led 'An act to protect all persons in the
United States in their civil rights, and furnish the means
for their vindication,' contains provisions which I can not
approve, consistently with my sense of duty to the whole
people and my obligations to the Constitution of the United
States. I am therefore constrained to return it to the
Senate, the house in which it originated, with my objections
to its becoming a law.

"By the first section of the bill, all persons born in the
United States, and not subject to any foreign power,
excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of
the United States. This provision comprehends the Chinese of
the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people
called Gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as
blacks, people of color, negroes, mulattoes, and persons of
African blood. Every individual of those races, born in the
United States, is by the bill made a citizen of the United
States. It does not purport to declare or confer any other
right of citizenship than Federal citizenship. It does not
purport to give these classes of persons any _status_ as
citizens of States, except that which may result from their
_status_ as citizens of the United States. The power to
confer the right of State citizenship is just as exclusively
with the several States as the power to confer the right of
Federal citizenship is with Congress.

"The right of Federal citizenship thus to be conferred on
the several excepted races before mentioned is now, for the
first time, proposed to be given by law. If, as is claimed
by many, all persons who are native-born, already are, by
virtue of the Constitution, citizens of the United States,
the passage of the pending bill can not be necessary to make
them such. If, on the other hand, such persons are not
citizens, as may be assumed from the proposed legislation to
make them such, the grave question presents itself, whether,
when eleven of the thirty-six States are unrepresented in
Congress, at this time it is sound policy to make our entire
colored population and all other excepted classes citizens
of the United States? Four millions of them have just
emerged from slavery into freedom. Can it be reasonably
supposed that they possess the requisite quali