Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029

Selected Papers of Beijing Forum 2006

Citizenship and Nation-Building in American History and Beyond

Wang Xi
Professeor, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Citizenship has been an important subject in the history of modem state-and nation-building. It has been a vital
component of the historical experience of modernization not only for the West but also for the non-Western nations.
The subject is now assuming particular importance in today’s China as the nation is engaged in the pursuit of a
“harmonious society,” along with an audacious economic transformation that has generated unprecedented social
changes in the nation’s history. The idea of citizenshipi is now returning to the Chinese political discourse as people
have become more and more sensible and vigilant about their citizenship rights—rights that are derived from
citizenship. The subject, however, has not been given a close attention by the Chinese and Western academia only
until recently.ii
This paper intends to review the evolution of American citizenship from the founding period to the twentieth
century and discuss its relations to the American experience of nation-building. This may sound a far too ambitious
topic for a conference paper since American citizenship is an enormous and complex subject. In addition, a number
of solid studies on the subject have already done by scholars in the field.iii My intent here is neither to offer a
panoramic view of the evolution of American citizenship nor to give every meticulous detail of how various aspects
of American citizenship unfolded historically. What I want to do for this Forum is to offer a historical sketch that
intends to capture the crucial developments of citizenship in American history. Much of my paper will be devoted to
this sketch. But my real intent is to demonstrate how citizenship has been profoundly and fundamentally connected
to the nation-building process in American history and how nation-building has been an important component in the
growth of the United States as a modern nation-state. It is hoped that this brief review (and some of the
observations) may provide some useful historical implications from a comparative perspective for us to think about
China’s endeavor to pursue a harmonious society, which is the theme of the Forum.

1. The Idea of Citizenship in the Western Historical Experience

The idea of citizenship has had a very long history in the West. Its origins could be traced back to the Greek and
Roman periods. The ancient usages of citizenship contain at least two meanings: 1) one’s identity with certain
political entity and 2) the privileges and obligations granted by the political entity, which one belonged to or
associated with. In the Greek city-state, citizenship was regarded as an exclusive privilege granted to those who
were regarded as privileged. The Roman form of citizenship was “both pragmatic and extensible in application.”
“Full” citizens were entitled to all privileges, such as the right to military service, voting, office-holding, legal
protection, appeal and other “public” rights. As the empire expanded, the concepts of dual citizenship and half
citizenship-civitas sine suffragio (citizenship without suffrage or voting rights) were introduced. This status was
used to give legal recognition to the vast number of non-Roman population conquered by the empire.iv The concept
of citizenship was largely buried during the medieval period in which the Roman Catholic Church and various
kingdoms claimed allegiance from their subjects. Subjectship was used to identify one’s political association with
his/her rulers. The Frenchman who was a subject of the Capetian monarch was not a citizen of France. An
Englishman did not own his allegiance to England but to the king of England. “Citizen” was confined to identifying

1877-0428 © 2010 Beijing Forum. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.05.056
7018 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029

