Mr. DAVIS. Mr. President, the honorable chairman of the ComJudiciary who reported this bill pronounced it to be probably the most important bill that has been before Congress since the adoption of the amendment to the constitution at the last session. I agree with him entirely in his estimate of the importance of this measure. Indeed, I doubt whether a measure of more importance has at any time been presented to the consideration of Congress. The honorable Senatorintroduced 2 measures which he himself considered, and which have generally been treated, as parts of the same gystcm the bill to enlarge the powers of the freedmens Bureau, and the bill now under consideration, “to protect allpersons in the U.S. in their civil rights and furnish the means of their vindication. These 2 bills, like the Siamese twins, came into the world together, and they were connected to ether by something like the umbilical cord that connected those 2 denizens of Asia who have taken up their residence a on the western continent. I have heard itsai by some anatomists that if that cord was ever severed, the twins would die. I trust, if that would be the lamentable fate that would attend Cheng and his brother, that the umbilical cord that connects these 2 measures may be scv ered and that each of them may meet the fate, as anatomists predict of the Siamese twins upon a similar catastrophe. I believe the honorable Senator, however, does not contemplate that these 2 bills shall be permanently united together. He declared that the 1st bill, to enlarge the power of the Freedmens Bureau, was intended to be tem o rary in its existence and its operation. Whether it will be tem orary or not, I suppose will depend upon the uses that may be made of it by the part in power in the future, and the necessity o those uses to themselves, according to the judgment of that party., propose to confine my attention, in the remar s which I am now about to make, to the proposition of amendment and the amendment to teamendment. However, the amendment to the amendment offered by the honorable Senfrom Kansas [Mr. LANE] isnot of any very material importance; but the bill as it was reported from the committee, and the amendment offered by the Senfrom Illinois, I estimate of all teimportance which he himself does, although he is the putative father of the measure. The amendment now before the Senate progoses to declare all the negroes in the U.S. citizens of the U.S. The honorable Senfrom Illinois pln s for 3 pockets in this bill. The 1st 1s, the bill itself, and the 1st and 2nd sections, essentially, upon which he relies to confer upon the free negroes all the civil rights that qn er our Government aspertainand belong to white citizens. The 2nd pocket for which he is playin is this amendment, which simply proposes in a few summary words to enact atal free negroes born in the U.S shall be held to be citizens, and consequently that they shall have all the rights and privileges of citizens. But the honorable Senator has still another ocket in reserve, which he announced the day before yesterday, and it is this: that thesenegroes, having been born in the U.S. of mer ica, by that fact, and by the operation of our constitution, would thereby be American citizens. If the latter propOsition be true, I ask the honorable Senator, where is the necessity of troubling this Senate with the consideration and the decision of either of these other propositions? But I suppose gentlemen are admenished by exerience, and they intend to use the same provience and throw wide their net in relation to the objects of this bill as they did in relation to the subject of negro slavery Generally. They 1st had the proclamation of the POTUS declaring that all slaves in the rebel States were made free. They then had the act of Congress liberating the wives and children of all negro soldiers; and, eventually, they had the amendment to the constitution. I did not deem either of the 1st measures of the least importance, because I held that they were legally and constitution ally invalid; but when it came to an amendment to the constitution of the U.S. which abolished slavery in the whole U.S., I was disposed to concede its validit. I I shall now proceed to make a few remar s upon the amendment that is now under consideration, offered by the honorable chairman of the ComJudiciary. It involves the subject of naturalization under the Government and laws of the U.S. There are, in my opinion, 3 modes by which naturalization may take place: one is by birth, not by the birth of negroes, but by the birth of white people; another is by being naturalized according to a uniform rule to be prescribed by congress in conformity to the power vested in congress by the constitution of the U.S.; and the 3rd is by treaty. I was interested by some conversation between the honorable Senfrom Maryland [Mr. JOHNSON] and other Senators yesterday evenin as to what had been the effect of the treaty or the acquisition of Florida, and other treaticsthat acquired foreign territoryto the U.S and brought in the inhabitants of those foreign territories. It was simply, in relation to citizenship, to make all the residents of the acquired territory who chose to continue their residence there after the territo was attached to the U.S., citizens thereof. Then it follows that the Government of the U.S., being authorized by the constitution to negotiate treaties for the acquisition of foreign territory, as an incident to the treatymaking power, all the residents of that territory who choose to re main in it when it is incorporated and comes under the jurisdiction of the U.S. are, by the effect and operation of the treatymaking power, made citizens. That is a very plain matter. I do not see any difficulty in that to excite the inquiry or the cogitations of profound lawyers, constitutional or statutary. t simply amounts to this: that where the treatymaking power brings in a portion of foreign territory, all the inhabitants who come in With that territory are, by the treatymaking power, made citizens. There is an end to that matter then. It cannot be widened; it cannot be dec ened; it cannot be confused nor obscured. l e matter of citizenship is imported in the power and in its exercise just as any other appendage of the treaty would also be imported by the treaty making power. There is then but one other mode, according to my understanding of the constitution, in which a citizen can be made by law or by arti ficial means; and that is in conformity to a Uniform rule of naturalization established by congress. The honorable Senfrom Maryland and the honorable Senfrom Illinois spoke of special acts of congress being passed to admit the Stockbridge Iddians, another tribes of Indians, as citizens of the U.S. According to my judgment, those laws passed inadvertently, Without due consideration. They were attempts, by special acts of Congress, to make citizens, when the constitution expressl declares that citizens shall be made only accord:ing to a uniform rule to be establishe by congress. That leads me step by step to the consideration of the main matter in this question: upon what description of persons does the power of Congress to make citizens operate? Vho are the people who, by the exercise of the power of Congress, either in declaring a uniform rule of naturalization or, if you please, by the as sage of a special act, are to be admitted into citizenship? I deny that a negro or any white person born in the U.S. can be admitted to citizenship in that mode. It is not upon the nativeborn, black or white, that the power of naturalization under this Government operates. It operates upon foreigners; it operates upon people who are either born out of the U.S or who have gone out of the U.S., and have assumed the relationship of obedience and fealty to a foreign Government or a foreign potentate. What powers exercised the right to make citizens before the present constitution was adopted 2 Each State for itself. Whom did they make citizens of? Not of any nativeborn of the country, but in variably of foreigners, and nobody else but for ei ers. I challenge the honorable chairman of the ComJudiciary to show me an instance from our history where a native born person of the U.S. was ever admitte to citizenship by any of the States before the adoption of the present constitution unless that nativeborn person went to a foreign conotry and there assumed the relation of subject or citizen to that foreign country. I state this further proposition: there never was a colony before to DeclarIndep and there never was a State after the DeclarIndep up to the time of the adoption of the constitution, so far as I have been able to learn by the slight historical examination which I have given to the subject, that ever made or attempted to make any other person than a person who belonged to one of the nationalities of Europe a citizen. I in voke the chairman of the committee to give me an instance,to point to any histo or any memento, where a negro, although that negro was born in America, was ever made a citizen of either of the States of the U.S. before the adoptionof this constitution. The whole materia out of which citizens were made previous to the adoption of the present constitution was from the European nationalities, from the Caucasian race, if may use the term. I deny that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the negro race. I deny that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the Mongolian race. I controvert that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the Chinese race, out of the Hindoos or out of any other race of people but the Caucasian race of Europe. I come, then, to this position: that whenever the States, after the DeclarIndep and before the present constitution was adopted, legislated in relation to citizenship or acted in their governments in relation to citizenship, the subject of that legislation or that action was the Caucasian race of Europe; that none of the inferior races of any kind were intended to be embraced or were embraced by this work of government in manufacturing citizens. I am not disposed to labor that proposition strenuously and elaborately, but pl la it down as a proposition that cannot be refute, that whenever the different States of the Unidn Were making citizens before the adoption of the present constitution all their purposes, all their intentions, and all their powers upon that subject were simply to make foreigners of the European family of nations citizens of the U.S. Now, sir, what is the rule of construction of our constitution as laid down so frequently by the Supreme Court, and of the construction of Ivery constitution and every instrument of writing I It is this, and the honorable Senfrom llineis will not controvert it: that the parties who frame an instrument give their own meaning, according to their understanding of the terms ahd language which they use, to that instrument, and at, therefore in construing the constitution of the U.S., all we have to do is to read the language, and to as certain from contemporaneous expositions, as well as from the force of the terms themselves, what particular meaning the framers of the constitution intended their language to import. Whatever meaning they intended to attach to the language of that instrument or to any of its phrases, by that light and by that rule is the constitution to be construed and interpreted. I take an example. The constitution defines treason. What has been the censtruction of all 524 January 31, of our courts in relation to the term “treason?” That the framers of the constitution used that term precise] in the sense in which it was used in 23 Edwar HI, and as that term had been expounded by the courts at Westminster. By time and by the modifications of language the ideas and meaning, living and current, of the term “treason” might vary; but in the conBtruction of the constitution and in the definition of treason there would be no such variation. An enlightened and honest and able judge, called upon to define what treason was to a jury under the constitution of the U.S., would recur back to the meaning of that term as generally understood at the time the constitution was adopted and as the framers of that constitution intended it should be understood and whenever the sense had thus been obtained the matter would be rendered clear and explicit, and the idea which the term imported at that day, and which those who made the Constitution and used this term intended to imply by it, would be accepted as the true construction of the constitution. I give one other example: the constitution interdicts expostfacto laws; it declares that no expostfacto law shall be passed. That is a technical term; it is a term of art; and it has a specific meaning. When that clause of the constitution is in court for construction, we do not resort to the ordinary acceptation and understandin of the terms: post acto. We hunt for its legs definition at the time the constitution was adopted, how learned judges and learned lawyers in the profession understood the term, and through all future time, as long as that constitution is respected, until it is changed in the mode prescribed by the instrument itself, will the meanin, as they under stood it and intended to use it, be adopted by the courts.