Did the Fourteenth Amendment make the American People Citizens of the Federal Government?

Sierra Times ^ | Robert Greenslade

[Sir Gawain]

Did the Fourteenth Amendment make the American People Citizens of the Federal Government?

By Robert Greenslade

In recent years, it has been asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment diluted or abrogated State citizenship by making the American people citizens of the federal government. Section 1 of the Amendment states:

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.

When the Constitution was adopted, it did not contain a formal definition of citizenship. This omission was not a defect as some have asserted. The system of government established by the Constitution did not warrant a definition of the term.

Contrary to the misrepresentations emanating from friends of big government, the Constitution did not create a national system of government or consolidate the States or their people into a single nation. The Constitution was simply a continuation of the federal system of government established by the Articles of Confederation. Under this system, the federal government would act as the agent of the States and its powers would relate to mutual relations between the States and external or foreign affairs. All powers involving to the life, liberty, property, and happiness of the American people, would remain with the States.

Since the federal government was functioning as the agent of the States and representing their collective interests, that government did not have any individual citizens of its own. The only class of citizen found within the borders of the United States when the Constitution was adopted, excluding foreigners, were Citizens of the individual States.

Even though the Constitution does not contain a formal definition of citizenship, it does make reference to three classes of citizen [excluding the reference to foreign citizens]. They are: “Citizens of each State,” “Citizens in the several States,” and “Citizens of the United States.” All three refer to State citizenship because the Constitution did not make the people of the several States citizens of a single government or nation.

Under the Constitution, the term “Citizen of each State” is synonymous with the term Citizen of one of the States united under the constitutional compact between the States. The term “Citizens in the several States” simply refers to State citizens in the different States. They were also known as “Citizens of the United States” or Citizens of the States united under the constitutional compact because their State was one of the United States and a Citizen of one State could change their citizenship and become a Citizen of any of the other United States [See Article IV, Section 1, Clause1]. These are the only classes of citizenship recognized under the Constitution, as contemplated by the Founders.

Citizenship could be acquired one of two ways. First, by birth, or second, by being naturalized pursuant to the power of Congress under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution.

After the requisite number of States ratified the Constitution, the States’ government began acquiring territories west of the existing boundaries of the United States. Since these areas were outside the jurisdiction of the individual States, the government of the United States had exclusive jurisdiction over all persons in these territories. Any person born in these areas to parents who were not Citizens of an individual State could not claim State citizenship by birth or naturalization. Since these individuals were born under the exclusive jurisdiction of the government of the United States, that government claimed the authority to make them statutory citizens of the United States [citizens by statute]. However, that government could not, by statute or decree, make these individuals Citizens of a State.

This same rule applied in the District of Columbia. Pursuant to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, the District is under the exclusive authority of the government of the United States because it is not a State. Persons born in the District who could not claim State citizenship were classified as citizens of the United States because they were under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the government of the United States.

The Fourteenth Amendment was not proposed because the States’ agent woke-up one morning and decided to change the nature of the Constitution and make the American people citizens of the federal government. The classes of citizenship referenced above only applied to free white persons. The Negro, according to a 1857 decision by the United States Supreme Court, “was ineligible to attain United States citizenship, either from a State or by virtue of birth in the United States even as a free man…”

Following the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment constitutionally freed the African slaves from bondage. However, Congress was still faced with a problem. Even though the Southern States lost the War, their State Constitutions still did not recognize blacks as persons entitled to citizenship. Not only did Congress lack the constitutional authority to alter these State Constitutions, but it also lacked the authority to confer state citizenship on these individuals. Absent citizenship, the Southern States viewed the newly freed slaves residing in their territory as aliens and began enacting laws that severely restricted the personal freedoms of persons who were not citizens of their State. These laws were commonly known as “Black Codes” because the target of these repressive laws were the newly freed slaves.

