Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/270

 258 FEDERAL REPORTER. �extreme, and opeiied the door, not only to persons of African descent, but to ail those "of African nativity" — therebyprof- fering the boon of American citizenship to the comparatively Bavage and strange inhabitants of the "dark continent," trhile withholding it from the intermediate and much-better- qualified red and yellow races. �However, there is this to be said in excuse for this seeming inconsistency : the negroes of Africa were not likely to emi- grate to this country, and therefore the provision concerning them was merely a harmless piece of legislative buncombe, while the Indian and Chinaman were in our midst, and at ouir dOOrs and only too willing to assume the mantle of Amer- ican sovereignty, which we ostentatiously offered to the Afri- can, but denied to them. �The conclusion being that an Indian is not a "white per- son" within the purview of the naturalization laws, the question arises, what is the status in this respect of the peti- tioner, who is a person of one-half Indian blood? In Louis- iana, if the proportion of African blood did not exceed one- eighth, the person was deemed white; and this was the rule in the colonial code noir of France, and approved in Carolina. 2 Kent. 72, note b. �In Ohio it bas been held that a person nearer white than black or red was a white person, within the provision in the state constitution of 1802, limiting the privilege of voting to the "white maie inhabitants," etc.; but that where the colored blood was equal to or pteponderated over the white blood, the person was not white. �In Jeffries v. Ankeny, 11 Ohio, 372, it was held that the offspring of a white man and a half-breed Indian woman was a voter; "that ail nearer white than black, or of the grade between the mulattoes and the whites, were entitled to enjoy every political and social privilege of the white citizen." See Gray v. The State, e Ohio, 853; Tliacker v. Hawk, 11 Ohio, 377; Lane v. Baker, 12 Ohio, 237. �Upon these authorities, and none other have come under my observation, the petitioner is not entitled to be considered a white man. As a matter of fact, he is as much an Indian ��� �