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 cannot 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
the 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 1848, 2 vol., 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 subject condition of that race at the time
the Constitution was adopted, and long afterwards, 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