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Thread: Citizenship, is this the reason they has to pass the 14th Amendment?

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  1. #1

    Citizenship, is this the reason they had to pass the 14th Amendment?

    I came across Attorney General Bates opinion on citizenship you all may find very enlightening:


    https://books.google.com/books?id=1v...enship&f=false

    https://books.google.com/books?id=Ku...%20506&f=false

    https://supreme.justia.com/cases/fed.../370/case.html

    https://books.google.com/books?id=RY...0color&f=false


    Ok, as linked above, I came across this opinion from Attorney General Bates where he is asked about a "colored" man in command of a ship if he was a citizen of the United States, previously Attorney General Wirt had the opinion that colored people could not be citizens of the United States.

    These are from Bates.
    Name:  citizenship.jpg
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    Name:  color_people_us_citizens.jpg
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    This is from Wirt
    Name:  opinion-attorney_general_wirt.jpg
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    Name:  slaves_were_not_citizens.jpg
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    The case Wirt cites is this:

    https://supreme.justia.com/cases/fed.../370/case.html
    Last edited by Gavilan; 09-10-16 at 03:03 PM. Reason: order of attachment

  2. #2
    My opinion:

    They had to pass the 14th to get over the ruling of Scott v. Sanford (1857).

    There are levels to status:

    1) citizen
    2) denizen
    3) alien whether resident or foreign
    4) slave

    Condition refers to whether free or servile.

    Ultimately, this is about the opinions of some officers in some body corporate.

    Under the law of nature, all men are free. It is man's law that seeks to involuntarily subjugate another and then rationalize it as law (positive law), religion, philosophy, or whatever.
    Last edited by shikamaru; 09-10-16 at 03:05 PM.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by shikamaru View Post
    My opinion:

    They had to pass the 14th to get over the ruling of Scott v. Sanford (1857).

    There are levels to status:

    1) citizen
    2) denizen
    3) alien whether resident or foreign
    4) slave

    Condition refers to whether free or servile.
    Read Bates opinion, he breaks it down for us. The case you cite was not novel, they had already ran into such issues previously.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Gavilan View Post
    Read Bates opinion, he breaks it down for us.
    1. These opinions are decades before the Dread Scott decision.
    2. An attorneys general of a State is an officer of the government of that State. Different states treated "people of color" differently given their prejudices and history.
    Last edited by shikamaru; 09-10-16 at 03:18 PM.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by shikamaru View Post
    1. These opinions are decades before the Dread Scott decision.
    2. An attorneys general of a State is an officer of the government of that State. Different states treated "people of color" differently given their prejudices and history.
    That's right, which Bates explains therein.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Gavilan View Post
    That's right, which Bates explains therein.
    Which explains the Dread Scott decision decades later to standardize the law across the several States which leads to the Civil War and ultimately the 14th Amendment to overturn that Supreme Court ruling.

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