
 Scott was a citizen of Missouri, or of any other state, and alleged 
 :hat Scott was a slave descended from negro ancestors, and was the 
 property of Sandford, and for that reason he had no standing in 
 :he court of the United States, and his petition should be dismissed 
 :or lack of jurisdiction. Scott demurred to the plea, and on hearing 
 ;he circuit court found for the plaintiff, and sustained the demurrer, 
 whereupon Sandford filed answer denying the charges alleged. 
 After a trial upon the issue of fact before a jury, the verdict found 
 the defendant Sandford not guilty. A writ of error was issued to the 
 Supreme Court December, 1854. 
 
 The case was squarely before the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, turning upon the question whether Dred Scott, a negro, 
 had any claim to citizenship by reason of his having lived on free 
 soil. Three years later, after twice argued, the court speaking 
 through Chief Justice Taney decided against Scott, dismissing his 
 petition for the reason he was not a citizen of the United States ; and 
 as a negro could not acquire citizenship, the circuit court of the 
 United States had no jurisdiction to hear and determine the case. 
 
 The court in construing who were citizens of the United States 
 interpreted the words "People of the United States" and "Citizens 
 of the United States," as used in the Constitution, to be synony- 
 mous terms, and that wherever the words "states" or "United States" 
 occurred, they are to be strictly construed to mean the original 
 thirteen states and such other states as were admitted to the Union 
 from time to time. 
 
 "The people of the respective states were the parties to the 
 Constitution," said Justice Taney. "These people consist of the 
 free inhabitants of those states. They had provided in their Con- 
 stitution for the adoption of a uniform rule of naturalization, and 
 that their descendants and persons naturaUzed were the only per- 
 sons who could be citizens of the United States. Citizenship of the 
 United States came through the citizenship of the several states, 
 but there was one restriction. While each state confers its own 
 citizenship on any class or description of persons it thinks proper, 
 such as a free person descended from Africans held in slavery, yet 
 such a person would not be a citizen of .the United States for the 
 reason that the state could not introduce any person or description 
 
8 
 
 of persons who were not intended to be embraced in the new politi- 
 cal family, which the Constitution brought into existence, but werCi 
 intended to be excluded from it. Consequently a man of African 
 descent, as the negro Dred Scott, whether slave or free was not and 
 could not be a citizen of the United States." 
 
 Thirty years later the same court, in 1888, considering the/ 
 application to American citizenship of the Chinese or persons othei 
 than of the white race, speaking through Justice Field, followec 
 Justice Taney to the effect, that Chinamen cannot be citizens of th( 
 United States because such persons were not intended by th( 
 people adopting the Constitution to be embraced in the political! 
 family known as the citizens of the United States. ' 
 
 Justice Curtis of Massachustets, sitting in the Dred Scott case, 
 dissented from the opinion of Taney and was the first jurist on the 
 Supreme Bench to declare the right of a free negro to citizenship. 
 Nevertheless, he agreed with the majority of the court, that under 
 the Constitution citizenship of the United States with reference to 
 natives was dependent upon citizenship in the several states under 
 their respective constitutions and laws; but where any free person, 
 descended from Africans held in slavery, was a citizen of a state 
 under the Confederation, he became by that fact a citizen of the 
 United States on the adoption of the Constitution. 
 
 "I can find," says the eminent jurist, in his dissenting opinion, 
 "nothing in the Constitution which by its own force deprives of 
 their citizenship any class of persons who were citizens of one of the 
 states at the time of the adoption of the Constitution ; nor any power 
 enabling Congress to disfranchise persons born on the soil of any 
 state by its constitution and laws. And my opinion is that under 
 the Constitution of the United States every free person, even an 
 emancipated negro born on the soil of a state, who is a citizen of 
 that state by force of its constitution, is also a citizen of the United 
 States." 
 
 The divergent views of the two schools of constitutional con- 
 struction regarding the status of a free negro, one denying, the 
 other recognizing his rights to citizenship of the United States have 
 passed into memorable history. Whichever view may have been 
 right in legal interpretation, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amend- 
 ment by the people ten years after the decision, set aside the Dred 
 Scott decision of the Supreme Court as a rule of law respecting the 
 negro, and changed the whole subject of citizenship, by removing 
 from doubt and discussion the bitter and long-standing dispute. 
 
 The Fourteenth Amendment recognizes in express terms, if it 
 
does not in fact create, citizens of the United States. It makes 
 citizenship depend upon the place of one's birth, or the fact of one's 
 adoption under the law of naturalization, and not upon the constitu- 
 tion or laws of any state or the condition of one's ancestry. 
 
