Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction
between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any
difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United
States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens,
whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is
clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute
one. The mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very
thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any
class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious
States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens.
This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated
citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the
Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of
each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the
several States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal
voter in all the States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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