Page:A legal review of the case of Dred Scott, as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.djvu/21

 born within the allegiance of the British king. Upon the Revolution, no other change took place in the law of North Carolina than was consequent upon the transition from a colony dependent upon a European king to a free and sovereign State; slaves remained slaves; British subjects in North Carolina became North Carolina freemen; foreigners, until made members of the State, continued aliens; slaves manumitted here became freemen, and therefore, if born within North Carolina, are citizens of North Carolina; and all free persons, born within the State, are born citizens of the State." "It has been said that by the Constitution of the United States, the power of naturalization has been conferred exclusively upon congress, and therefore it cannot be competent for any State, by its municipal regulations, to make a citizen. But what is naturalization? It is the removal of the disabilities of alienage. Emancipation is the removal of the incapacity of slavery. The latter depends wholly upon the internal regulations of the State; the former belongs to the government of the United States. It would be a dangerous mistake to confound them." State v. Manuel, 4 Dev. & Bat. 24, 25. And this was again recognized as the settled law of that State, in State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell, 253.

It is not strange that Mr. Justice Catron abstained from concurring in the opinion of Chief Justice Taney upon this point; for he must have remembered these decisions of his native State, as well as his own opinion when presiding over the supreme court of Tennessee, in which he said: "The idea that a will emancipating slaves, or deed of manumission, is void in this State, is ill founded. It is binding on the representatives of the devisor in the one case, and the grantor in the other, and communicates a right to the slave; but it is an imperfect right, until the State, the community of which such emancipated person is to become a member, assents to the contract between the master and slave. It is adopting into the body politic a new member—a vastly important measure in every community, and especially in ours, where the majority of freemen over twenty-one years of age govern the balance of the people, together with themselves; where the free negro's vote at the polls is of as high value as that of any man." "It is an act of sovereignty, just as much as naturalizing the foreign subject. The highest act of sovereignty a government can perform, is to adopt a new member with all the privileges and duties of citizenship." Fisher's Negroes v. Dabbs, 6 Yerger, 126, 127.