 Henceforth the American enjoyed a recognized double citizen- 
 ship. He is at once a citizen of the United States by birth, and he 
 is a citizen of a state as a matter of choice. Birth as a test of 
 citizenship is a rule common to many countries. From earliest 
 times in English jurisprudence, it was laid down as a broad prin- 
 ciple that the place of birth fixed the place of citizenship. A child 
 born within any territory subject to the King of England, is a 
 natural born subject to the king, and is no alien in England. This 
 was the rule of the American colonies prior to 1776, so that the 
 Fourteenth Amendment in this respect reaffirmed the common law. 
 
 The distinction between citizenship of the United States and 
 citizenship of a state is clearly recognized and established. Not 
 only a man may be a citizen of the United States without being a 
 citizen of a state, but an important element is necessary to convert 
 the former into the latter. He must reside within the state to make 
 him a citizen of it. But it is only necessary that he should be born 
 or naturalized in the United States to be a citizen of the Republic. 
 
 Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, a citizen of the United- 
 States must first be qualified as a citizen of some state. After the 
 Fourteenth Amendment, a citizen of a state is merely a citizen of the 
 United States residing in that state. 
 
 Under the Constitution, certain rights, privileges and immuni- 
 ties belong to an American as a free man and a free citizen. After 
 1868 these rights belong to him as a citizen of the United States, 
 and are not dependent upon his citizenship of any state. 
 
 The Fourteenth Amendment does not confer any new privi- 
 leges or immunities upon the citizen, or attempt to define or to 
 enumerate those already existing. The Fourteenth Amendment 
 assumes that there are such privileges and immunities, which be- 
 long of right to a person as a citizen of the United States, and or- 
 dains that they shall not be abridged by state legislation. 
 
 The Fourteenth Amendment in part reads as follows : 
 
 "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 wherein they reside. No state shall make or en- 
 force any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of 
 citizens of the United States." 
 
 This addition to the Bill of Rights is of great historical import- 
 
lO 
 
 ance. Its immediate purpose following the Civil War of 1861, and 
 the abolition of slavery in 1863, was to throw about the unfortu- 
 nate negro race further civil and political protection, which the 
 Thirteenth Amendment abohshing slavery failed to secure. In a 
 spirit of magnanimity the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted for 
 the negro's express benefit. Henceforth the negro and his descend- 
 ants were created citizens of the United States and of the p:.rticular 
 states wherein they reside, and the intention was that they were to 
 be given all the benefits and all the immunities which by right of 
 free men white citizens of the United States enjoy. But the re- 
 sults of the Fourteenth Amendment are broader. In effect the Four- 
 teenth Amendment withdrew from the states powers theretofore 
 enjoyed by them to an extent not yet fully ascertained, and it is 
 the province of the Supreme Court to differentiate these powers so 
 necessary to the perpetuity of our dual form of government. 
 
 It was the boast of the Roman, to be a citizen of Rome was to 
 be greater than a king. Cicero has preserved in the orations against 
 Verres, that tyrant who crucified a Roman citizen in defiance of 
 Roman law, a striking illustration of the sacredness of the person 
 of a Roman citizen. If such was the Roman conception, what shall 
 be said of the power and dignity that hedge about a citizen of the 
 great American Republic ? 
 
 The privileges and immunities, which the American citizen 
 enjoys, are not easily defined. They are those which are funda- 
 mental, which belong to citizens of a free government, and which are 
 comprehended in the words of the Declaration of Independence, 
 life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and are included in the 
 preamble of the Constitution, "to establish justice, insure domestic 
 tranquility, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of 
 liberty to ourselves and our posterity." The privileges and im- 
 munities of a citizen of the United States are as broad and as strong 
 as the arm of the nation is able and willing to enforce his rights. 
 They arise out of the nature and essential character of the national 
 government or are specifically granted or secured to all citizens or 
 persons by the Constitution of the United States or its laws and 
 treaties made in pursuance thereof, as distinguished from those 
 belonging to the citizens of a state. 
 
 To the national citizen are guaranteed the right to pass freely 
 from state to str te, the right of habeas corpus, trial by jury, access 
 to the Federal courts, the free exercise of religion, free speech, a 
 free press, the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the Con- 
 gress for a redress of grievances, to receive protection in the right 
 
II 
 
 to vote for national officers, and the right of not being deprived of 
 life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The citizen 
 cannot be arbitrarily despoiled of his property ; equally with others 
 he shall enjoy personal and civil rights. What the Constitution 
 expresses in general terms, the laws of Congress and judicial inter- 
 pretation have ampUfied to meet new conditions. 
 
