I don't see why they wouldn't have considering the quotes in US v. Cruikshank states: citizen' means `citizen of the United States,' and not a person generally
This means a citizen of the United States is not even a human being, but an artificial construct.
What so many people can't seem to understand is that there is more than one type of 'law' in operation. Natural law and positive law.
The Constitution is merely an operations manual for government. It has nothing to do with the People who ordained and established it except to enumerate a few positive law rights in the Bill of Rights.
Folks also don't realize the federal Bill of Rights was merely to ensure the rights of people residing in Washington D.C. The States each all already HAD their own 'Bill of Rights'.
Your comment on people being artificial constructs is very critical to understanding how we're dealt with by the powers that be. As I'm sure you know we're dealing on a daily basis with agents of several "artificial entities" aka corporations who go by "the City of__ , or the County of__ or the State of___.
Since an artificial entity cannot impose it's will on a living, breathing soul along came the 14th amendment in time to help turn us all into "federal or US citizens" or in other words little mini-corporations with no real status or standing. That's why people continue to wonder why they can't get justice in the courts and continue to have more control exerted over their daily lives or have untold $ extracted from them by numerous gov't. agencies of the gov't.
Like it or not we're living in a real version of the Matrix in which much of what we've been brainwashed to believe by the public fool system is just total BS. We've lost our way and until we begin to understand "who we really are again" the downward spiral will continue.