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UNITED STATES v. VAELLO MADERO 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

a citizen, it being the great fundamental law in our Govern-
ment, that under the law, citizens are equal in their rights
and privileges.”  Kansas—The Mormons—Slavery, in A Po-
litical Textbook for 1860, p. 155 (H. Greeley & J. Cleveland 
eds. 1860).  Thus, Douglas recognized that the bestowal of 
citizenship  ineluctably  entailed  equal  civil  rights.  Aboli-
tionists  agreed,  but,  unlike  Taney  and  Douglas,  reasoned 
that all persons—black or white—born in the United States 
were  citizens  and  therefore  entitled  to  equal  civil  rights. 
See Williams 515–518.1 

After the Civil War, the Nation again confronted the citi-
zenship status of black Americans.  Though they were no
longer  slaves  in  light  of  the  Thirteenth  Amendment,  the
question remained whether, by virtue of their freedom from 
bondage, these native-born men and women were “citizens.”
Consistent with Taney’s view in Dred Scott, southern gov-
ernments rejected that free blacks were citizens and conse-
quently enacted “Black Codes” that “restricted freed slaves’ 
rights  to  make  and  enforce  private  contracts,  to  own  and
convey real and personal property, to hold certain jobs, to
seek relief in court, and to participate in common life as or-
dinary citizens.”  J. Harrison, Reconstructing the Privileges
or Immunities Clause, 101 Yale L. J. 1385, 1388 (1992). 

—————— 

1 To be sure, not all agreed that citizenship entailed civil equality.  Jus-
tice  Curtis,  dissenting  in  Dred  Scott  v.  Sandford,  19  How.  393  (1857),
argued that “citizenship, under the Constitution of the United States, is
not dependent on the possession of any particular political or even of all
civil rights.”  Id., at 583; see also United States v. Rhodes, 27 F. Cas. 785, 
790 (No. 16,151) (CC Ky. 1866) (Swayne, J., for the court) (“The fact that
one is a subject or citizen determines nothing as to his rights as such”); 
10 Op. Atty. Gen. 382, 398 (1862) (“I can hardly comprehend the thought
of  the  absolute  incompatibility  of  degradation  and  citizenship”);  2
J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law *258, n. b (9th ed. 1858) (“If a 
slave born in the United States be . . . lawfully discharged from bondage,” 
he  “becomes  thenceforward  a  citizen”  even  if  he  remained  subject  to
“such disabilities as the laws of the states respectively may deem it ex-
pedient to prescribe to free persons of color”).