Speech #440056258

The fourteenth amendment is a grand and clear enunciation by the American peopie of the persons who are entitled to citizenship. It ordains thatAll persons born or nataralized in the United States. and subjectti the jurisdic tion tiereof. are citizens of the United States and of tire State wherein they reside It annihilates creed. nativity. class. and color. and embraces in the vast brotherhood of Americancitizenship all born within the United States and all. wherever born. who love freedom and record an oath to defend anti uphold it. All naturalized persons are citizens. and all persons born in the United States. whether in a State or Territory or the District of Columbia. are citizens. Before this amendment it was doubted whether any one could be a citizen of the Uiited States who was not a citizen of some one of the States. and it was asserted by high and reverend authorities that you coold only enter into the august incorporation of United States citizensbip through the citizenship of a State. It was the States that forned and entered the Union. and only those were citizens of the Union which the States carried into it clothed with the character of State citizenship. The individual had no access to citizenship of the Union except as invested with the citizenship of some one of tre representative sovereign republics that composed the Union. Hence colored people. who were not considered citizens of any State. were decided not to be citizens of the United States. and the same doctrine was applied to persons resident in the District of Columbia or in any of the Territories. The ameudirent removes .l these difficulties. and declares that "aIll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction shall be citizens of the United States." It goes further. and clothes the citizen of the United States with the citizenship of whatever State he may reside in. It not only declares who are citizens of the United States. but accompanies those citizens into the several States and makes each one a citizen also of the State in which heresides. It is noJonger in the power of a State to exclude from its full and equal citizenship a citizen of the United States who may reside within it. Birth or naturalization creates the citizen of the United States. and residence within a State superadds. by force of tihe amendment. citizenship of that State. Prior to the amendment a citizen of one State was entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in each of the several States. A citizen of a State was seenrd an equality of privilege with the citizens of any other State ie chose to move into or reside in and this was a. poverfol provision to make the people of the several States els people and elevate them all to the high plane of a broad national character.