ons and others. (See Con. of N.Y., Art. 2,
Rev. Stats. of N.Y., vol. 1, p. 126.)

That of New Jersey, to "all inhabitants of this colony, of full age,
who are worth L50 proclamation money, clear estate."

New York, by its Constitution of 1820, required colored persons to
have some qualifications as prerequisites for voting, which white
persons need not possess. And New Jersey, by its present Constitution,
restricts the right to vote to white male citizens. But these changes
can have no other effect upon the present inquiry, except to show,
that before they were made, no such restrictions existed; and colored
in common with white persons, were not only citizens of those States,
but entitled to the elective franchise on the same qualifications as
white persons, as they now are in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. I
shall not enter into an examination of the existing opinions of that
period respecting the African race, nor into any discussion concerning
the meaning of those who asserted, in the Declaration of Independence,
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. My own opinion is, that a calm
comparison of these assertions of universal abstract truths, and of
their own individual opinions and acts, would not leave these men
under any reproach of inconsistency; that the great truths they
asserted on that solemn occasion, they were ready and anxious to make
effectual, wherever a necessary regard to circumstances, which no
statesman can disregard without producing more evil than good, would
allow; and that it would not be just to them, nor true in itself, to
allege that they intended to say that the Creator of all men had
endowed the white race, exclusively, with the great natural rights
which the Declaration of Independence asserts. But this is not the
place to vindicate their memory. As I conceive, we should deal here,
not with such disputes, if there can be a dispute concerning this
subject, but with those substantial facts evinced by the written
Constitutions of States, and by the notorious practice under them. And
they show, in a manner which no argument can obscure, that in some of
the original thirteen States, free colored persons, before and at the
time of the formation of the Constitution, were citizens of those
States.

The fourth of the fundamental articles of the Confederation was as