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he Civil War brought freedom to four million
enslaved people. However, in January 1866,
the meaning of that freedom under the law
remained nebulous. The 13th Amendment, which states had
ratified in December 1865, outlawed slavery. In 1857, how-
ever, the U.S. Supreme Court had in Scott v. Sandford denied
citizenship to African-Americans, even those born in the
United States. To Senator Lyman Trumbull (R-Illinois), the
status quo—freedom without citizenship—smacked of con-
tinued involuntary servitude. The formerly enslaved born in
America deserved birthright citizenship, the same as any
white American enjoyed, Trumbull reasoned, and he vowed
to make that reasoning a reality.
On January 5, 1866, Trumbull introduced S-61, a bill to
grant citizenship to all freed slaves born in the United States.
He expected Congress to pass this bill, formally known as
“An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their
Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their Vindication,” and
President Andrew Johnson to sign it into law.
However, citizenship proved a more divisive issue than
Trumbull had envisioned, and in a controversy with echoes
into the present, Congress spent months heatedly debating
who deserves to be an American.
Initially, the concept of American citizenship was unset-
tled. Foreign-born immigrants became citizens by natural-
ization, a process the first Congress codified in 1790 that was
limited to white persons and activated only after a five-year
wait. Immigrants’ children born in the United States, how-
ever, enjoyed citizenship by virtue of jus soli, “right of the
soil,” regardless of parental nationality. Jus soli, also called
birthright citizenship, had originated in England and had
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
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