if an
individual should leave his nation or tribe, and take up his abode among
the white population, he would be entitled to all the rights and
privileges which would belong to an emigrant from any other foreign
people.

We proceed to examine the case as presented by the pleadings.

The words "people of the United States" and "citizens" are synonymous
terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body
who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and
who hold the power and conduct the Government through their
representatives. They are what we familiarly call the "sovereign
people," and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent
member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class
of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this
people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they
are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be
included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can
therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument
provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the
contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and
inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race,
and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their
authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held
the power and the government might choose to grant them.

It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice or
injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision of that
question belonged to the political or law-making power; to those who
formed the sovereignty and framed the Constitution. The duty of the
court is, to interpret the instrument they have framed, with the best
lights we can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it,
according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.

In discussing this question, we must not confound the rights of
citizenship which a State may confer within its own limits, and the
rights of citizenship as a member of the Union. It does not by any means
follow, because he has all the rights and privileges of a citizen of a
State, that he must be a citizen of the United States. He may have all
the rights and privileges of the citizen of a State, and yet not be
entitled to the rights and privileges of a citizen in any