By the 1850s, there were few slaves who were first generation.
Remember that the British started actively stopping slave ships in the early 1800s.
The USA did try that - in 1822, the American Colonization Society began sending free people of color to the Pepper Coast voluntarily to establish a colony.
I think if the USA offered to send people to Africa, they would have had a single-digit participation level. By that time, the black people were nativized, second or later generation Americans.
My point is (that I failed miserably to make is) if that offer had been provided after the Civil War it may have mitigated some of this reparations bull$hit we are hearing today.
Seemingly nobody in the late 1850’s was arguing that descendants of enslaved Africans should be recognized, pursuant either to natural law the Law of Nations, as Citizens of the U.S.A..
By its Dred Scott decision, SCOTUS seemingly definitively answered that question in the negative. History has not been kind to that decision. It was not overturned, though. Meaning, on its legal merits. Instead, the Constitution was amended, post-Civil War, to change the answer from “No” to “Yes”.
This Guy views the citizenship-declaring provision of 14th Amendment as a glorified Naturalization statute that did not alter the definition (which still needs to be declared by SCOTUS in an on-point opinion deciding, once and for all, the true criteria for determining who is, and who is not, eligible to the office of POTUS) of the Constitutional term “natural Born citizen of the United States.”
Change his mind.
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Fourteenth Amendment
Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
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ArtI.S8.C4.1.2.4 Naturalization as an Exclusive Power of Congress
Article I, Section 8, Clause 4:
[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; . . .
While the first Congress enacted federal laws governing naturalization, the Supreme Court initially appeared to recognize that states retained naturalization powers. For instance, in one early case, Collet v. Collet, the Court in 1792 declared that the states continued to have concurrent authority over naturalization, but could not exercise that authority in a manner that conflicted with federal naturalization laws.1 In United States v. Villato, the Court in 1797 ruled that a Spanish national, Francis Villato, was not a U.S. citizen even though he had taken an oath of citizenship under Pennsylvania law.2 Without deciding whether states maintained naturalization powers, the Court simply determined that the Pennsylvania law under which Villato sought to naturalize had been effectively repealed by an amendment to the state’s constitution.3 Accordingly, the Court held, Villato never became a U.S. citizen and could not be criminally charged with treason.4
Despite the Supreme Court’s early recognition of state power over naturalization, the Court ultimately determined that the naturalization power rested solely within Congress. For example, in Chirac v. Lessee of Chirac, Chief Justice John Marshall in 1817 declared [t]hat the power of naturalization is exclusively in [C]ongress does not seem to be, and certainly ought not to be, controverted.5 Therefore, in that case, a French national did not have the ability to own land (a privilege generally extended only to U.S. citizens at the time) based on the fact that he had taken an oath of citizenship under Maryland law because [C]ongress alone has the power of prescribing uniform rules of naturalization.6 Nonetheless, the Court held that a 1778 treaty between the United States and France permitted French nationals to purchase and own lands in the United States.7
Footnotes
1. 12 U.S. (2 Dall.) 294, 296 (1792) (quoting U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 4).
2. 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 370, 373 (1797).
3. Id.
4. Id.
5. Chirac v. Lessee of Chirac, 15 U.S. (2 Wheat.) 259, 269 (1817).
6. Id. at 269. According to Chief Justice John Marshall, the Maryland naturalization law was virtually repealed by the [C]onstitution of the United States, and the act of naturalization enacted by [C]ongress. Id.
7. Id. at 270–71. See also Matthew’s Lessee v. Rae, 16 F. Cas. (3 Cranch) 1112 (C.C.D.D.C. 1829) (No. 9,284) (ruling that an alien who complied with state naturalization laws after Congress had passed a naturalization law was not a U.S. citizen because the state naturalization laws [were] superseded, and annulled by the act of [C]ongress, whose jurisdiction upon that subject is, under the [C]onstitution of the United States, exclusive. . . .).
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