Thomas, J., concurring
The proposal passed the House by a vote of 128 to 37. Id., at 2545.
Senator Jacob Howard introduced the proposed Amendment in the Senate, powerfully asking, “Ought not the time to be now passed when one measure of justice is to be meted out to a member of one caste while another and a different measure is meted out to the member of another caste, both castes being alike citizens of the United States, both bound to obey the same laws, to sustain the burdens of the same Government, and both equally responsible to justice and to God for the deeds done in the body?” Id., at 2766. In keeping with this view, he proposed an introductory sentence, declaring that “ ‘all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside.’ ” Id., at 2869. This text, the Citizenship Clause, was the final missing element of what would ultimately become §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Howard’s draft for the proposed citizenship text was modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1866’s text, and he suggested the alternative language to “remov[e] all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States,” a question which had “long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.” Id., at 2890. He further characterized the addition as “simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already.” Ibid.
The proposal was approved in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 11. Id., at 3042. The House then reconciled differences between the two measures, approving the Senate’s changes by a vote of 120 to 32. See id., at 3149. And, in June 1866, the amendment was submitted to the States for their consideration and ratification. Two years later, it was ratified by the requisite number of States and became the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. See 15 Stat. 706–707; id., at 709–711. Its opening words instilled in our Nation’s Constitution a new birth of freedom:
