On the same evening, the Battalion embarked on board the transport “Ariel” for Annapolis, where it arrived on the morning of April 24th, and on the 2d of May was transferred to Fort McHenry, in the harbor of Baltimore. There it remained to the end of its term of service. PASSPORTS FOR COLORED CITIZENS. NOTE TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE, JUNE 27, 1861. The question of Passports for Colored Citizens was embarrassed by the Dred Scott decision, and the usage of the State Department, refusing to recognize colored persons as citizens. The position of the latter was set forth in a letter of Mr. Thomas, Assistant Secretary, communicating the judgment of Mr. Marcy, Secretary of State. “DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, November 4, 1856. “Your letters of the 29th ult. and 3d inst., requesting passports for eleven colored persons, have been received, and I am directed by the Secretary to inform you that the papers transmitted by you do not warrant the Department in complying with your request. The question whether free negroes are citizens is not now presented for the first time, but has repeatedly arisen in the administration of both the National and State governments. In 1821 a controversy arose as to whether free persons of color were citizens of the United States, within the intent and meaning of the Acts of Congress regulating foreign and coasting trade, so as to be qualified to command vessels, and Wirt, Attorney-General, decided that they were not, and he moreover held that the words ‘citizens of the United States’ were used in the Acts of Congress in the same sense as in the Constitution. This view is also fully sustained in a recent opinion of the present Attorney-General. “The judicial decisions of the country are to the same effect.… Such being the construction of the Constitution in regard to free persons of color, it is conceived that they cannot be regarded, when beyond the jurisdiction of this Government, as entitled to the full rights of citizens; but the Secretary directs me to say, that, though the Department could not certify that such persons are citizens of the United States, yet, if satisfied of the truth of the facts, it would give a certificate that they were born in the United States, are free, and that the Government thereof would regard it to be its duty to protect them, if wronged by a foreign government while within its jurisdiction for a legal and proper purpose.”[146]