Federal citizenship in 1821 hinged on full state-level equal rights for white citizens.

Evidence

In 1821, an appeal from customs official William Lindsay, the collector for the Port of Norfolk, Virginia, asked U.S. attorney general William Wirt: Could a free Black man command an American merchant vessel? Federal law, Lindsay understood, barred noncitizens from commanding such ships. Wirt’s answer confused as much as it clarified. The attorney general wrote: “I am of the opinion that the constitution, by the description of ‘citizens of the United States,’ intended those only who enjoyed the full and equal privileges of white citizens in the State of their residence.” It followed that because free Black Virginians were not full and equal citizens of their state, they could not be citizens of the United States. They were instead, in Wirt’s view, mere residents. But he also left the door open to the idea that if a Black person’s home state deemed them a citizen—as did some Northern states, such as Massachusetts and New York—they might also be citizens of the United States. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 697

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s case study on how the framing of American origins (who counts as a citizen from the start) determines later legal interpretation — connects to the Dred Scott logic that follows in later chapters.