Happy Monday faithful FR readers! As usual, this Monday’s post comes to us from Stephen Hall. Thanks so much, Stephen!!!
Going outside the scope of my normal postings due to the current nature of the topic and faced with an eloquence difficult to match in more concise phrasing, I would like to broach the current topic of birthright citizenship from one of the only Supreme Court cases proximate to the issue.
This issue involved not persons entering the country illegally, that is to say trespassing upon our nation, but people who had a legal right to be in our country and the status and nature of the phrase in the Fourteenth Amendment regarding “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”.
One of the reasons that such a case is important is the legal distinction between the “plain language” of the Constitution and those who would focus upon the “original intent” of the writers of that Constitution, or amendment thereof.
Just as the word “commerce” in the Commerce Clause, in the common understanding of the English language of the day included only the purchasing, selling, or transporting of goods, more modern courts have often sided with a more modern usage of the word commerce to be synonymous with the word “business” and not the more traditional restricted meaning.
One of the best ways to understand the original intent of any phrase is to examine what people more contemporaneous in time thought that such a phrase meant. Which is why this case, being decided less than twenty years after the creation of the 14th Amendment, gives us greater insight into what those who voted on the amendment understood the phrase to mean.
And I focus upon the people who voted for such amendment rather than the writer, because that is where the true meaning of any legislation resides.
Note that the focus of the discussion is the natural allegiance to another governmental entity. I have made sure to include the dissent, because often the counter argument is as telling as the winning argument. And, because I am conveying to you a legal case, thankfully edited for brevity, this post will be much longer than my usual short quips.
ELK v. WILKINS, 112 U.S. 94, 5 S.Ct. 41, 28 L.Ed. 643 (1884).
GRAY, J.
This is an action brought by an Indian, in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Nebraska, against the registrar of one of the wards of the city of Omaha, for refusing to register him as a qualified voter therein.
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The plaintiff, in support of his action, relies on the first clause of the first section of the fourteenth article of amendment of the constitution of the United States, by which ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside;’ and on the fifteenth article of amendment, which provides that ‘the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’ . . . [H]e does not allege that . . . he has ever been naturalized, or taxed, or in any way recognized or treated as a citizen by the state or by the United States. Nor is it contended by his counsel that there is any statute or treaty that makes him a citizen.
The question then is, whether an Indian, born a member of one of the Indian tribes within the United States, is, merely by reason of his birth within the United States, and of his afterwards voluntarily separating himself from his tribe and taking up his residence among white citizens, a citizen of the United States, within the meaning of the first section of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution. * * *
The distinction between citizenship by birth and citizenship by naturalization is clearly marked in the provisions of the constitution, by which ‘no person, except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president;’ and ‘the congress shall have power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.’ Const. art. 2, § 1; art. 1, § 8. By the thirteenth amendment of the constitution slavery was prohibited. The main object of the opening sentence of the fourteenth amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes, (Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393;) and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside. Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 73; Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 306.
This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared to be citizens are ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ The evident meaning of these last words is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards, except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts; or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired. Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of, and owing immediate allegiance to, one of the Indiana tribes, (an alien though dependent power,) although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more ‘born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ within the meaning of the first section of the fourteenth amendment, than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign nations. This view is confirmed by the second section of the fourteenth amendment, which provides that ‘representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.’ Slavery having been abolished, and the persons formerly held as slaves made citizens, this clauses fixing the apportionment of representatives has abrogated so much of the corresponding clause of the original constitution as counted only three-fifths of such persons. But Indians not taxed are still excluded from the count, for the reason that they are not citizens. Their absolute exclusion from the basis of representation, in which all other persons are now included, is wholly inconsistent with their being considered citizens. * * *
It is also worthy of remark that the language used, about the same time, by the very congress which framed the fourteenth amendment, in the first section of the civil rights act of April 9, 1866, declaring who shall be citizens of the United States, is ‘all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed.’ 14 St. 27; Rev. St. § 1992. Such Indians, then, not being citizens by birth, can only become citizens in the second way mentioned in the fourteenth amendment, by being ‘naturalized in the United States,’ by or under some treaty or statute. The action of the political departments of the government, not only after the proposal of the amendment by congress to the states in June, 1866, but since the proclamation in July, 1868, of its ratification by the requisite number of states, accords with this construction. While the amendment was pending before the legislatures of the several states, treaties containing provisions for the naturalization of members of Indian tribes as citizens of the United States were made on July 4, 1866, with the Delawares, in 1867 with various tribes in Kansas, and with the Pottawatomies, and in April, 1868, with the Sioux. 14 St. 794, 796; 15 St. 513, 532, 533, 637.
