We have made this particular examination into the legislative and judicial action of
Connecticut, because, from the early hostility it displayed to the slave trade on the coast of
Africa, we may expect to find the laws of that State as lenient and favorable to the subject race as
those of any other State in the Union; and if we find that at the time the Constitution was
adopted, they were not even there raised to the rank of citizens, but were still held and treated as
property, and the laws relating to them passed with reference altogether to the interest and
convenience of the white race, we shall hardly find them elevated to a higher rank anywhere else.

It would be impossible to enumerate and compress, in the space usually allotted to an
opinion of a court, the various laws, marking the condition of this race, which were passed from
time to time after the Revolution, and before and since the adoption of the Constitution of the
United States, hi addition to those already referred to, it is sufficient to say that Chancellor Kent,
whose accuracy and research no one will question, states in the sixth edition of his
Commentaries, published in 1848, 2d vol. 258, note b, that in no part of the country, except
Maine, did the African race, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites in the exercise of
civil and political rights.

v. Effect of Citizenship

The legislation of the States therefore shows, in a manner not to be mistaken, the inferior
and subject condition of that race at the time the Constitution was adopted, and long afterwards,
throughout the thirteen States by which that instrument was framed; and it is hardly consistent
with the respect due to these States, to suppose that they regarded at that time, as fellow citizens
and members of the sovereignty, a class of beings whom they had thus stigmatized; whom, as we
are bound, out of respect to the State sovereignties, to assume they had deemed it just and
necessary thus to stigmatize, and upon whom they had impressed such deep and enduring marks
of inferiority and degradation; or that when they met in convention to form the Constitution, they
looked upon them as a portion of their constituents, or designed to include them in the provisions
so carefully inserted for the security and protection of the liberties and rights of their citizens. It
cannot be supposed that they intended to secure to them rights, and privileges, and rank, in the
new political body throughout the Union, which every one of them denied within the limits of its
own dominion. More especially, it cannot be believed that the large slaveholding States regarded
them as included in the word "citizens." or would have consented to a constitution which might
compel them to receive them in that character from another State. For if they were so received,
and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the
operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be
necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized
as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they
pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn
there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without
molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be
punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all
subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs,

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