Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Slavery and the Constitution
DanishDynamite said:
Were other "equal men" mentioned seperatly as not having citizen rights if they didn't pay taxes? I suspect they were, but if so, why were the Indians mentioned specifically?
Because only Indians held land by treaty between sovereign entities that was within the boundaries of the various states, but didn't actually participate in the activities of the states.
The discussion wasn't of "citizen rights," but of enumeration for purposes of representation. Women, for example, didn't have full "citizen rights" (they didn't vote, for example), but they did count for purposes of representation. Women didn't vote, but they were generally part of the economic, social, and by extension political life of the state. So they were enumerated.
Indians were not part of the economic, social, and political life of the State, and, even though Indian land (what would eventually become codified as the reservation system) was "officially" part of the United States and of the various states, it wasn't under the jurisdiction of the various states. (For example, if Canada had invaded an Indian reservation in western Mass., the US would have regarded that as an act of war and have responded militarily. In that sense, it was part of Massachusetts. But on the other hand, the Indians whose land it was paid no taxes on it, received no state (or federal) services, et cetera. State laws did not extend to tribal lands. Crimes committed on tribal property were subject to tribal justice, not the state courts.
The Indians were mentioned specifically because only Indians were in that particular anomolous position of living within a state as part of a recognized independent sovereign nation. A European immigrant, by contrast, was part of the state, even if he didn't have citizenship -- he would be tried by the state court if he committed a crime, paid taxes to the state, followed state rules, and so forth. An Indian immigrant, one who also paid taxes to the state, and followed state instead of tribal law, would be counted for purposes of the census.
And part of the reason for THIS is that the actual geographic boundaries of the colonies extended to areas where enumeration would have been a practical impossibility. The state of Georgia, for example, officially stretched from ocean to ocean and would have included the site of present-day Los Angeles. The actual population of Georgia -- meaning the people within that area who recognized and accepted the sovereignty of the United States -- were confined to a tiny strip along the Atlantic coast. So the Navajo were officially part of Georgia, but no one even knew they existed. But since they didn't pay taxes, no one really cared.
