s of the several states, is to-day
null and void, precisely as is every one against negroes.

Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities of citizens? I
think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state prisoners will all
agree with me, that it is not only one of them, but the one without
which all the others are nothing. Seek first the kingdom of the ballot,
and all things else shall be given thee, is the political injunction.

Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define citizen to be a person, in the
United States, entitled to vote and hold office.

Prior to the adoption of the thirteenth amendment, by which slavery was
forever abolished, and black men transformed from property to persons,
the judicial opinions of the country had always been in harmony with
these definitions. To be a person was to be a citizen, and to be a
citizen was to be a voter.

Associate Justice Washington, in defining the privileges and immunities
of the citizen, more than fifty years ago, said: "they included all such
privileges as were fundamental in their nature. And among them is the
right to exercise the elective franchise, and to hold office."

Even the "Dred Scott" decision, pronounced by the abolitionists and
republicans infamous, because it virtually declared "black men had no
rights white men were bound to respect," gave this true and logical
conclusion, that to be one of the people was to be a citizen and a
voter.

Chief Judge Daniels said:

"There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of
writers on government, or in any actual experiment heretofore
tried, an exposition of the term citizen, which has not been
considered as conferring the actual possession and enjoyment of the
perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment of an entire equality of
privileges, civil and political."

Associate Justice Taney said:

"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."

Thus does Judge Taney's decision, which was such a terrible ban to the
black man, while he was