CHAPTER XI

ENFRANCHISED FUNCTIONS

THE status of citizenship is vested in all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. The first authoritative definition of American citizenship was contained in the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment, which made all individuals, in any state or territory of the Union, who came within its prescribed definitions, American citizens owing direct allegiance to Federal authority. Before that amendment was adopted, there was no common standard; citizenship was a local institution, and determined by the laws of the several states, hence a person who was a citizen in one state might be an alien in another. But by virtue of that amendment, every inhabitant born or naturalized in the United States, in becoming Federal citizens, acquired citizenship in any particular state in which residence was made. This amendment wrought a sweeping revolution in the status of citizenship, which was not fully grasped at the time, and whose significance is by no means generally apprehended now. It was

this amendment which conferred citizenship on the American negro, North and South. By one of its sections provision was made for restricting the represen

tation of a state when persons were denied suffrage. The obvious intent of this section was to limit congressional representation to the actually qualified voters of the several states. Negroes were not then entitled to vote. They had, as slaves, added threefifths to the Southern representative apportionment, and would, as citizens, increase the congressional representation of that section two score.

To understand the effect of the acts which grew out of our war legislation, it is necessary to advert briefly to some of the causes which led up to them. The possible dissolution of the Union had been uppermost in men's minds from the adoption of the Constitution. The possible severance of allegiance was the attitude of Virginia in 1799; also later of Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. It was preeminently evidenced in the far-reaching plot of Burr to form an empire in the Mississippi Valley. Even New England, with Massachusetts in the lead, showed an inclination in this direction, in the Hartford Convention of 1814. We may say that the conception of a single supreme sovereignty which should be a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," had no existence in the mind of any one in the early days of the nation. Popular sovereignty was, therefore, an inconceivable possibility. The nearest approach to it was the town meetings of New England, and these institutions of local selfgovernment were ill-equipped to grasp the profound significance wrapped up in the idea of a supreme

authority, created by individual assent, and exacting loyalty to the exclusion of local interests and sectional prejudices. Sound notions respecting the nature and functions of a federal government were impossible to incongruous, isolated colonists, deeply rooted in local prejudices. The fact is that, from its creation to the close of our civil strife, the Federal government was viewed by all classes with all the suspicion that attaches to foreign control. Fraternity of states and national loyalty were unbudded plants, that had no flower and fruitage until strife and bloodshed brought men to see that friendship and unity were better than hate and separation.

Before their rebellion the seceding states were civic organizations, owing official allegiance to the Union, and amenable to Federal control. The citi zens of the several states held, in a primary sense, allegiance to their several states, and only through their civic relation to the state were they bound in allegiance to the Federal government. Consequently the rebellion of the state not only destroyed its organic relations to the Federal government, but carried its individual citizens, except such as gave their allegiance directly to the Federal government, outside of all national civic rights. Logically speaking, then, though the secessionist was an inhabitant of Federal territory when the Rebellion ceased, he was not a citizen, but in every sense an alien subject. The severity of these conclusions, while not stated in express terms, was fully borne out by the attitude of Congress in

dealing with Southern reconstruction. The official declarations of our Federal legislature and judiciary were that their rebellion had destroyed the former organic and legal status of the states in regard to the Federal government. To be sure, no physical territory was alienated or destroyed,- that was still within, and the property of, the nation; but the former municipal organism to which the inhabitants of such territory were in subjection was obliterated. Therefore, in the absence of any recognized legal government, and in pursuance of the mandate of the Constitution to provide a republican form of government for each state, it was held that Congress had the undoubted right to prescribe the form and method by which new municipalities should be organized.

It is not our purpose to present a history of the steps which led to the conferring of suffrage on the freedmen and the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment. For a proper understanding of certain parts, however, a brief statement is necessary. Eleven states had been in armed rebellion against the national government. When hostilities ceased, no provision had been made for the restoration of these states to the Union. Congress was not in session, President Lincoln had been assassinated, and the man who had succeeded him to the presidency, though at first disposed to resort to rigorous measures in dealing with the Confederates, was speedily led, under the persuasive influence of Mr. Seward,

then Secretary of State, to issue pardons to many of the leading Southern conspirators. Guided by the same influence, he appointed provisional governors for the several Southern states, and directed that in each a convention should be held for the purpose of resuming administrative functions; the only conditions imposed were the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment and the repudiation of the Confederate debt. The consequence was that, when Congress met in December, 1865, each of the eleven rebellious states had, under such terms, effected a complete restoration of their state administrative functions, and had sent their senators and representatives for admission to the Federal Congress.

Congressional inquiry into the means and methods by which these events had been accomplished disclosed the fact that these state governments were organized, not in accordance with, but in defiance of, the expressed sentiment and policy of the nation; and especially was this observable in the attitude of these states toward the Thirteenth Amendment. It is true they had perfunctorily given their assent to that amendment, though, as was claimed by them, under duress; but they nullified both spirit and letter of the Amendment by such odious and inhuman laws against the freedmen as practically to reënslave the whole negro race. In fact, the laws for the control of the freedmen, enacted by the Southern states immediately after the close of the war, effectually reduced that people to a condition of helpless servil