Every sovereign
right of the United States exists solely from its existence as a
nation.
As the nation has grown to know the needs of liberty, it has from time
to time thrown new safeguards around it, as I have shown in its fifteen
progressive steps since 1776. For sixty years there was no change.
Slavery had cast its blight upon our country, and the struggle was for
State supremacy. Men forgot the rights, and need of freedom; but in
1861, the climax was reached, and then came the bitter struggle between
state and national power. Although our underlying principles were all
right, freedom required new guards, and the right of all men to liberty,
was put in a new form. An especial statute or amendment was added to our
National Constitution, declaring that involuntary servitude, unless for
crime, could not exist in this republic. This statute created no new
rights; it merely affirmed and elucidated rights as old as creation, and
which, in a general way, had been recognized at the very first
foundation of our government--even as far back as the old Articles of
Association, before the Declaration of Independence. This amendment was
the sixteenth step in _securing_ the rights of the people, but it was
not enough. Our country differs from every other country, in that we
have _two kinds_ of citizenship.
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