Since the Southern States had not yet been restored to their pre-war status as States of the Union, they were treated as occupied territories that fell under the exclusive jurisdiction of the government of the United States just like the territories. This enabled Congress to enact legislation that would block enforcement of the “Black Codes.” One of these pieces of legislation was the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Act stated in part:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States…

From a constitutional standpoint, there was a problem with this part of the Act. Congress lacked the general statutory authority to declare persons to be Citizens of the United States. The only way to remedy this was through a constitutional amendment. Fearing that the United States Supreme Court might declare the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, on various grounds, Congress proposed the 14th Amendment.

As a result of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, the newly freed slaves went from bondage to Citizens of the United States [Citizens of the States united in the compact or Union between the States] and Citizens of the State [Citizens of one of the United States] where they were residing at the time the Amendment went into effect. United States citizenship simply meant the newly freed slaves could exercise citizenship in any one of the United States. By giving the newly freed slaves the ability to acquire and exercise citizenship in any one of the United States, none of the United States could have prevented the newly freed slaves from changing their State citizenship and acquiring new citizenship in their State.

This brings us to the threshold question. Did the Fourteenth Amendment change the nature of citizenship and make the American people citizens of the federal government? The so-called citizenship clause of the Amendment states:

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.

Nowhere in this provision does it grant or confer citizenship on any class of person or subject anyone to the jurisdiction of the federal government. It only defined citizenship, as it had been commonly understood since the adoption of the Constitution, and spells out the method by which it can be obtained.

The assertion that this provision made the American people citizens of the federal government can be reduced, for purposes of this article, to the phrase? “United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Unless these words refer to the federal government, this assertion fails on its face.

The Constitution, as stated previously, is a compact or contract between the several States. Under contract law, a word or phrase has the same meaning throughout the contract, or any amendment of the contract, unless the word or phrase is specifically re-defined for another part of the contract. The phrase “United States,” as used in the Constitution, refers to the individual States in their united or collective capacity. It does not refer to a single government or nation because the Constitution only established a “partial” Union between the several States. In other words, the States are only partially united under the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson expressed this principle in 1800 when he wrote: “[t]he true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign affairs.”

One does not have to look any further than the Thirteenth Amendment to prove that the words “United States” refer to the States. Section 1 of the Amendment states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [Emphasis added]

If the words “United States” referred to the federal government, then the provision could not have used the term “their” to describe the jurisdictional provision of the Amendment. It would have stated: “subject to its jurisdiction.”

As stated above, a word or phrase has to have the same meaning throughout the contract unless it is specifically re-defined for another part of the contract. If the words “United States” refer to the States in the Thirteenth Amendment and the federal government in the Fourteenth Amendment, then the same words in back to back Amendments have two completely different meanings. This would be an absurdity.

If the phrase “United States,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, refers to the federal government, then the two phrases would be interchangeable and have the same meaning throughout the Amendment. By replacing the words “United States” with “federal government,” the Amendment reads as follows:

All persons born or naturalized in the federal government, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the federal government and of the State wherein they reside.

Such a reading would be lunacy because it is impossible for persons to be “born or naturalized in the federal government.” The phrase “United States,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, has to refer to the States. Senator Howard of Michigan, who authored the citizenship provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, made this fact crystal clear when he stated that the jurisdictional provision enumerated in the Amendment refers to the States, not the federal government.

This amendment [the Citizenship Clause] which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is…a citizen of the United States. [Emphasis added]

As stated by Senator Howard, this provision changed nothing. If it was merely declaratory of “the law of the land already,” then the Fourteenth Amendment could not have made the people of the several States citizens of the federal government because they were not citizens of that government before the adoption of the Amendment.

The underlying reason the American people cannot be citizens of the federal government was expressed by John C. Calhoun in his writings on the Constitution:

It is federal, because it is the government of States united in a political union, in contradistinction to a government of individuals, that is, by what is usually called, a social compact. To express it more concisely, it is federal and not national because it is the government of a community of States, and not the government of a single State or Nation.

Since the federal government is, by definition and intent, the common government of the several States, not the general government of the American people, the Fourteenth Amendment could not have made them citizens of the States’ government.