The treaty of 1867 with the Kansas Indians strikingly illustrates the principle that no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent, and directly contradicts the supposition that a member of an Indian tribe can at will be alternately a citizen of the United States and a member of the tribe. * * *
Since the ratification of the fourteenth amendment, congress has passed several acts for naturalizing Indians of certain tribes, which would have been superfluous if they were, or might become without any action of the government, citizens of the United States. * * *
The act of January 25, 1871, c. 38, for the relief of the Stockbridge and Munsee Indians in the state of Wisconsin, provided that ‘for the purpose of determining the persons who are members of said tribes, and the future relation of each to the government of the United States,’ two rolls should be prepared under the direction of the commissioner of Indian affairs, signed by the sachem and councilors of the tribe, certified by the person selected by the commissioner to superintend the same, and returned to the commissioner; the one, to be denominated the citizen roll, of the names of all such persons of full age, and their families, ‘as signify their desire to separate their relations with said tribe and to become citizens of the United States,’ and the other to be denominated the Indian roll, of the names of all such ‘as desire to retain their tribal character and continue under the care and guardianship of the United States;’ and that those rolls, so made and returned, should be held as a full surrender and relinquishment, on the part of all those of the first class, of all claims to be known or considered as members of the tribe, or to be interested in any provision made or to be made by the United States for its benefit, ‘and they and their descendants shall thenceforth be admitted to all the rights and privileges of citizens of the United States.’ 16 St. 406.
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The act of July 27, 1868, c. 249, declaring the right of expatriation to be a natural and inherent right of all people, and reciting that ‘in the recognition of this principle this government has freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested them with the rights of citizenship,’ while it affirms the right of every man to expatriate himself from one country, contains nothing to enable him to become a citizen of another without being naturalized under its authority. 15 St. 223; Rev. St. § 1999. * * *
In the case of U. S. v. Elm, 23 Int. Rev. Rec. 419, decided by Judge WALLACE in the district court of the United States for the Northern district of New York, the Indian who was held to have a right to vote in 1876 was born in the state of New York, one of the remnants of a tribe which had ceased to exist as a tribe in that state; and by a statute of the state it had been enacted that any native Indian might purchase, take, hold, and convey lands, and, whenever he should have become a freeholder to the value of $100, should be liable to taxation, and to the civil jurisdiction of the courts, in the same manner and to the same extent as a citizen. N. Y. St. 1843, c. 87. The condition of the tribe from which he derived his origin, so far as any fragments of it remained within the state of New York, resembled the condition of those Indian nations of which Mr. Justice JOHNSON said in Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch, 87, 146, that they ‘have totally extinguished their national fire, and submitted themselves to the laws of the states;’ and which Mr. Justice MCLEAN had in view when he observed in Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 580, that in some of the old states ‘where small remnants of tribes remain, surrounded by white population, and who, by their reduced numbers, had lost the power of self-government, the laws of the state have been extended over them, for the protection of their persons and property.’ See, also, as to the condition of Indians in Massachusetts, remnants of tribes never recognized by the treaties or legislative or executive acts of the United States as distinct political communities, Danzell v. Webquish, 108 Mass. 133; Pells v. Webquish, 129 Mass. 469; Mass. St. 1862, c. 184; 1869, c. 463.
