Speech #450006197

But undoubtedly that doubt may be removed by a special act of legislation. whether the Constitutin. does or does not confer that citizenship. The objection is not. as the Senator from Kansas seems to suppose by his remarks this morning. that the person so declared a citizen is not required to pare with the property which appertained to him before he became a citizen. Is is true. as the Senator says. that it was never heard that the German or Frenchman or Irishman who possessed property before his naturalization was required to part with it afterward. The objectiun to the bill is this: thatafter you have made the Indian a citizen you still claim the right to regulate bythe laws of the United States the property which he possessed before he was a citizen and the property wlich he acquires afterward by laws specially applicable to him because of his race. Now. suppose a bill were introduced enacting that any homestead acquired by a German or French or Irish naturalized citizen should not be alienable for five years after he acquired it. suppose a law were proposed that no negro should be permitted either to sell or acquire any property which he owned before the fourteenth amendment conferred citizenship upon him. by an enactment peculiar to him. In other words. the bill contains this vicious principle: an assertion of a claim by Congress to regulate the property rights and the right to contract and deal with other citizens. of one class of American citizens because of their race. Now. if it be true that the Senator is right in thinking that the discreet management of the Indians justifies such a principle of legislation as applied to them. it is equally true that if there happen at anytime toheamajority in Congress of persons who thinkthatthe laws which in many Southern Stateswere enacted froml16 to 1863 applicable to the lately enfranchised African are required by a like discretion and policy. they may under the Constitution enact provisions of exactly the same character.