First, we have national citizenship,
based upon equal political rights. A person born a citizen of the United
States, is, by the very circumstances of birth, endowed with certain
political rights. In this respect, the circumstances of birth are very
different from those of a person born in Great Britain. A person born in
Great Britain is not endowed with political rights, simply because born
in that country. Political rights in Great Britain are not based upon
personal rights; they are based upon property rights. In England,
persons are not represented; only property is represented. That is the
very great political difference between England and the United States.
In the United States, representation is based upon individual, personal
rights--therefore, every person born in the United States--_every
person_,--not every white person, nor every male person, but every
person is born with _political_ rights. The naturalization of foreigners
also secures to them the exercise of political rights, because it
secures to them citizenship, and they obtain naturalization through
_national_ law. The war brought about a distinct and new recognition of
the rights of national citizenship. States had assumed to be superior to
the nation in this very underlying national basis of voting rights, but
when certain States boldly attempted to thwart national power, and vote
themselves out of the Union,--when by this attempt they virtually said,
there is no nation, a new protection was thrown around individual,
personal, political rights, by a seventeenth step, known to the world by
the Fourteenth Amendment, which defined, (not created) citizenship.
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