Note: it has been asserted that the Amendment was never properly ratified. For an interesting article on this subject, click here..

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Robert Greenslade focuses his writing on issues surrounding the federal government and the Constitution. He believes politicians at the federal level, through ignorance or design, are systematically dismantling the Constitution in an effort to expand their power and consolidate control over the American people. He has dedicated himself to resurrecting the true intent of the Constitution in the hope that the information will contribute, in some small way, to restoring the system of limited government established by the Constitution.

[Sir Gawain]

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[.cnI redruM]

Considering how soon this post-dated The Civil War, this was a considered statement. Think of it as a way to still allow a state to sucede, but refuse to let any of it's population go with it. In the post-bellum aftermath, noone was terribly keen on state's rights anymore.

[inquest]

Any person born in [the territories] to parents who were not Citizens of an individual State could not claim State citizenship by birth or naturalization. Since these individuals were born under the exclusive jurisdiction of the government of the United States, that government claimed the authority to make them statutory citizens of the United States (citizens by statute). However, that government could not, by statute or decree, make these individuals Citizens of a State.

Is there an actual reference for this, or is it just the author's conclusion? Because it seems highly incongruous to me that Congress can make state citizens out of foreigners, via the naturalization clause, but can't make state citizens out of people within its own territories.

[billbears]

Bump from a citizen of the state of North Carolina

[soundbits]

sovereign citizen bump for later more detailed reading

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[Vindiciae Contra TyrannoSCOTUS]

. . . .The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law.... Justice Henry Brown - Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)

National Constitution Center: Interactive Constitution Although the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, it did not resolve the legal status of former slaves under federal and state law. After the Civil War, many southern states passed "Black Codes" designed to severely restrict the lives of newly freed slaves and keep them in virtual slavery. Through the Fourteenth Amendment, former slaves were granted citizenship and promised "equal protection of the laws." This protection from unreasonable discrimination eventually extended to other groups as well. The Fourteenth Amendment became the basis for claims of legal equality.

Because the Fourteenth Amendment specifically addressed the states, it drastically expanded the reach of the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court used the amendment to apply most provisions in the Bill of Rights to state governments. As a result, the Fourteenth Amendment is cited more often in modern litigation than any other. In fact, many constitutional scholars believe that, through its wide scope and promise of equality, the Fourteenth Amendment created a new Constitution.

Failed Ratification of Fourteenth Amendment Congressional Record -- House, June 13, 1967, page 15641, H7161

THE 14TH AMENDMENT - EQUAL PROTECTION LAW OR TOOL OF USURPATION

(Mr. Rarick (at the request of Mr. Pryor) was granted permission to extend his remarks at this point in the Record and to include extraneous matter.)

Mr. RARICK. Mr. Speaker, arrogantly ignoring clear-cut expressions in the Constitution of the United States, the declared intent of its drafters notwithstanding, our unelected Federal judges read out prohibitions of the Constitution of the United States by adopting the fuzzy haze of the 14th Amendment to legislate their personal ideas, prejudices, theories, guilt complexes, aims, and whims. Through the cooperation of intellectual educators, we have subjected ourselves to accept destructive use and meaning of words and phrases. We blindly accept new meanings and changed values to alter our traditional thoughts.

We have tolerantly permitted the habitual misuse of words to serve as a vehicle to abandon our foundations and goals. Thus, the present use and expansion of the 14th Amendment is a sham -- {H7162} serving as a crutch and hoodwink to precipitate a quasi-legal approach for overthrow of the tender balances and protections of limitation found in the Constitution.

Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment Second Edition. By Raoul Berger

Berger famously argued that the great 1954 school desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education was incorrectly decided because the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend its equal protection clause to require racial integration of the public schools. According to Berger, the sole purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, was to reinforce the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 and protect it against repeal by a future Congress.

[gubamyster]

ping

[Held_to_Ransom]

All very nice, but the simple fact is that the Constitution, as originally written, put upon Congress the onus of ensuring a Republican form of government in the individual states. Now, as long as the individual states kept their diapers clean, there was no problem. Sadly though, after the Civil War, the southern states allowed for the KKK's reign of terror, and widespread ethnic cleansing as well as activities that can only be described in modern terms as genocidal. On top of this, where these horrible things happened, it was the states that they happened in who chose to deny justice, both through their legislatures and their courts. It was those states who are to blame for the original sin, and trying to pass the blame eslewhere is to avoid being able to adequately deal with the modern problem.

It is also to be noted that it the SCOTUS has a long history of aggravating those issues, with a truly dramatic history of justices who were not only extremely racist to the point of radicalism, but also today a list of judges who are just as radical in their inclination to treat the citizens of the nation not as citizens, but as just 'we-uns working in the fields for massa.' True, racism is fading, but the intolerance and high handed egotism that bred it in the first place are still rampant in the court system.

The most recent outlandish nonsense was the handling of the Florida election, which was clearly a matter that belonged to the Congress to settle. The ruling from SCOTUS in that case is incredibly bizarre, becuase, in effect, it ruled all national elections in the country, past and present to be invalid, since the conditions that the court accepted as validation for their ruling exist in every state in the Union. Clearly, the courts are out of hand, and while the 14th amendment should never have necessary, in fact it was, and the forces that pulled the courts into the matter were not the overstepping of the court, but the recalcitrance, prejudice, stupidity and incompetence of state governments.

Now, sadly, it has become the courts who are off in never never land, but one thing we know for sure. America is no longer a nation where every vote counts or is counted. Now, everyone take a moment of silence to worship SCOTUS.....

[Regulator]

An important point made here and linked by you is that the ratification of the 14th is a fraud. Joe Fallon also wrote a rather succinct article on this. The only conclusion that anyone can make about it, after reading the history, is that it was extorted from many of the 'states' (in quotes, because they had temporarily ceased to exist when the 14th was rammed through).

Funny, but you never hear the ACLU or anyone else mentioning that little fact prior to invoking it.

[Vindiciae Contra TyrannoSCOTUS]

Whatever uncertainty there might be about whether the First Amendment is gathered into the scope of judicial review, there is none whatever about the proposition that, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, it was intended to restrain only the national government and not the states or their subdivisions. And, among scholars who do not hold a prior commitment to judicial activism, a second proposition is virtually settled as well: that the Fourteenth Amendment changed nothing about that fact.(see footnote 134)

Of course, on the Court the debate has gone all the other way, so that Justices Scalia and Thomas no less than their more liberal brethren act unquestioningly on the basis of twentieth-century precedents that declared that much of the Bill of Rights is selectively ''absorbed'' or ''incorporated'' into the terms of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But these precedents are worse than doubtful: they represent a plain usurpation of power by the Court, and they ought not to be respected, on or off the Court, by anyone who regards the Constitution as superior to ''constitutional law.''

The Fourteenth Amendment is certainly the major ''culprit'' if we are concerned about reining in the Court. By ''incorporation'' of the Bill of Rights, and by creating under the doctrine of ''substantive due process'' rights which are contained nowhere in the Constitution at all, the Court has used the Fourteenth Amendment to nationalize some of the most important policy questions that the Constitution properly leaves to the states.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MATTHEW J. FRANCK, CHAIRMAN AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, RADFORD UNIVERSITY Congress, the Court, and the Constitution

 

 

[Vindiciae Contra TyrannoSCOTUS]

Now, as long as the individual states kept their diapers clean, there was no problem. Sadly though, after the Civil War, the southern states allowed for the KKK's reign of terror, and widespread ethnic cleansing as well as activities that can only be described in modern terms as genocidal.

PUT THAT INTO PERSPECTIVE:

Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Blacks were lynched in the U.S. That number is surpassed in less than 3 days by abortion.

1,452 African-American children are killed each day by the heinous act of abortion.

3 out of 5 pregnant African-American women will abort their child.

Since 1973 there has been over 13 million Black children killed and their precious mothers victimized by the U.S. abortion industry.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson once said:
"That is why the Constitution called us three-fifths human and then whites further dehumanized us by calling us 'niggers'. It was part of the dehumanizing process. The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify that which they wanted to do and not even feel like they had done anything wrong. Those advocates of taking life prior to birth do not call it killing or murder, they call it abortion. They further never talk about aborting a baby because that would imply something human. Rather they talk about aborting the fetus. Fetus sounds less than human and therefore abortion can be justified".

With 1/3 of all abortions performed on Black women, the abortion industry has received over 4,000,000,000 (yes, billion) dollars from the Black community. BlackGenocide.org | LEARN Northeast

[Spiff]

The War Between the States was only peripherally about slavery, no matter what anyone says. The war was fought to decide if we live in a nation with a centralized National government under which the States exist as mere subdivisions of the whole or if we live in a nation with a limited Federal government under which the States are sovereign and only delegate some power to the Federal government and reserve all other powers for themselves and their citizens. With the outcome of the war, the 14th Amendment, and precedent which has been set ever since, it is obvious that the side of the centralized National government is the victor and that annoying things like the 10th Amendment and such should just be ignored as they are irrelevant.

And it is all so very unfortunate

[inquest]

So Scalia accepts the notion of "substantive due process"? I thought he rejected that doctrine.

[stainlessbanner]

bttt

[Vindiciae Contra TyrannoSCOTUS]

Thus, the nature of active review in equal protection jurisprudence remains in flux, subject to shifting majorities and varying degrees of concern about judicial activism and judicial restraint. But the cases, more fully reviewed hereafter, clearly indicate that a sliding scale of review is a fact of the Court's cases, however much its doctrinal explanation lags behind. FindLaw: Cases and Codes: US Constitution

[Vindiciae Contra TyrannoSCOTUS]

For an unanswered refutation of incorporation see - Fairman, Fourteenth Amendment Incorporate Bill of Rights? 2 Stan.L.Rev. 5 (1949).

[ancient_geezer]

Contrary to the misrepresentations emanating from friends of big government, the Constitution did not create a national system of government or consolidate the States or their people into a single nation.

 

According to Madison in making his argument for the ratification of the Constitution to the American people it did.

James Madison, Federalist #39:

• "The difference between a federal and national government, as it relates to the OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT, is supposed to consist in this, that in the former the powers operate on the political bodies composing the Confederacy, in their political capacities; in the latter, on the individual citizens composing the nation, in their individual capacities. On trying the Constitution by this criterion, it falls under the NATIONAL, not the FEDERAL character;"

 

The Constitution was simply a continuation of the federal system of government established by the Articles of Confederation.

Hardly!!

James Madison, Federalist #45:

• "The change relating to taxation may be regarded as the most important; and yet the present [Continental] sic Congress have as complete authority to REQUIRE of the States indefinite supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare, as the future [Constitutional] Congress will have to require them of individual citizens;

James Madison, Elliots Debates Vol 3 p128:

• "If a government depends on other governments for its revenues -- if it must depend on the voluntary contributions of its members -- its [*129] existence must be precarious."

• "If the general government is to depend on the voluntary contribution of the states for its support, dismemberment of the United States may be the consequence."

Hamilton, Federalist #34:

• ``A CONCURRENT JURISDICTION in the article of taxation was the only admissible substitute for an entire subordination, in respect to this branch of power, of State authority to that of the Union.'' Any separation of the objects of revenue that could have been fallen upon, would have amounted to a sacrifice of the great INTERESTS of the Union to the POWER of the individual States. The convention thought the concurrent jurisdiction preferable to that subordination; and it is evident that it has at least the merit of reconciling an indefinite constitutional power of taxation in the Federal government with an adequate and independent power in the States to provide for their own necessities.

 

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Under this system, the federal government would act as the agent of the States and its powers would relate to mutual relations between the States and external or foreign affairs.

False Premises makes for False Conclusions.

[Vindiciae Contra TyrannoSCOTUS]

LOL - It's the FEDERALIST, not NATIONALISTS Papers.