ng to them in all the States of the Union.
The right of American citizenship means something. It does not mean,
in the case of a foreigner, that when he is naturalized he is to be
left entirely to the mercy of State legislation. He has a right, when
duly naturalized, to go into any State of the Union, and to reside
there, and the United States Government will protect him in that
right. It will protect a citizen of the United States, not only in one
of the States of the Union, but it will protect him in foreign lands.

"Every person residing in the United States is entitled to the
protection of that law by the Federal Government, because the Federal
Government has jurisdiction of such questions. American citizenship
would be little worth if it did not carry protection with it.

"How is it that every person born in these United States owes
allegiance to the Government? Every thing that he is or has, his
property and his life, may be taken by the Government of the United
States in its defense, or to maintain the honor of the nation. And can
it be that our ancestors struggled through a long war and set up this
Government, and that the people of our day have struggled through
another war, with all its sacrifices and all its desolation, to
maintain it, and at last that we have got a Government which is
all-powerful to command the obedience of the citizen, but has no power
to afford him protection? Is that all that this boasted American
citizenship amounts to? Go tell it, sir, to the father whose son was
starved at Andersonville; or the widow whose husband was slain at
Mission Ridge; or the little boy who leads his sightless father
through the streets of your city, made blind by the winds and the sand
of the Southern coast; or the thousand other mangled heroes to be seen
on every side, that this Government, in defense of which the son and
the husband fell, the father lost his eyes, and the others were
crippled, had the right to call these persons to its defense, but has
no right to protect the survivors or their friends in any right
whatever in any of the States. Sir, it can not be. Such is not the
meaning of our Constitution. Such is not the meaning of American
citizenship. This Government, which would go to war to protect its
meanest--I will not say citizen--inhabitant, if you please, in any
foreign land, whose rights were unjustly encroached upon, has
certainly some power to protect its own citizens in their own country.