, and clothed with all the
[406] rights and immunities which the Constitution and laws of
the State attached to that character.

"It is very clear, therefore, that no State can, by any act or
law of its own, passed since the adoption of the Constitution,
introduce a new member into the political community created by
the Constitution of the United States. It cannot make him a
member of this community by making him a member of its own. And,
for the same reason, it cannot introduce any person or
description of persons who were not intended to be embraced in
this new political family, which the Constitution brought into
existence, but were intended to be excluded from it.

"The question then arises, whether the provisions of the
Constitution, in relation to the personal rights and privileges
to which the citizen of a State should be entitled, embraced the
negro African race, at that time in this country, or who might
afterwards be imported, who had then or should afterwards be made
free in any State; and to put it in the power of a single State
to make him a citizen of the United States, and indue him with
the full rights of citizenship in every other State without their
consent. Does the Constitution of the United States act upon him
whenever he shall be made free under the laws of a State, and
raised there to the rank of a citizen, and immediately clothe him
with all the privileges of a citizen in every other State and in
its own courts?

"The court think the affirmative of these propositions cannot be
maintained. And if it cannot, the plaintiff in error could not be
a citizen of the State of Missouri, within the meaning of the
Constitution of the United States, and, consequently, was not
entitled to sue in its courts."[46]

This decision of the Supreme Court on the plea in abatement that the
plaintiff (a Negro, Dred Scott) was not a citizen in the sense of the
word in Article iii, Sec. 2 of the Constitution, was based upon an
erroneous idea respecting the location of the word _citizen_ in the
instrument. The premise of the court was wrong, and hence the
feebleness of the reasoning and the false conclusions. Article iii,
Section 2 of the Constitution, extends judicial power to all cases, in
law and equity, "between citizens of different States, between
citizens of the same S