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10 

UNITED STATES v. VAELLO MADERO 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

see also ibid. (“[T]he right of citizenship involves everything
else.  Make the colored man a citizen of the United States 
and he has every right which you or I have as citizens of the 
United States . . . ”).  And after President Johnson’s veto, 
Representative William Lawrence, the 1866 Act’s principal
House sponsor, maintained that “the very nature of citizen-
ship” guaranteed an “equality of civil rights.”  Id., at 1836. 
The  1866  Act’s  reversal  of  Dred  Scott  raised  questions 
whether  Congress  had  such  authority  under  the  existing 
Constitution.  See,  e.g.,  K.  Lash,  The  Fourteenth  Amend-
ment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citi-
zenship 169 (2014).  Once incorporated into the Fourteenth
Amendment,  the  Citizenship  Clause  “forever  closed  the 
door on Dred Scott” and “constitutionalized the Civil Rights 
Act  of  1866.”  Id.,  at  171.  When  Senator  Jacob  Howard 
moved to add the Citizenship Clause, he and others charac-
terized the Clause as largely “declaratory” of existing law, 
including the 1866 Act.  Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.,
at 2890 (remarks of Sen. Howard); see also id., at 2896 (re-
marks of Sen. Doolittle).  Then, as Congress considered the 
Citizenship Clause, Republicans reiterated the same equal-
citizenship principle that featured in the debates over the 
1866  Act.  Senator  John  Conness,  for  instance,  remarked 
that  the  1866  Act  guaranteed  that  all  born  in  the  United 
States  “be  regarded  and  treated  as  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  entitled  to  equal  civil  rights  with  other  citizens  of 
the United States.”  Id., at 2891; see also Williams 543–548. 
And during the ratification debates, Republicans continued
to publicly advocate that citizenship and equal civil rights 
were concomitant.  See id., at 549–554. 

B 
In the years following the Fourteenth Amendment’s rati-
fication, several Justices also appeared to endorse this un-
derstanding  of  the  Citizenship  Clause,  consistent  with
Reconstruction-era  discourse.    In  the  Slaughter-House