t 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 class is concerned, but for the ruling of the Supreme
Court to which I have adverted."

Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, spoke against the propriety and
constitutionality 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 Constitution, 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 Constitution. The whole material out of
which citizens were made previous to the adoption of the present
Constitution 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 ou