Now, slavery became a highly profitable system. And as it became more profitable, the numbers of slaves imported increased and the laws governing relationships, both slave-master relationships, as well as perceptions of interracial relationships, began to proliferate in so many ways. By 1710, which is only a few decades after slavery had become based on race and hereditary, Africans began to outnumber Europeans in places like South Carolina. And so many of the colonies, like Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, there were significant increases in the number of slaves imported from Africa. One way to trace the ways in which the laws of slavery that base slavery on skin color and heredity as well as other laws in society that regulated and defined race is simply look at the question of race and citizenship, which started early on with the Constitution. Now within the Constitution there is no definition of citizenship or naturalization. But the Constitution of 1789, asked the Congress to establish a uniform rule of Naturalization. In 1790 the First Congress passed our first Naturalization Act. And the Naturalization Act said that only free white persons could be naturalized as citizens of the newly formed United States of America. That also raised the question as to what is a free white person? And who would qualify? The Naturalization Act was changed again and again in 1802, it had the same clause. That any alien being a free white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States. Again, in 1810, the law is amended with the same clause. In 1821, the Attorney General of United States, William Wirt, ruled that the Constitution did not confer citizenship on Negroes, a ruling that affected only Virginia free persons of color. But once again, it raised a question as to what is a Negro? In 1831, the Attorney General, Roger Taney, who would later become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, issued a ruling that the framers of the US Constitution did not confer citizenship on African Americans. And that there was no reason to change the legal status as of 1831. In 1843, the attorney general ruled that free negroes were not citizens and nor were they aliens, but sort of occupied some kind of intermediate position. Again, they're coming back to this question of who is a citizen and how is citizenship based on race? And the point being here, is to recognize how race became so fundamental to the most important foundation of American society, and that is the question of citizenship. In 1857, the former Attorney General, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Taney rendered one of the more infamous Supreme Court decisions in American history, the Dred Scott Decision. In which the US Supreme Court ruled that African Americans were not citizens of the United States, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Now that began to change at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860. And in fact, the Attorney General, Edward Bates, then advised that African Americans were citizens of the United States. And then in the 1866 Civil Rights Act, it was made clear in that act that all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens of the United States. And that included African Americans. The most important decision of the time was the ratification of the14th Amendment in 1868. And that amendment said all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United Sates. And that pretty much settled the question of domestic citizenship, or birthright citizenship in the US Constitution. But the question of naturalized citizenship continued to be debated, and a hotly debated topic, and it remained a question as to who could be naturalized as a citizen. Now, at the same time, in 1866 when the civil rights act was passed and also when congress actually passed the 14th amendment to be ratified two years later, one of the representatives, republican from New York, introduced a bill to change the Naturalization Act. Henry Jarvis Raymond proposal, which was a bill before the Congress, really asked that all acts of Congress relating to Naturalization strike out, wherever it occurred, the words being a free white person. And so, there was a movement at that time to make naturalization open to all persons, irrespective of their race or their background or nationality, and to strike from our Naturalization Act any restrictions that were based on race or heredity. This bill was defeated. And the clause remained. In 1870, there was another attempt by Charles Sumner, a Senator from Massachusetts, well-known for his very progressive views on democracy and civil rights, civil liberties, made a second attempt to change the Naturalization Act. By removing the word white as a condition for naturalized citizenship. He chose to do this on July 4th in 1870 to remind his fellow senators that the Declaration of Independence said all persons. It didn't say, it did not use the word white. That the intention of the framers of the declaration was to have a democracy that was not based on color. And so he asked, and proposed the bill to remove the word white from the Naturalization Act. Sumner's attempt to amend the Naturalization Act was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 32 to 14, giving us some sense that there were at least a significant minority of senators in favor of making citizenship, that is naturalized citizenship, a race-neutral proposition. But the vast majority, 30, was still in favor of restricting naturalized citizenship to race. In 1870, there was an important change to the Naturalization Act. And it was done at the same time that there was a proposal to take the word, white, out. It was the first amendment that changed the Naturalization Act from whites only to include people of another color. And so in 1870, Congress amended the Naturalization Act to make it possible for any person of African descent or African nativity, from anywhere in the world, to be naturalized as a citizen of the United States. That seemed to be and certainly was a change that departed dramatically from what had been the case from 1790 up until 1870. I think in part, because of the nearly 200,000 African American soldiers that fought on the side of the Union Army in the Civil War. And the loyalty and dedication that they made to the union, was clearly a part of the reason that the senators felt at that time, or congress felt at that time. And that they should amend the Naturalization Act to include a population that have been so loyal to the United States in a time of crisis. Especially after the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 that made this population citizens by the Constitution itself. But at the same time that the Congress approved the Naturalization Act and amended it to include persons of African descent, it also approved a Naturalization Act that barred Chinese from obtaining US citizenship. So they did not approve a race-neutral Naturalization Act, but just a specifically amended act that would include persons of African descent.