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The law upon the question before us has been well stated by Judge DEADY in the district court of the United States for the district of Oregon. In giving judgment against the plaintiff in a case resembling the case at bar, he said: ‘Being born a member of ‘an independent political community’—the Chinook—he was not born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States—not born in its allegiance.’ McKay v. Campbell, 2 Sawy. 118, 134. And in a later case he said: ‘But an Indian cannot make himself a citizen of the United States without the consent and co-operation of the government. The fact that he has abandoned his nomadic life or tribal relations, and adopted the habits and manners of civilized people, may be a good reason why he should be made a citizen of the United States, but does not of itself make him one. To be a citizen of the United States is a political privilege which no one, not born to, can assume without its consent in some form. The Indians in Oregon, not being born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, were not born citizens thereof, and I am not aware of any law or treaty by which any of them have been made so since.’ U. S. v. Osborne, 6 Sawy. 406, 409. Upon the question whether any action of a state can confer rights of citizenship on Indians of a tribe still recognized by the United States as retaining its tribal existence, we need not, and do not, express an opinion, because the state of Nebraska is not shown to have taken any action affecting the condition of this plaintiff. See Chirac v. Chirac, 2 Wheat. 259; Fellows v. Blacksmith, 19 How. 366; U. S. v. Holliday, 3 Wall. 407, 420; U. S. v. Joseph, 94 U. S. 614, 618. The plaintiff, not being a citizen of the United States under the fourteenth amendment of the constitution, has been deprived of no right secured by the fifteenth amendment, and cannot maintain this action. Judgment affirmed.
HARLAN, J., dissenting.
(Justice Harlan goes into some depth regarding, or rather disregarding, the taxation status of Indians who have abandoned the tribal governance.)
In the bill as originally reported from the judiciary committee there were no words excluding ‘Indians not taxed’ from the citizenship proposed to be granted. Attention being called to this fact, the friends of the measure disclaimed any purpose to make citizens of those who were in tribal relations, with governments of their own. In order to meet that objection, while conforming to the wishes of those desiring to invest with citizenship all Indians permanently separated from their tribes, and who, by reason of their residence away from their tribes, constituted a part of the people under the jurisdiction of the United States, Mr. Trumbull, who reported the bill, modified it by inserting the words ‘excluding Indians not taxed.’ What was intended by that modification appears from the following language used by him in debate: ‘Of course we cannot declare the wild Indians who do not recognize the government of the United States, who are not subject to our laws, with whom we make treaties, who have their own laws, who have their own regulations, whom we do not intend to interfere with or punish for the commission of crimes one upon the other, to be the subjects of the United States in the sense of being citizens. They must be excepted. The constitution of the United States excludes them from the enumeration of the population of the United States when it says that Indians not taxed are to be excluded. It has occurred to me that, perhaps, the amendment would meet the views of all gentlemen, which used these constitutional words, and said that all persons born in the United States, excluding Indians not taxed, and not subject to any foreign power, shall be deemed citizens of the United States.’ Cong. Globe, (1st Sess. 39th Congress,) p. 527. In replying to the objections urged by Mr. Hendricks to the bill even as amended, Mr. Trumbull said: ‘Does the senator from Indiana want the wild roaming Indians, not taxed, not subject to our authority, to be citizens of the United States persons that are not to be counted, in our government? If he does not, let him not object to this amendment that brings in even only the Indian when he shall have cast off his wild habits, and submitted to the laws of organized society and become a citizen.’ Id. 528.
The entire debate shows, with singular clearness, indeed, with absolute certainty, that no senator who participated in it, whether in favor of or in opposition to the measure, doubted that the bill as passed admitted, and was intended to admit, to national citizenship Indians who abandoned their tribal relations and became residents of one of the states or territories, within the full jurisdiction of the United States. It was so interpreted by President Johnson, who, in his veto message, said: ‘By the first section of the bill all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States. This provision comprehends the Chinese of the Pacific states, Indians subject to taxation, the people called gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks, persons of color, negroes, mulattoes, and persons of African blood. Every individual of those races, born in the United States, is, by the bill, made a citizen of the United States.’