those who could freely exercise rights and duties in a city or town that gained so-called municipal liberties.
Theoreticians of the late Middle Ages, such as Hobbes and Bodin, defined subjectship/citizenship strictly along the
line of a social contract dominated by king’s divine right to rule. Bodin argued what makes a man a citizen was “the
mutual obligation between the subject and sovereign must do justice and give counsel, assistance, encouragement,
and protection to the subject.”v The medieval concept of subjectship was both a personal and collective identity. (In
this case, the American colonists’ revolt against the British king and Parliament was an act to break the contractual
relationship that was dated back to the medieval times).
Historians generally agree that modem notion of citizenship began with the French Revolution in 1789. The
revolution began as a revolt of aristocrats and clergy to challenge the royal power of taxation, but the revolt quickly
became a Third Estate led popular and violent uprising that led to a new state-and nation-making. As state was
transformed from the king’s property into a national possession, king’s “subjects” became the new nation-state’s
“citizens.” Historically speaking, the idea of modem citizenship had an earlier, English origin. The Levellers during
the English (Puritan) Revolution in the 1640s had already challenged the medieval subjectship with the demands for
universal male adult suffrage, a right to participate in politics. If the poorest people do not have a voice in the
government, Colonel Rainborough of the parliamentary army argued, they were not bound at all in a strict sense to
the English government.vi Here we see the embryonic idea of modern citizenship that crucially identified one’s
political allegiance with one’s right to political participation in a political commonwealth. We may also argue that
the colonists might be the first people that truly enjoyed modern citizenship rights since they, long before the
American or French Revolution occurred, had lived in self-rule communities. But the Colonists were de jure
subjects of the British king. Regardless, it was the French Revolution that had put the idea of citizenship into the
practice in Europe and affirmatively linked the idea of citizenship to the sovereign state, transforming sovereign
state into nation-state and subjects into citizens. The Revolution proclaimed that the French state (sovereignty)
belonged to all the French and claimed the allegiance of all citizens, consequently shifting the national allegiance
from the sovereign king to the sovereign nation. With this transformation, state was no longer merely a spatial and
political organization but a membership association. The idea of citizenship offers a notion, at least on paper and in
law, of unitariness and equity in membership. “If sovereignty is linked to the (pre-democratic) stateness of modern
nation-states,” Christian Joppke argues, “citizenship is linked to their (democratic) nationness.”vii
Thus, the French Revolution united sovereignty and nationality. Throughout the nineteenth century the idea of
nationalism was intimately associated with that of popular sovereignty (which was interpreted either as
republicanism or democracy or mixture of both). Both ideas provided powerful ideological weapons for the rising
bourgeoisie to agitate for national unification in central and eastern Europe. The Frankfurt Constitution defined the
rights of German state citizenship as including “equality of political rights for all without distinction of religious
confessions” and “equal eligibility of all citizens” for office holding. Citizenship was made absolute and coercive as
the Hungarian declaration of separation from the Habsburgs declared that any individual that betrays one’s
citizenship for another would be construed as treason against one’s nation. viii Hegel’s theory of overreaching
political state substantially contributed to the rise of German nationalism based on the creation of a unified German
state. Karl Marx, who ridiculed the liberals’ usage of citizenship as hypocritical, still recognized the extension of
citizenship as “a great progress.”ix
By the end of the nineteenth century, nation has become an integral part of modern state. State and nation were in
a symbiotic relationship. As nation increasingly became “the spiritual principle” of a state (Ernest Renan’s phrase),
citizenship inevitably became an imperative to national identity and national belonging.
The meaning of citizenship experienced several major transformations in the late nineteenth and throughout
much of the twentieth century.x Citizenship initially referred to the legal identity of one’s national belonging, but it
was also an embodiment of a number of entitlements or rights. T. H. Marshall in his seminal essay on citizenship
defined citizenship rights in three categories: political, civil and social. Marshall outlines the trajectory of how each
of these categories of citizenship rights evolved in Great Britain. In his view, the British first secured civil rights and
equal legal status of citizenship in the eighteenth century, expanded suffrage (or, political rights) in the nineteenth
century, and finally achieved social rights-right to social security, education, health, etc.-in the twentieth century.
The progress in citizenship rights, according to Marshall, juxtaposed with the growing consolidation and
centralization of national state and, more importantly, the expansion of democracy. No progress as described by
Marshall was achieved without a long and constant struggle of those who were previously excluded by the
conventional boundaries of citizenship. The evolution and transformation of citizenship also posed challenges to
 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029 7019

