VAN VALKENBURG V. BROWN, 43 CAL. 43 (1872)-FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT CITIZENSHIP

"It is claimed that the plaintiff is a citizen of the United States and of this State.  Undoubtedly she is.  It is argued that she became such by force of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, already recited.  This, however, is a mistake.  It could as well be claimed that she became free by the effect of the Thirteenth Amendment, by which slavery was abolished; for she was no less a citizen than she was free before the adoption of either of these amendments.  No white person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, or born without those limits, and subsequently naturalized under their laws, owes the status of citizenship to the recent amendments to the Federal Constitution. “The history and aim of the Fourteenth Amendment is well known, and the purpose had in view in its adoption well understood. That purpose was to confer the status of citizenship upon a numerous class of persons domiciled within the limits of the United States, who could not be brought within the operation of the naturalization laws because native born, and whose birth, though native, had at the same time left them without the status of citizenship. These persons were not white persons, but were, in the main, persons of African descent, who had been held in slavery in this country, or, if having themselves never been held in slavery, were the native-born descendents of slaves. Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment it was settled that neither slaves, nor those who had been such, nor the descendants of these, though native and free born, were capable of becoming citizens of the United States. (Dread Scott v. Sanford, 19 How. 393). The Thirteenth Amendment, though conferring the boon of freedom upon native-born persons of African blood, had yet left them under an insuperable bar as to citizenship; and it was mainly to remedy this condition that the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.”

"This is a recent history--familiar to all."  pp. 46-47

"...each state was a sovereign and independent state, and the states had confederated only for the purposes of general defense and security, and to promote the general welfare."  p. 49.

"This circumstance [privilege of elective franchise] has given rise to a notion in some quarters that the privilege of voting and the status of citizenship are necessarily connected in some way--so that the existence of one argues that of the other.  But the history of the country shows that there was never any foundation for such a view."  p. 50 [Brackets original.]