le by designating the
particular classes of persons who should or should not come under it;
that when we turn to the Constitution for an answer to the question,
what free persons, born within the several States, are citizens of the
United States, the only answer we can receive from any of its express
provisions is, the citizens of the several States are to enjoy the
privileges and immunities of citizens in every State, and their
franchise as electors under the Constitution depends on their
citizenship in the several States. Add to this, that the Constitution
was ordained by the citizens of the several States; that they were
"the people of the United States," for whom and whose posterity the
Government was declared in the preamble of the Constitution to be
made; that each of them was "a citizen of the United States at the
time of the adoption of the Constitution," within the meaning of those
words in that instrument; that by them the Government was to be and
was in fact organized; and that no power is conferred on the
Government of the Union to discriminate between them, or to
disfranchise any of them--the necessary conclusion is, that those
persons born within the several States, who, by force of their
respective Constitutions and laws, are citizens of the State, are
thereby citizens of the United States.

It may be proper here to notice some supposed objections to this view
of the subject.

It has been often asserted that the Constitution was made exclusively
by and for the white race. It has already been shown that in five of
the thirteen original States, colored persons then possessed the
elective franchise, and were among those by whom the Constitution was
ordained and established. If so, it is not true, in point of fact,
that the Constitution was made exclusively by the white race. And that
it was made exclusively for the white race is, in my opinion, not only
an assumption not warranted by anything in the Constitution, but
contradicted by its opening declaration, that it was ordained and
established, by the people of the United States, for themselves and
their posterity. And as free colored persons were then citizens of at
least five States, and so in every sense part of the people of the
United States, they were among those for whom and whose posterity the
Constitution was ordained and established.

Again, it has been objected, that if the Constitution has left to the
several States the rightful power to dete