 To citizens of the United States is given the right to the pubhc 
 domain, and the right of homestead upon the public lands, the 
 benefits of copyright, and the right to be protected against violence 
 while in the lawful custody of the United States marshal. 
 
 A privilege of a citizen of the United States is to demand and 
 receive the care and protection of the Federal Government over 
 his life, liberty and property when on the high seas, or within the 
 jurisdiction of a foreign power. Armed with his patent of nobiUty, 
 his American passport, he may safely go to any country in the 
 world with which the United States has entered into a treaty of 
 friendship, secure in the protection of his person and his property. 
 
 Another privilege is that a citizen of the United States shall 
 have the same property right in every state and territory as is 
 enjoyed by the citizens of each state and territory. He shall have 
 the Hberty and the right to follow any of the ordinary calUngs of 
 life. Another privilege is that no discrimination shall be made by 
 one state against the citizens of another state or against the citizens 
 of the United States. Under the Fourth Article of the Constitution, 
 equahty is expressly secured between citizens of different states; 
 under the Fourteenth Amendment the sarne equality is secured 
 between citizens of the United States. 
 
 This equality of right in lawful pursuits throughout the whole 
 country is the distinguishing privilege of citizens of the United States. 
 Each state may freely prescribe such regulations as will promote 
 the public health, secure the good order and advance the general 
 prosperity of society. When once prescribed the pursuit must be 
 free to be followed by every citizen of the United States who will 
 conform to the regulations. 
 
 American history is full of examples of the protection extended 
 for violation of the citizen's rights abroad and vindication of the 
 Nation's honor. The war with Tripoli and the punishment of the 
 Barbery pirates in the infant days of the RepubHc showed the 
 Nation's temper in behalf of American citizens on the high sea. The 
 second war with England was a protest against seizure and im- 
 pressment of American seamen, whether native or naturcohzed. 
 
 The Pericardis affair in Morocco and the Ellen M. Stone outrage 
 
12 
 
 in Bulgaria, have not yet passed out of mind of the goverment's 
 efforts in behalf of kidnapped citizens. The execution of Groce and 
 Cannon by Zelaya and the protest of the State Department, en- 
 forced by the navy against the arbitrary action of the President of 
 Nicaragua, is the latest expression of the national government in 
 behalf of citizens of the United States. The American missionary in 
 Turkey and in China is protected under the stars and stripes. The 
 periodic interference in Venezuela, in Santo Domingo and Central 
 America are the perennial attempts of the United States to protect 
 the persons and property and business interests of American citizens 
 in the turbulent republics. While the persistent refusal of Russia 
 to permit American citizens of Jewish religion to enter or reside in 
 Russia equally with American citizens in general has at times 
 reached acute conditions in diplomatic correspondence and given 
 rise to protests in the platforms of national parties. 
 
 Likewise in domestic affairs, the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission and the legislation in Congress to extend its powers in 
 railroad regulation may be an exercise of governmental supervision 
 over railroads under the commerce clause of the Constitution. But 
 its effect is the relief of the citizen of the United States engaged in 
 traffic between states against unjust discrimination. So, too, the 
 investigation into the beef trust, Standard Oil and other alleged 
 monopolies is merely another phase of government inquiry through 
 its law-making functions and its executive departments to insure to 
 the citizen his privileges and immunities throughout the country of 
 the United States. 
 
 We are accustomed in our internal affairs to rely on the Federal 
 courts for the redress of such abuses against citizens of the United 
 States, and the records of the courts are voluminous with decisions 
 restraining individuals and even states from unconstitutional acts 
 against the citizen. Interference by the Executive and by Congress 
 rarely exercised, is however, often viewed with alarm as radical 
 and an encroachment upon the states. But the judiciary is only 
 one branch of government machinery. When necessary the entire 
 force of national power must be exercised at home as well as abroad 
 in behalf of citizens of the United States deprived unjustly of funde- 
 mental rights. There has always existed a delicacy and reluctance 
 on the part of the Federal Government to interfere with the internal 
 affairs of a state in the protection of the violated rights of a citizen 
 of the United States. This is especially true of Congress and of the 
 President. Only on rare occasions has the Executive power been 
 directly exercised. The jealousy of a state against what is termed 
 
