694               CHURCH REVIEW.

full of danger. Our liberty had been declared in proc-
lamation and guaranteed by constitutional amendment,
but we had no weapon of self-defense in our hands, no
share in the government under which we must live, no
protection in the courts against injustice and violence.
Chief Justice Taney, in the famous, or rather infamous
Dred Scott decision, had declared that no Negro could
be a citizen of the United States.  This decision was
authoritative till reversed by the same tribunal or over-
thrown by a constitutional provision. But this Dred
Scott case served other purposes besides giving an unen-
viable immortality to Taney. It called attention to tbe
fact that a man could become a citizen of the United
States only by first becoming a citizen of some particu-
lar State--that is, that national citizenship depended
upon citizenship in some State. The Negro was a free-
man by national action; he could become a citizen only
by State action. It was this anomalous condition of the
colored people, made free against their master's will by
an external power, and yet living in their midst without
a single legal weapon of self-protection, and rendered
more helpless still by their poverty and ignorance, that,
not only made the Reconstruction Policy necessary, but
gave that policy its form and significance.
   HISTORY OF RECONSTRUCTION--PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S
                        POLICY.
  The final form of reconstruction was the result of
three distinct experiments. President Lincoln was the
first to seriously consider the question, how to restore
the seceded States to their proper relations in the federal
union.  There were no precedents in the case, no con-
stitutional or statute law to guide him. Should the
President or Congress make the first move in the mat-
ter?  His  conclusion was, that the President should
take the initiative, reserving to Congress, however, its
constitutional right of admitting the representatives of
the restored States upon such terms as it deemed best.




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 15, Num. 3

History of Negro Citizenship

W.

Volume:  15
Issue Number:  03
Page Number:  689
Date:  01/1899