[Non-Sequitur]

I can't speak to the political status of antebellum free blacks, but according to the document they were entitled to full representation.

According to Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision (Scott v Sandford) they were not. He ruled that blacks were not and could not be citizens.

[Mark in the Old South]

That was in reference to slaves not Black citizens. The use of the term citizen can be misleading since there is a historical classical meaning and then there is the common usage. Since use of the term can be misunderstood as to how the writer intended it is might be better to use the tern countryman. In that use of the word a slave is a member of a country though his status in low an his rights limited but the same would apply to women (who are not citizens in a classical use of the term) as are children, even those born to a position of privilege. In fact there are host of people who do not have the classical status of "citizen" but are part of a country and may even be a major influence in the culture of a society. Sparta was overwhelmingly slave and dealing with the was the single greatest cause of that country's character. Citizen no but you can not pretend they were not there. Of course Sparta is an extreme but even Athens had a slave majority. Classically citizens were very limited in who they describe. I suspect using the common use of the term or picking another word would be better than having a debate grind to a useless halt over semantics.