States. And no law of a
State, therefore, passed since the Constitution was adopted, can give
any right of citizenship outside of its own territory.

A clause similar to the one in the Constitution, in relation to the
rights and immunities of citizens of one State in the other States, was
contained in the articles of Confederation. But there is a difference of
language, which is worthy of note. The provision in the Articles of
Confederation was "that the _free inhabitants_ of each of the States,
paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice, excepted, should be
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of free citizens in the
several States."

It will be observed, that under this Confederation, each State had the
right to decide for itself, and in its own tribunals, whom it would
acknowledge as a free inhabitant of another State. The term _free
inhabitant_, in the generality of its terms, would certainly include one
of the African race who had been manumitted. But no example, we think,
can be found of his admission to all the privileges of citizenship in
any State of the Union after these articles were formed, and while they
continued in force. And, notwithstanding the generality of the words
"free inhabitants," it is very clear that, according to their accepted
meaning in that day, they did not include the African race, whether free
or not: for the fifth section of the ninth article provides that
Congress should have the power "to agree upon the number of land forces
to be raised, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota in
proportion to the number of _white_ inhabitants in such State, which
requisition should be binding."

Words could hardly have been used which more strongly mark the line of
distinction between the citizen and the subject; the free and the
subjugated races. The latter were not even counted when the inhabitants
of a State were to be embodied in proportion to its numbers for the
general defense. And it can not for a moment be supposed, that a class
of persons thus separated and rejected from those who formed the
sovereignty of the States, were yet intended to be included under the
words "free inhabitants," in the preceding article, to whom privileges
and immunities were so carefully secured in every State.

But although this clause of the articles of Confederation is the same in
principle with that inserted in the Constitution, yet the comprehensive
word _inhabitant_, which might