opposite
to their terms;--a new form of argument, which begins by assuming the
truth of the proposition desired, and ends by denying the truth of the
admitted premises.

He then proceeds, to inquire if the terms "we, the people," in the
Constitution, embraced the persons in question. Here, too, he admits
that they did embrace all who were members of the several States. Then,
turning round the power given Congress to end the slave-trade after
1808, and arguing from it as a reserved right to acquire property till
that time; laying aside the fact that the framers of the Declaration had
acted on their declared principles, and that in many States, as in
Massachusetts and Vermont, even in Southern States, as in North Carolina
they remained till 1837, many freed colored persons were citizens at
that time, with the remark, that "the numbers that had been emancipated
at that time were but few in comparison with those held in slavery,"
assuming that the very acts of the States suppressing the slave-trade
helped instead of destroying his argument; arguing from the fact that
Congress had not authorized the naturalization of colored persons, or
enrolled them in the militia; arguing even from State laws passed in the
most passionate moments as late as 1833; going back to the old Colonial
acts of Maryland in 1717, and of Massachusetts in 1705; even coming down
to the fact that Caleb Cushing gave his opinion that they could not have
passports as citizens; denying that the "free inhabitants" in the
Articles of Confederation, which he was forced to concede did in terms
embrace freemen, actually did include them, because the quota of land
forces was proportioned to the white inhabitants,--he affirmed that they
were not and never could become citizens, that neither the States nor
the nation had power to lift them from their abject condition. The
United States could naturalize Indians. But neither the United States
nor the individual States could make colored persons citizens.

The Chief Justice stated that colored persons were not, at the time of
the adoption of the Constitution, citizens under the laws of the several
States and the laws of the civilized world. But he knew, for it had been
shown to him in the arguments, that such persons, and many who had been
slaves, were then citizens in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and North
Carolina, as they likewise were in Vermont, Pennsylvania, and in other
States. And he knew--for in 1831 he hims