704                CHURCH REVIEW

benefits of all laws and provisions for the security of
personal property."
  The object of this bill was to specifically and directly
counteract the effects of the vagrant and apprentice
laws of the South which had been so framed as to ap-
ply to the freedmen only.    Senator Sumner's  Bill, as
finally passed, aimed to secure equal rights as to inns,
public conveyances, theatres, and other places of public
amusements, cemeteries supported wholly or in part by
taxation, and to grand and petit jurors.
  The next grand step was the passage through Congress
of the 14th Amendment June 13th 1866. The peculiar
glory of this enactment is that it makes the nation the
source of citizenship instead of the States, and that it
places the right thereto upon the broad basis of human-
ity, thus sweeping away forever the principle of the in-
famous Dred Scott decision.
  But this amendment by implication recognizes a dis-
tinction between citizenship and suffrage, the latter be-
ing left in the power of the States. Yet the aim, and it
was hoped, the effect of the second section would lead
the South to confer the elective franchise upon the col-
ored citizens in that it conditioned its representation in
Congress, not upon the number of inhabitants, but
upon the number entitled to vote. Thus the distinct
advantage of increased power in the national councils
was held out to the South as an inducement to ignore
the race line in dealing with its citizens and to treat
them all with equal justice, coupled with the threat
of loss of power in case this fair and generous offer
were rejected. Moreover it was well understood at
the time, that the acceptance of this amendment by
any Southern State would open the way for its full
restoration to the Union. The offer was in the high-
est degree magnanimous, for it still left the subject
of reconstruction to be largely determined by the
Southern leaders themselves; it invited them to a fair
and dispassionate consideration of the question, what




			

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