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Why? Because Congress’s objective was to deal with a unique historical problem — the status of black people who had been in America for generations, bore allegiance to its sovereign power and the burdens of its laws, but were being denied citizenship and its attributes. This, indeed, was exactly how the Supreme Court saw the matter 18 years later when, in Elk v. Wilkins (1884), it denied birthright citizenship to the American-born adult child of members of an Indian tribe — observing that the point of the 14th Amendment was to settle the question of citizenship for black former slaves, and adopting the reasoning of Trumbull and Howard that 14th Amendment “jurisdiction” meant complete jurisdiction. The amendment was designed to bring blacks formally into the American fold without purporting to affect the status of others who were regarded as non-Americans because they actually were non-Americans — foreign diplomats and their families, Indian tribes, and aliens who had not been naturalized.Share
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