ect condition of that race at the time
the Constitution was adopted, and long afterward, throughout the
thirteen States by which that instrument was framed; and it is hardly
consistent with the respect due to these States, to suppose that they
regarded at that time, as fellow citizens and members of the
sovereignty, a class of beings whom they had thus stigmatized; whom, as
we are bound, out of respect to the State sovereignties, to assume they
had deemed it just and necessary thus to stigmatize, and upon whom they
had impressed such deep and enduring marks of inferiority and
degradation; or that when they met in convention to form the
Constitution, they looked upon them as a portion of their constituents,
or designed to include them in the provisions so carefully inserted for
the security and protection of the liberties and rights of their
citizens. It cannot be supposed that they intended to secure to them
rights, and privileges, and rank, in the new political body throughout
the Union, which every one of them denied within the limits of its own
dominion. More especially, it can not be believed that the large
slaveholding States regarded them as included in the word citizens, or
would have consented to a Constitution which might compel them to
receive them in that character from another State. For if they were so
received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities to citizens, it
would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the
police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own
safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized
as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every
other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass
or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they
pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night
without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for
which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full
liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which
its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political
affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this
would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both
free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination
among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.

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