Citizens of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution can have been
no other than the citizens of the United States under the Confederation.

Without going into any question concerning the powers of the Confederation to govern
the territory of the United States out of the limits of the States, and consequently to sustain the
relation of Government and citizen in respect to the inhabitants of such territory, it may safely be
said that the citizens of the several States were citizens of the United States under the
Confederation.

i. State Laws

To determine whether any free persons, descended from Africans held in slavery, were
citizens of the United States under the Confederation, and consequently at the time of the
adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it is only necessary to know whether any such
persons were citizens of either of the States under the Confederation at the time of the adoption
of the Constitution.

Of this there can be no doubt. At the time of the ratification of the Articles of
Confederation, all free native-bom inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not
only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed
the franchise of electors on equal terms with other citizens.

The Supreme Court of North Carolina, in the case of The State v. Manuel, 4 Dev. & Bat.
20, has declared the law of that State on this subject, in terms which I believe to be as sound law
in the other States I have enumerated, as it was in North Carolina.

"According to the laws of this State," says Judge Gaston, in delivering the opinion of the
court, "all human beings within it, who are not slaves, fall within one of two classes. Whatever
distinctions may have existed in the Roman laws between citizens and free inhabitants, they are
unknown to our institutions. Before our Revolution, all free persons born within the dominions
of the King of Great Britain, whatever their color or complexion, were native-bom British
subjects - those bom out of his allegiance were aliens. Slavery did not exist in England, but it
did in the British Colonies. Slaves were not in legal parlance persons, but property. The moment
the incapacity, the disqualification of slavery, was removed, they became persons, and were then
either British subjects, or not British subjects, according as they were or were not bom within the
allegiance of the British king. Upon the Revolution, no other change took place in the laws of
North Carolina than was consequent on the transition from a Colony dependent on a European
King, to a free and sovereign State. Slaves remained slaves. British subjects in North Carolina
became North Carolina freeman. Foreigners, until made members of the State, remained aliens.
Slaves, manumitted here, became freeman, and therefore, if bom within North Carolina, are
citizens of North Carolina, and all free persons bom within the State are born citizens of the
State. The Constitution extended the elective franchise to every freeman who had arrived at the

89