Mr. JOHNSON. No, sir, I did not refer to Texas. It was proposed at one time to acquire Texas by treaty, but it was subsequently an nexed by JtResolution of the 2 Houses. That establishes the recedent which I was about to suppose mig it be established under the constitution. The citizens of Texas, who of course were aliens, it has never been doubted became citizens of the U.S. by the an nexation of Texas; and that was not done by treaty, it was done by legislation. If the power was in Congress by legislation to make citizens of all the inhabitants of the State ofTexas, why is it not in the power of congress to make citizens by legislation of all who are inhabitants of the T U.S and who are not citizens? That is what this bill does, or what it proposes to do. There are within the U.S. millions of people who are not citizens, accordin to the view of the SCOTUS Ought they to be citizens? I think they ought. I think it is an anomaly that says there shall not be the rights of citizenshipto any of the inhabitants of any State of the U.S. While they were slaves it was a very different question; but now, when slavery is terminated, and by terminutin it you have got rid of the only obstacle in 1ie way of citizenship, 2 uestious arise: 1st, whether that fact itself oes notmake them citizens? Before they were not citizens, because of slavery, and only be; cause of slavery. Slavery abolished, why are they not just as much citizens as they would have been if slavery had never existed? My opinion is that they become citizens, and I hold that opinion so strongly that I should consider it unnecessary to legislate on the subject at all as far as that class is concerned, but for the ruling of the Supreme Court to which I have adverted. They held that the constitution of the U.S. in no part of it in which the word citizen was used was intended to embrace the African; or to state it still more strongly, but not more strongly than the court stated it, they held that, looking to the contem. oraneous history and to the contemporaneous cgislation of the several States at the time the constitution was adopted, the use of the word “citizen” as employed in that constitution was to exclude the African.