It would seem manifest, from this brief review of the history of the act of 1866, that one purpose of that legislation was to confer national citizenship upon a part of the Indian race in this country—such of them, at least, as resided in one of the states or territories, and were subject to taxation and other public burdens. And it is to be observed that, whoever was included within the terms of the grant contained in that act, became citizens of the United States without any record of their names being made. The citizenship conferred was made to depend wholly upon the existence of the facts which the statute declared to be a condition precedent to the grant taking effect. At the same session of the congress which passed the act of 1866, the fourteenth amendment was approved and submitted to the states for adoption. Those who sustained the former urged the adoption of the latter. An examination of the debates, pending the consideration of the amendment, will show that there was no purpose on the part of those who framed it, or of those who sustained it by their votes, to abandon the policy inaugurated by the act of 1866, of admitting to national citizenship such Indians as were separated from their tribes and were residents of one of the states or territories outside of any reservation set apart for the exclusive use and occupancy of Indian tribes.
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Prior to the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, numerous statutes were passed with reference to particular bodies of Indians, under which the individual members of such bodies, upon the dissolution of their tribal relations, or upon the division of their lands derived from the government, became, or were entitled to become, citizens of the United States by force alone of the statute, without observing the forms required by the naturalization laws in the case of a foreigner becoming a citizen of the United States. Such was the statute of March 3, 1839, (5 St. 349,) * * * And certainly it must be conceded that except in cases of persons ‘naturalized in the United States,’ (which phrase refers only to those who are embraced by the naturalization laws, and not to Indians,) the fourteenth amendment does not require the citizenship granted by it to be evidenced by the record of any court, or of any department of the government. Such citizenship passes to the person, of whatever race, who is embraced by its provisions, leaving the fact of citizenship to be determined, when it shall become necessary to do so in the course of legal inquiry, in the same way that questions as to one’s nativity, domicile, or residence are determined.
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When the fourteenth amendment was pending in the senate of the United States, Mr. Doolittle moved to insert after the words ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ the words ‘excluding Indians not taxed.’ His avowed object in so amending the measure was to exclude, beyond all question, from the proposed grant of national citizenship, tribal Indians who—since they were, in a sense, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States—might be regarded as embraced in the grant. The proposition was opposed by Mr. Trumbull and other friends of the proposed constitutional amendment, upon the ground that the words ‘Indians not taxed’ might be misconstrued, and also because those words were unnecessary, in that the phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ embraced only those who were subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States, which could not be properly said of Indians in tribal relations. But it was distinctly announced by the friends of the amendment that they intended to include in the grant of national citizenship Indians who were within the jurisdiction of the states, and subject to their laws, because such Indians would be completely under the jurisdiction of the United States. Said Mr. Trumbull: ‘It is only those who come completely within our jurisdiction, who are subject to our laws, that we think of making citizens; and there can be no objection to the proposition that such persons should be citizens.’ Cong. Globe, pt. 4, (1st Sess. 39th Cong.) pp. 2890-2893. Alluding to the phrase ‘Indians not taxed,’ he remarked that the language of the proposed constitutional amendment was better than that of the act of 1866 passed at the same session. He observed: ‘There is a difficulty about the words ‘Indians not taxed.’ Perhaps one of the reasons why I think so is because of the persistency with which the senator from Indiana himself insisted that the phrase ‘Indians not taxed,’ the very words which the senator from Wisconsin wishes to insert here, would exclude everybody that did not pay a tax; that that was the meaning of it; we must take it literally. The senator from Maryland did not agree to that, nor did I; but, if the senator from Indiana was right, it would receive a construction which, I am sure, the senator from Wisconsin would not be for, for if these Indians come within our limits and within our jurisdiction and are civilized, he would just as soon make a citizen of a poor Indian as of the rich Indian.’ Id. 2894.
A careful examination of all that was said by senators and representatives, pending the consideration by congress of the fourteenth amendment, justifies us in saying that every one who participated in the debates, whether for or against the amendment, believed that, in the form in which it was approved by congress, it granted, and was intended to grant, national citizenship to every person of the Indian race in this country who was unconnected with any tribe, and who resided, in good faith, outside of Indian reservations and within one of the states or territories of the Union. This fact is, we think, entitled to great weight in determining the meaning and scope of the amendment. Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U. S. 57; S. C. 4 SUP. CT. REP. 279. In this connection we refer to an elaborate report made by Mr. Carpenter, to the senate of the United States, in behalf of its judiciary committee, on the fourteenth of December, 1870. The report was made in obedience to an instruction to inquire as to the effect of the fourteenth amendment upon the treaties which the United States had with various Indian tribes of the country. The report says: ‘For these reasons your committee do not hesitate to say that the Indian tribes within the limits of the United States, and the individuals, members of such tribes, while they adhere to and form a part of the tribes to which they belong, are not, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States, and therefore that such Indians have not become citizens of the United States by virtue of that amendment; and, if your committee are correct in this conclusion, it follows that the treaties heretofore made between the United States and the Indian tribes are not annulled by that amendment.’ The report closes with this significant language: ‘It is pertinent to say, in concluding this report, that treaty relations can properly exist with Indian tribes or nations only, and that, when the members of any Indian tribe are scattered, they are merged in the mass of our people, and become equally subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.’
The question before us has been examined by a writer upon constitutional law whose views are entitled to great respect. Judge COOLEY, referring to the definition of national citizenship as contained in the fourteenth amendment, says: ‘By the express terms of the amendment, persons of foreign birth, who have never renounced the allegiance to which they were born, though they may have a residence in this country, more or less permanent, for business, instruction, or pleasure, are not citizens. Neither are the aboriginal inhabitants of the country citizens, so long as they preserve their tribal relations and recognize the headship of their chiefs, notwithstanding that, as against the action of our own people, they are under the protection of the laws, and may be said to owe a qualified allegiance to the government. When living within territory over which the laws, either state or territorial, are extended, they are protected by, and, at the same time, held amenable to, those laws in all their intercourse with the body politic, and with the individuals composing it; but they are also, as a quasi foreign people, regarded as being under the direction and tutelage of the general government, and subjected to peculiar regulations as dependent communities. They are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States only in a much qualified sense; and it would be obviously inconsistent with the semi-independent character of such a tribe, and with the obedience they are expected to render to their tribal head, that they should be vested with the complete rights—or, on the other hand, subjected to the full responsibilities—of American citizens. It would not for a moment be contended that such was the effect of this amendment. When, however, the tribal relations are dissolved, when the headship of the chief or the authority of the tribe is no longer recognized, and the individual Indian, turning his back upon his former mode of life, makes himself a member of the civilized community, the case is wholly altered. He then no longer acknowledges a divided allegiance; he joins himself to the body politic; he gives evidence of his purpose to adopt the habits and customs of civilized life; and, as his case is then within the terms of this amendment, it would seem that his right to protection, in person, property, and privilege, must be as complete as the allegiance to the government to which he must then be held; as complete, in short, as that of any other native-born inhabitant.’ 2 Story, Const. (Cooley’s Ed.) § 1933, p. 654. To the same effect are Ex parte Kenyon, 5 Dill. 390; Ex parte Reynolds, Id. 397; U. S. v. Crook, Id. 454; U. S. v. Elm, Dist. Ct. U. S., N. D. N. Y. 23 Int. Rev. Rec. 419.
