The Constitution used the word citizen repeatedly but never defined it

Evidence

The new U.S. Constitution of 1787 more tightly knit together the states and made express provisions for taxation and national defense. The framers engaged in wide-ranging debates across competing interests—Southern versus Northern; slaveholding versus free-soil; Republican versus Federalist. But they addressed citizenship only indirectly. Article II provided that the president must be a “natural born Citizen.” Article I said that members of the House of Representatives must have been U.S. citizens for at least seven years; for senators, the requirement was nine years. Federal courts, the new Constitution provided, could hear disputes between citizens of different states. “Citizens of each state” were entitled to the privileges and immunities of “Citizens in the several states.” Still, nowhere did the Constitution define what made one a citizen. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 694

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes that early American citizenship was a legally undefined category — key to the later reframing argument.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing work on how origin statements (a constitution’s text) leave room for later contestation over who counts.