Eminent Men Who Favored Native-Americanism

tension of the same spirit of exclusion so as to prescribe the particular district or parish of the State from which he must be chosen? In a little

while this hostile feeling towards the citizens of other States would be made to include a particular class of native - born citizens, and thus ultimately enthrone aristocracy and discord. The convention had been called explicitly to extend the right of suffrage. To require the Governor to be native-born would not be in accordance with the call for the convention.

But others took a different view. Was not the Virginia convention of 1829 a sufficient precedent? Had not Monroe, Madison, and Marshall been among its members? Had not that convention required the candidate for Governor of Virginia to be thirty years of age, a native-born citizen of the United States, and a resident in the State for five years? And those who opposed the qualification of nativity forgot that Monroe and Madison had been each twice President of the United States; that Madison was one of the chief members of the convention that made the Constitution of the United States, and that Marshall presided in the Supreme Court. These men certainly understood what provisions should be ingrafted in a State constitution. Was it error to err in such company? Was not their authority sufficient? Even Congress had given its consent to the qualification complained of. Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas were not members of the old confederation of thirteen States. Each had been compelled

to submit its constitution to the approval of Congress, lest any clauses should conflict with a provision of the federal Constitution. Congress had admitted these States into the Union and sanctioned the provision in their constitutions requiring that the Governor should be a native-born citizen of the United States. Who would say that the Representatives and Senators of the whole country, the President of the United States, and the judges of its courts, had obstinately supported an unconstitutional provision? There was no doubt of the constitutional right of Louisiana to insert such a clause.

The debate on the qualifications of the executives had at last narrowed down, as Marigny, of Orleans, expressed it, to the question whether the people of Louisiana would have a naturalized citizen for their Governor. Entering at length into the history of the State, he showed that its citizens of foreign birth had shown as sympathizing an interest in its welfare as those native-born. Asylums, hospitals, convents, cathedrals, institutions of learning, and public benefactions of various kinds attested the philanthropy of many distinguished citizens of the State who were born in foreign lands. Officers of high rank, of inestimable service to the State, were alien - born. The general welfare of the commonwealth had been as much promoted by its naturalized as by its native citizens. Particularly was the proposed exclusion of foreign-born citizens unwelcome to the French population of the State, which was generously rep

Free Colored Persons and the Slave States

resented in the convention, and Marigny made the ablest remonstrance against the discrimination, and deplored his inability to speak fluently in English.*

As has so often occurred in the political history of the country, the most earnest defence of democratic principles was now made by men of foreign birth. Undoubtedly the unwillingness of many members to make a person of foreign birth. eligible to the office of Governor was due not to any desire to exclude naturalized persons of the white race from coming from another State or country, but because, as a member said, if the State had no right of preventing any class of citizens coming from other States from being eligible to office in Louisiana, it would make a colored citizen of Massachusetts, or from any other free State, capable of holding office. Though free colored persons were not persons of foreign birth, they were not considered as capable of being identified politically with the citizenship of a slaveholding State. They were, by nature, forever foreigners. The convention was controlled by this sentiment, and in its desire to obliterate even the suggestion that a free person of color could be included in the concept of the State, it treated the free person of color as permanently a foreignerthe naturalized citizen had been one. The African was incapable of becoming an elector; the foreign-born white man, according to this notion,

*The debates of this convention were published in both French and English.

though legally capable of naturalization, was incapable in sound political economy of becoming identified with the essential interests of the State. The free person of color and the foreigner were to be excluded from the electorate essentially for the same reason.

But Virginia was not the only precedent quoted. New York, in 1821, had admitted free persons of color, under a property qualification, to the right of suffrage. If eminent names, like those of Madison, Monroe, and Marshall, were to be quoted as authority for adopting the doctrines of NativeAmericanism, the names of Tompkins and Van Buren, members of the New York convention, should also be quoted, for they had voted to exclude naturalized citizens from the office of Gov

vernor of New York. Had not Washington, in his farewell address, admonished his countrymen to beware of foreign influence? Jefferson wished that there was an ocean of fire between the United States and Europe. Certainly, the precedents and the authority for the exclusion of foreigners from office-holding in America were sufficient.

At this point some one inquired whether the matter under discussion was of even slight importance in practical administration, as it was highly improbable that any naturalized citizen would ever be elected Governor of Louisiana. If it was true, however, that a naturalized citizen, a person invested with the rights of citizenship under the act of Congress, was not worthy to be trusted with the office of Governor, the principle

Political and Legal Acumen in the Constitutions

would have to be carried further: all citizens of foreign birth would have to be looked upon with suspicion; none of them could be intrusted with the administration of the laws; and all the departments of the government should be swept "with the besom of Native-American reform." The executive department, as every one knew, was less important than the legislative and the judiciary. Why exclude the adopted citizen from an office of little importance and invest him with a weightier authority? It was far more prudent to exclude him from the bench and from the Legislature. It was immaterial whether or not Monroe, Madison, and Marshall had voted for Native-Americanism in the Virginia convention. Marshall might be a learned jurist, but little importance should be attached to his opinions on political matters. In the days of the black cockade he was a Federalist, deeply imbued with the heresies of a school whose temporary ascendency had fastened upon the country the odious Alien and Sedition lawsthe most disgraceful acts that had ever blotted the statute books of the nation. There was no doubt that, with his party, he sympathized in its hostility to foreigners. Such rights involved nothing more than the assertion and maintenance of the reserved rights of the States. By the consent of the States, the right of admitting foreigners to citizenship had been conceded to the general government; the States had consented that no distinction should be made between different classes of American citizens. This was no invasion of State