n there raised to
the rank of citizens, but were still held and treated as property, and
the laws relating to them passed with reference altogether to the
interest and convenience of the white race, we shall hardly find them
elevated to a higher rank any where else.

A brief notice of the laws of two other States, and we shall pass on to
other considerations.

By the laws of New Hampshire, collected and finally passed in 1815, no
one was permitted to be enrolled in the militia of the State but free
white citizens; and the same provision is found in a subsequent
collection of the laws, made in 1855. Nothing could more strongly mark
the entire repudiation of the African race. The alien is excluded,
because, being born in a foreign country, he can not be a member of the
community until he is naturalized. But why are the African race, born in
the State, not permitted to share in one of the highest duties of a
citizen? The answer is obvious; he is not, by the institutions and laws
of the State, numbered among its people. He forms no part of the
sovereignty of the State, and is not therefore called on to uphold and
defend it.

Again, in 1822, Rhode Island, in its revised code, passed a law
forbidding persons who were authorized to join persons in marriage, from
joining in marriage any white person with any negro, Indian, or
mulatto, under the penalty of two hundred dollars, and declaring all
such marriages absolutely null and void; and the same law was again
re-enacted in its revised code of 1844. So that, down to the
last-mentioned period, the strongest mark of inferiority and degradation
was fastened upon the African race in that State.

It would be impossible to enumerate and compress in the space usually
allotted to an opinion of a court, the various laws, marking the
condition of this race, which were passed from time to time after the
Revolution, and before and since the adoption of the Constitution of the
United States. In addition to those already referred to, it is
sufficient to say, that Chancellor Kent, whose accuracy and research no
one will question, states in the sixth edition of his Commentaries
(published in 1846, 2 vols., 258, note _b_,) that in no part of the
country except Maine, did the African race, in point of fact,
participate equally with the whites in the exercise of civil and
political rights.

The legislation of the States therefore shows, in a manner not to be
mistaken, the inferior and subj