Speech #560029079

In the sense of the Senators definition. the adoption of the thirteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution converted every freedman in the United States into a citizen of the United States. The Government was entitled to their allegiance and owed them protection. They were nativeborn inhabitants of the country in which they lived. and yet that they were not citizens after the adoption of the thirteenth amendment. and that a broader and more comprehensive meaning attaches to the expression "citizens of the United States" than that insisted on by the Senator from Ohio was made clear by the subsequent action of the States in adopting the first clause of the fourteenth amendment. which. in order to confer citizenship on the freedmen. declared that 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." This declara tion guaranteed to the freedmen constitutional protection equal to that enjoyed by the original citizens of the American States. and established beyond cavil or dispute the true significance of the phrase "citizens of the United States." The national status of the masses of the people residing in any country gives character to its political relations with the rest of the world. If the United States elect to treat a people as foreigners. the country they inhabit. so far as we are concerned. must be deemed a foreign state or territory. If they be treated as subject to the sovereign authority of the United States. but at the same time the inhabitants of a territory held under our temporary control. their country may be treated as an American dependency.