"1. John Bingham wrote a single sentence of the 14th Amendment, and it was not the one that had to do with citizenship.”
Not so.
Article 1 of the 14th amendment, the Citizenship and the Citizenship Clause (Defining who was a citizen of the United States) was written exclusively by John Bingham.
Except for the addition of the first sentence of Section 1, the amendment which defined citizenship weathered the Senate debate without substantial change. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.
The U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black called Rep. John Bingham (R-Ohio), “the Madison of the Fourteenth Amendment,”
http://www.constitution.org/col/intent_14th.htm
On Jan 12., 1866, Rep. John Bingham of Ohio began the drafting of the Fourteenth by a proposed amendment to the Joint Senate-House Committee of 15:
The Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to secure to all persons in every state within this Union equal protection in their rights of life, liberty and property.[1]
Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania proposed a similar guarantee:
All laws, state or national, shall operate impartially and equally on all persons without regard to race or color.[2]
On Jan. 19 Connecticut Representative Henry Deming introduced a constitutional amendment similar to Bingham's that declared:
That Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to secure to all persons in every State equal protection in their rights of life, liberty, and property.[3]
On January 20 the Joint Committee's subcommittee considering drafts of constitutional amendments reported to the full Joint Committee an expanded form of the Bingham proposal that read as follows:
Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to secure to all citizens of the United States, in every State, the same political rights and privileges; and to all persons in every State equal protection in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property."[4]
A wholly separate proposed amendment would have stated, in addition to the above:
All provisions in the Constitution or laws of any State, whereby any distinction is made in political or civil rights or privileges, on account of race, creed or color, shall be inoperative and void."[5]
The word "creed" was deleted by the full committee, perhaps to exclude atheists or Confederate sympathizers.[6] Stevens proposed and subsequently withdrew a constitutional amendment that defined United States citizens as "all persons born in the United States, or naturalized, excepting Indians."[7]
On January 27 the Joint Committee considered a draft of the constitutional amendment reported by the subcommittee of Bingham, Boutwell, and Rogers. It now read:
Congress shall have power to make laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure all persons in every state full protection in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property; and to all citizens of the United States in every State the same immunities and also equal political rights and privileges.[8]
Johnson lost his motion to strike the privileges and immunities clause.[9] Further consideration was postponed until the next meeting.[10]
On February 1, 1866, Senator Benjamin G. Brown of Missouri introduced, and the Senate adopted, a resolution that the Joint Committee consider an amendment to the Constitution
so as to declare with greater certainty the power of Congress to enforce and determine by appropriate legislation all the guarantees contained in that instrument[11] (emphasis added).
This resolution thus anticipated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment to incorporate the Bill of Rights.
In debate on S. 61, the Civil Rights Bill, some Western senators wished to exclude Indians and Chinese from citizenship. Williams of Oregon argued that if Indians were citizens, then state laws that prohibited whites from selling arms and ammunition to Indians would be void.[12] At a time when the suppression of Indians and the seizure of their lands was proceeding in earnest, it was considered unacceptable to recognize a right of Indians to keep and bear arms. Thus, the Senate voted to define all persons born in the United States, without distinction of color, as citizens, "excluding Indians not taxed."[13]
In the House, debate on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, S. 60, began with a procedural ruling that delayed the offering of amendments. Nathaniel P. Banks, a former governor of Massachusetts and Union general, stated: "I shall move, if I am permitted to do so, to amend the seventh section of this bill by inserting after the word 'including' the words 'the constitutional right to bear arms'; so that it will read, 'including the constitutional right to bear arms, the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, &c.'"[14] The section would thus have recognized "the civil rights belonging to white persons, including the constitutional right to bear arms."
The House then returned to debate on the bill. Supporting its passage, Representative Ignatius Donnelly noted that "there is an amendment offered by the distinguished gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Bingham] which provides in effect that Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation all the guarantees of the Constitution."[15] Once again, Bingham's draft of the Fourteenth Amendment was seen as protecting Bill of Rights guarantees.
Every law book, every case citing the 14th, every constitutional
article I have ever read cites John Bingham as the framer of the 14th.
Here is Mr. Bingham leading the debate in Congress:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=071/llcg071.db&recNum=75
House of Representatives, 39th Congress, 1st Session Page 1034
To save Free Republic some memory I will simply supply these search links:
John Bingham principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Results 21 - 30 of about 41,600
Article 1 of the 14th amendment John Bingham
Results 21 - 30 of about 358,000
“2. John Bingham was not even born when Article II was written. As such his opinion is no more relevant than anybody else in Congress 80 years too late.”
“3. John Bingham’s opinion was not echoed by a single one of his contemporaries.”
“4. John Bingham wasn’t even talking about the Constitution in that quotation.”
John Bingham confirms that understanding and the construction the framers used in regards to birthright and jurisdiction while speaking on civil rights of citizens in the House on March 9, 1866
“Bingham states: I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill],
which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen… . . – John Bingham in the United States House on March 9, 1866”
s61 was the Civil Rights bill that the 14th amendment to the Constitution.
On Jan 12., 1866, Rep. John Bingham of Ohio began the drafting of the Fourteenth by a proposed amendment to the Joint Senate-House Committee of 15.
“Why anybody thinks that Bingham’s comments on the Civil Rights Act have any authority over the meaning of Article II of the US Constitution is entirely beyond me."
Simple. Article 1 of the 14th amendment defined citizenship.
http://federalistblog.us/mt/articles/14th_dummy_guide.htm
Section one of the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to accomplish one purpose: End to denial of those fundamental rights that belong to all citizens of the United States by virtue of citizenship under Article IV, Sec. II of the U.S. Constitution wherever they traveled within the Union. Under the original Constitution, citizens of the United States were required to be first a citizen of some State - something newly emancipated citizens could not claim. This is why it was imperative for the first section to begin with a definition of citizenship so that no State could refuse recognition of newly freed slaves as U.S. citizens by withholding the right to protection of the laws in life, liberty or property in the courts as enjoyed by white citizens.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted after the Civil War as one of the Reconstruction Amendments on July 9, 1868. The amendment provides a broad definition of citizenship, overruling the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had excluded slaves, and their descendants, from possessing Constitutional rights by declaring them not to be citizens.
This is why article 1 of the 14th amendment is called the Citizenship and the Citizenship Clause.
It had everything to do with citizenship because it defined citizenship within the constitution.