ace a citizen of the United States, and to endue him with the full rights of citizenship in every other state without their consent. The Constitution of the United States does not act upon one of the Negro race whenever he shall be made free under the laws of a state, and raise him to the rank of a citizen, and immediately clothe him with all the privileges of a citizen of any other state, and in its own courts. The plaintiff in error was a Negro slave, and brought into a free State (Illinois), and in the free territory of the United States for about four years, during which time he was married to another Negro slave who also was in said free territory. One of their children (Eliza) was born on the River Mississippi, and another of their children was born in the State of Missouri, to which state he had returned. Held, that the plaintiff in error could not be and was not a citizen of the State of Missouri, within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and consequently was not entitled to sue in its courts. The legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show that neither the class of persons who had been imported as shaves nor their descendents, whether they had become free or not, where then acknowledged as part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that instrument. Belonos 6The descendents of Africans who were imported into this country and sold as slaves, when they shall become emancipated, or who are born of parents who had become free before their birth, are not citizens of a state in the sense in which the word "citizen" is used in Constitution of the United States. The enslaved African race was not intended to be included in, and formed no part of, the people who formed and adopted the Declaration of Independence. When the framers of the Constitution were conferring special rights and privileges upon the citizens of a state in ev...
