18
which there is no express constitutional or statute declaration to the contrary. Blacks, whether born free or in bondage, if born under the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States, are natives, and not aliens. They are what the common law terms natural born subjects. Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms, as applied to natives; and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound, by allegiance and subjection, to the government and law of the land. The privilege of voting, and the legal capacity for office, are not essential to the character of a citizen, for women are citizens without either; and free people of color may enjoy the one, and may acquire, and hold, and devise, and transmit, by hereditary descent, real and personal estates. The better opinion, I should think, was, that negroes or other slaves, born within and under the allegiance of the United States, are natural born subjects, but not citizens. Citizens, under our constitutions and laws, mean free inhabitants, born within the United States, or naturalized under the law of congress. If a slave born in the United States be manumitted, or otherwise lawfully discharged from bondage, or if a black man be born within the United States, and born free, he becomes thenceforward a citizen, but under such disabilities as the laws of the States respectively may deem it expedient to prescribe to free persons of color." 2 Kent Com. (6th ed.) 258, note b.
To the same effect is the opinion of the supreme court of North Carolina, as delivered by Mr. Justice Gaston, which we cite at some length, both for its great intrinsic merit, and to show that these views are not confined to any one section of the country: "According to the laws of this State, all human beings within it, who are not slaves, fall within one of two classes. Whatever distinctions may have existed in the Roman law between citizens and free inhabitants, they are unknown to our institutions. Before our Revolution, all persons born within the dominions of the king of Great Britain, whatever their color or complexion, were native-born British subjects; those born out of his allegiance were aliens. Slavery did not exist in England, but it did exist in the British colonies. Slaves were not, in legal parlance, persons, but property. The moment the incapacity or disqualification of slavery was removed, they became persons, and were then either British subjects or not British subjects, accordingly as they were or were not