13 
 
 Federal interference and encroachment is easily aroused and re- 
 sented. South Carolina in 1833 resisted President Jackson's attempt 
 to collect duties on imports. Governor Altgeld, of Illinois, during 
 the railroad strikes of 1894, bitterly opposed President Cleveland's 
 proclamation directing Federal troops to protect from obstruction 
 United States mails in the city of Chicago. Such Executive inter- 
 ference in a state has been justified on the ground of protecting 
 property of the United States. If the dignity of the United States 
 is assaulted by the unlawful interference with its property or with 
 its mails or with its administration, is not its dignity equally in- 
 sulted when one of its citizens cannot obtain the protection of the 
 state to which he is lawfully entitled and wherein he resides? Is 
 there any reason why the national power should not be more often 
 invoked at least through the criminal or the equity side of the Fed- 
 eral courts, to protect a citizen of the United States, tho' he be 
 a citizen of a state, from mob violence in that state, and to punish 
 those engaged in lynching negroes as in South Carolina ; or in forceful 
 deporting of riotous miners out of the state, as in Colorado ; or in burn- 
 ing their victim at the stake, as in Mississippi; or in the excesses of 
 the night riders, as in Kentucky, whenever the officers of that state 
 charged with executive or judicial power fail in their duty, or the 
 sentiment of the community of that state tolerates such outrages? 
 Yet the Federal courts have with reluctance interposed in the protec- 
 tion of the life of a citizen of the United States jeopardized in the 
 state to which he likewise owes allegiance, where fundamental 
 rights are invaded. 
 
 Elihu Root in public address called attention to the failure of 
 states in the protection of their own citizens in life and property, 
 and the warning that the supineness of the state was an invitation 
 to the nation to exercise its protecting prerogative over its citizens, 
 though claimed an encroachment on the rights of the state over its 
 own. 
 
 To the American bom to the purple, the great advantages which 
 he holds by right as a citizen of the United States, scarcely give him 
 a moment's thought. Like Napoleon's royal son, these honors and 
 these dignities have been prepared for him. He has known no other 
 conditions. His citizenship sits lightly on his shoulders. He feels 
 no appreciable burdens, he pays, no direct tax for the support of the 
 national government. The only time he feels the big stick of his 
 country and has cause to grumble is when he returns from Europe 
 with a trunk full of dutiable goods, and is subject to custom-house 
 inspection and tariff charges. His undefined security and power as 
 
14 
 
 a citizen of the Republic he enjoys through his relations to the 
 nation. It is not given him by reason of his citizenship in a state, 
 for he changes his state as often as he does his coat, yet he knows 
 his privileges and immunities follow him up and down the broad 
 domain of his country. 
 
 There is one exception to his prerogatives. With all his powers, 
 the citizen of the United States has no right to vote. The United 
 States has no vote in the states of its own creation. The elective 
 officers of the United States are all elected directly or indirectly by 
 state votes. Members of Congress are chosen by the votes of citizens 
 of the states. Senators are elected by the legislatures of the states. 
 Presidential electors are elected by the qualified voters of each state 
 or are selected in such manner as the legislature directs. The citizen 
 of the United States who desires to vote cannot do so in any state 
 unless he qualifies as a citizen under the laws of that state. Each 
 state determines for itself what qualifications are required, with the 
 prohibition, however, under the Fifteenth Amendment, that the right 
 of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or 
 abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, 
 color, or previous condition of servitude. In Nebraska, for example, 
 the right to vote is limited to male persons of the age of twenty-one 
 or upwards, who shall have resided in the state six months and who 
 are either citizens of the United States or persons of foreign birth 
 who shall have declared their intention to become citizens of the 
 United States in conformity to the Federal naturalization laws. In 
 Colorado male as well as female persons of required age and qualifica- 
 tions may vote. But the right of women to vote in Colorado or in 
 Wyoming or in Utah as citizens of those states do not qualify them 
 to vote in Nebraska or in any other state where the suffrage is 
 withheld from females. The Federal Constitution does not confer 
 the right to vote on any one and suffrage is not a part of citizenship 
 of the United States. Minors and women if otherwise competent 
 are citizens of the United States. Likewise lunatics, paupers and 
 convicts are citizens of the United States, but their citizenship if 
 denied by the states does not embrace the right to vote. 
 
 With this reservation to his sovereignty, if the citizen of the 
 United States appears careless of his birthright, the advantages 
 which he enjoys over other men in the world are eagerly sought 
 after by those who stand outside the pale and seek adoption into 
 his family. With respect to aliens, that is, persons foreign born, 
 citizenship of the United States is a white man's prerogative. The 
 Civil War made citizenship the black man's privilege. Neither the 
 
yellow man nor the brown man, neither Chinese nor Japanese, 
 neither Malay, Hawaiian nor Filippino is welcome under the laws of 
 naturaHzation, and the red man who is a domestic alien is denied 
 citizenship so long as he is held in tribal relations as ward of the 
 nation. The provisions of the naturalization laws apply to aliens 
 who are free-white persons and to the negro of African nativity and 
 of African descent. To all other men the doors of citizenship through 
 naturalization are shut; but a person of the excluded races, as 
 Chinese or Japanese, if bom in one of the states, as determined by 
 the Supreme Court of the United States within the past twenty 
 years, although of alien parentage, is by virtue of the Fourteenth 
 Amendment a citizen of the United States. 
 
 Apart from the provisions by which an individual acceptable 
 to the United States may be naturalized, whole communities during 
 the past one hundred years have been admitted to citizenship by 
 treaty or by joint resolution of Congress. The relations which the 
 inhabitants of ceded territory shall bear to the United States are 
 determined by the treaty of cession. Such treaty is the law of the 
 land. Under the Louisiana Purchase by the Treaty of Paris in 1803, 
 it was provided that, "the inhabitants of the ceded territory of 
 Louisiana should be incorporated into the union of the United 
 States, and admitted as soon as possible according to the principles 
 of the Federal Constitution to the enjoyment of all the rights and 
 advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States." By 
 virtue of this treaty, the white inhabitants of the territory of Louis- 
 iana ^nd their descendants became citizens of the United States 
 on an equal footing with the citizens of the original states. In like 
 manner the white inhabitants of Florida, New Mexico and Cali- 
 fornia, and Alaska, were each in turn admitted to citizenship of the 
 United States under treaty. The Republic of Texas was admitted 
 to the Union as a state by joint resolution of Congress. 
 
 A radical departure was made, however, in 1898 when Hawaii, 
 Porto Rico and the Philippines were annexed with the proviso, 
 "that the civil and political status of the native inhabitants of the 
 territories ceded to the United States shall be determined by Con- 
 gress." In other words, the native inhabitants of these possessions 
 are not citizens. Whether the natives of these islands at any time 
 shall be admitted to the full privileges and immunities of citizens 
 of the United States rests with Congress. It is Congress which 
 shall determine to whom and to what extent rights of citizenship 
 shall be extended to the native inhabitants of our insular possessions. 
 At each session the tendency is to grant greater rights and privi- 
 

 -)^? " 
 
 i6 
 
 leges to the native people of these possessions, as they qualify 
 themselves for a citizen's duties. 
 
 A century and a quarter of national growth has developed in 
 the status of citizenship, curious and anomalous conditions not 
 dreamt of by the fathers. At first citizenship of the United States 
 was dependent and subordinate to citizenship of one of the states. 
 After the Fourteenth Amendment citizenship was acquired by birth 
 in a state or by naturalization. Through changes brought about 
 mainly by judicial interpretation a system of caste has grown up. 
 All men are not equal in the Republic. Only the native born in the 
 states enjoy full power embraced in the title, citizenship of the United 
 States. The naturalized citizen barred by constitutional prohibi- 
 tion from the President's chair may not be conscious of that disabil- 
 ity. But the people of the territories may have reason to complain 
 when their status may be one thing in the District of Columbia, a 
 different thing in New Mexico, and something else in Alaska. In 
 the insular dependencies the native Porto Rican, the Hawaiian and 
 the Filippino are wholly at the pleasure of Congress and differ in 
 political and civil rights not only from the people of the territories, 
 but one with another and class with class. In this year of grace, the 
 descendant of the emanicpated black man may truly look down 
 with scorn upon his political inferior, the yellow man, the red man 
 and the brown man. The Chinese youth born in San Francisco 
 may as a patriotic American deport his alien father, while the Indian 
 as a dependent ward of the nation must accept, no matter how un- 
 willingly, guardianship of a grudging white man. 
 
,„ «ooi. „„. STAMPED Uow"""^^ °ATE 
 
 JUL 17 
 
 ?.9?5 
 
 OBRAffy USE 
 ^ iC'D LD 
 
 FEB 1 8 t963 
 
 15/n-i2,'24 
 
3/3S ., ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY