"I leave that to the exercise of your own ingenuity," replied Mr.
Davis.
"That is it," said Mr. Clark. "Washington is dead; Marshall is dead; Story is dead; I hoped the Senator from Kentucky would have enlightened us. He says a negro is not a citizen, and a negro is not a foreigner and can not be made a citizen. He says that a person who might be and was a citizen before the Constitution, is not a citizen since the Constitution was adopted. What right was taken away from him by the Constitution that disqualifies him from being a citizen? The free negroes in my State, before the Constitution was adopted, were citizens."
Mr. Davis, having admitted that free negroes were citizens before the
Constitution in New Hampshire, Mr. Clark said:
"I desired that the Senator should tell me what, in his opinion, constituted a citizen under the Constitution."
Mr. Davis replied: "I will answer the honorable Senator. We sometimes answer a positive question by declaring what a thing is not. Now, the honorable Senator asks me what a citizen is. It is easier to answer what it is not than what it is, and I say that a negro is not a citizen."
"Well, that is a lucid definition," said Mr. Clark.
"Sufficient for the subject," said Mr. Davis.
"That is begging the question," Mr. Clark replied. "I wanted to find why a negro was not a citizen, if the gentleman would tell me. If he would lay down his definition, I wanted to see whether the negro did not comply with it and conform to it, so as to be a citizen; but he insists that he is not a citizen."
"I will answer that question, if the honorable Senator will permit me," said Mr. Davis. "Government is a political partnership. No persons but the partners who formed the partnership are parties to the government. Here is a government formed by the white man alone. The negro was excluded from the formation of our political partnership; he had nothing to do with it; he had nothing to do in its formation."
"Is it a close corporation, so that new partners can not be added?" asked Mr. Stewart, of Nevada.