It seems to us that the fourteenth amendment, in so far as it was intended to confer national citizenship upon persons of the Indian race, is robbed of its vital force by a construction which excludes from such citizenship those who, although born in tribal relations, are within the complete jurisdiction of the United States. There were, in some of our states and territories at the time the amendment was submitted by congress, many Indians who had finally left their tribes and come within the complete jurisdiction of the United States. They were as fully prepared for citizenship as were or are vast numbers of the white and colored races in the same localities. Is it conceivable that the statesmen who framed, the congress which submitted, and the people who adopted that amendment intended to confer citizenship, national and state, upon the entire population in this country of African descent, (the larger part of which was shortly before held in slavery,) and, by the same constitutional provision, to exclude from such citizenship Indians who had never been in slavery, and who, by becoming bona fide residents of states and territories within the complete jurisdiction of the United States, had evinced a purpose to abandon their former mode of life, and become a part of the people of the United States? If this question be answered in the negative, as we think it must be, then we are justified in withholding our assent to the doctrine which excludes the plaintiff from the body of citizens of the United States upon the ground that his parents were, when he was born, members of an Indian tribe; for, if he can be excluded upon any such ground, it must necessarily follow that the fourteenth amendment did not grant citizenship even to Indians who, although born in tribal relations, were, at its adoption, severed from their tribes, subject to the complete jurisdiction as well of the United States as of the state or territory in which they resided.
Our brethren, it seems to us, construe the fourteenth amendment as if it read: ‘All persons born subject to the jurisdiction of, or naturalized in, the United States, are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside;’ whereas the amendment, as it is, implies in respect of persons born in this country that they may claim the rights of national citizenship from and after the moment they become subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States. This would not include the children born in this country of a foreign minister, for the reason that, under the fiction of extraterritoriality as recognized by international law, such minister, ‘though actually in a foreign country, is considered still to remain within the territory of his own state,’ and, consequently, he continues ‘subject to the laws of his own country, both with respect to his personal status and his rights of property; and his children, though born in a foreign country, are considered as natives.’ Halleck, Int. Law, c. 10, § 12. Nor was plaintiff born without the jurisdiction of the United States in the same sense that the subject of a foreign state, born within the territory of that state, may be said to have been born without the jurisdiction of our government. For, according to the decision in Cherokee Nation plaintiff were members was not ‘a foreign state, in the sense of the constitution,’ but a domestic dependent people, ‘in a state of pupilage,’ and ‘so completely under the sovereignty and dominion of the United States, that any attempt to acquire their lands, or to form a political connection with them, would be considered an invasion of our territory and an act of hostility.’ They occupied territory which the court, in that case, said composed ‘a part of the United States,’ the title to which this nation asserted independent of their will. ‘In all our intercourse with foreign nations,’ said Chief Justice MARSHALL in the same case, ‘in our commercial regulations, in any attempt at intercourse between Indians and foreign nations, they are considered as within the jurisdictional limits of the United States, subject to many of those restraints which are imposed upon our citizens. * * * They look to our government for protection; rely upon its kindness and its power; appeal to it for relief to their wants; and address the president as their great father.’ And, again, in U. S. v. Rogers, 4 How. 572, this court, speaking by Chief Justice TANEY, said that it was ‘too firmly and clearly established to admit of dispute that the Indian tribes, residing within the territorial limits of the United States, are subject to their authority.’ The Cherokee Tobacco, 11 Wall. 616. Born, therefore, in the territory, under the dominion and within the jurisdictional limits of the United States, plaintiff has acquired, as was his undoubted right, a residence in one of the states, with her consent, and is subject to taxation and to all other burdens imposed by her upon residents of every race. If he did not acquire national citizenship on abandoning his tribe and becoming, by residence in one of the states, subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States, then the fourteenth amendment has wholly failed to accomplish, in respect of the Indian race, what, we think, was intended by it; and there is still in this country a despised and rejected class of persons with no nationality whatever, who, born in our territory, owing no allegiance to any foreign power, and subject, as residents of the states, to all the burdens of government, are yet not members of any political community, nor entitled to any of the rights, privileges, or immunities of citizens of the United States.
One final note by your humble poster, is that if you’d care to pursue the topic further, I can recommend the following article: https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/10/30/birthright-citizenship-a-fundamental-misunderstanding-of-the-14th-amendment/
