backthen

  • 1857 BCE

    Dred scott

    Dred Scott, who was a slave, "sued the executor of his former master’s estate under the state-citizenship diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts, seeking a determination that he had become free because his master had voluntarily taken him into free territory. " ( the citizenship clause para 3)
  • abraham Lincoln

    Abraham Lincoln, won control of the White House. Lincoln’s took the legal position that free blacks were indeed American citizens.
  • Congress passed the Civil Rights Act

    this means there is a declare that all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens of the United States and the state in which they lived, thereby affirming a rule of citizenship by birth that did not depend on race.
    - “subject to any foreign power”
    - “Indians not taxed.”