some other cardinal principles of the West, too. The idea of equality, which was the core idea of citizenship, posed
the threat to the economic hierarchy in the marketplaces. Demands for general social welfare challenged the
economic order of laissez faire capitalism. Such challenge compelled the government to adjust its policies on
taxation and expenditure, based on the pressures as generated by the extent of political participation and non-
participation. Beginning in 1940s leading theoreticians in the West debated on how to find the balance between the
demands of modern citizenship and sustaining of the classical liberalism.xi And the debate continues even though
most of the Western states have adopted, in one or another, the idea of welfare states.
In short, the idea of citizenship has been a product of Western historical experience in association with nation-
states. It has evolved with the political development in the West. The expansion of the idea’s inner meanings
orsubstance has reflected the changing histories of the West. We should note that the so-called “Western
experience” is not a single or uniform model. Citizenship has evolved differently in different Western nations given
the different geographic, political, economic and demographic conditions. But it is equally noticeable that
citizenship on the whole has been a shared experience in the West, especially in the twentieth century. The concept
of citizenship carries some shared features, including: 1) nationality (legal identity or national belonging), 2) rights
(privileges or immunities) and obligations (duties and responsibilities) associated with being a citizens, 3) allegiance
(one’s loyalty to the nation-state with which s/he is granted citizenship), and 4) social status, dignity and
recognition.

2. The American Experience of Citizenship: A Historical Survey

Compared to the European (especially British) experience of citizenship, the development of American
citizenship was a much more complicated experience. Several factors have contributed to this complication. First,
the United States was born out of a colonial revolt against its mother country. The War of Independence created the
American state and American nation simultaneously. This was a rather unique experience in the eighteenth century
especially when it was compared to the state-and nation-making experience in Europe at the same time or later. So,
American founders’ task was not only to make a new state, but also a new nation. In addition, their state-and nation-
making must be conducted on the basis of a new and different system of government. Second, although the
independent states broke their legal allegiance with Great Britain, they did not completely do away with their
English heritage in law and government, which, together with the Colonial experiences of the original states, laid the
foundation for constructing the new nation-state and its citizenry. The new nation also inherited from its Colonial
experience other legacies, such as the institution of slavery, political and social hierarchy based on race, ethnicity,
and religious beliefs, separation of public and private spheres, and widespread economic inequality. All this posed
serious challenges to the *nation’s proclaimed principles of human equality, natural rights, and liberty. Third, the
American nation began as a nation of settlers and a country of immigrants. The debate over who were “We the
People”, or “who are we”, was present at the beginning of the nation’s history. Such debate remained almost a
permanent part of the nation’s history as it grew territorially and demographically.xii The newcomers and latecomers
must be to molded or remade into part of “We the People” according to the perceptions of the earlier settlers. In
other words, the process of American nation-building involved creating one politically homogeneous people out of a
collection of peoples that were diverse in racial, ethnic, religious, geographic, ideological, cultural, linguistic and
pre-American national background. It was no easy job to create one out of many or to create one within many.xiii
Fourth, the structure of American system of government-specifically, federalism-contributed to the complication of
citizenship, especially during the antebellum period when federal and state citizenships frequently collided with
each other. In the modem times, economic globalization and transnational migration has created a growing
population of ampersands and a new challenge of dual citizenship. Given these circumstances, the American
experience of citizenship development (or evolution) bears with the following features: 1) the juxtaposition between
inclusiveness and exclusivity in the process, 2) a constant tension between the universality in principles (such as
equality) and de facto inequality in according rights and privileges to citizens, 3) an ongoing contestation between
those who were included and those who were not, and 4) a constant making and remaking of “We the People.”
The development of American citizenship can be roughly divided into three eras or phases: the Founding era, the
Civil War and Reconstruction era, and the New Deal-Great Society era. Each of these eras was centered at a major
event or transformation in state-building process and each extended a relatively long period of duration. The
founding era covered the period from 1776 to the eve of the Civil War; the Civil War and Reconstruction era
7020 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029

covered the period from the Civil War to the Progressive era; and the New Deal-Great Society era covered much to
the 20th century up to the 1960s. For this discussion I will focus on two aspects of citizenship development in each
era: citizenship as a legal status (who should be citizens) and the expansion and contractions of rights attached to
citizenship (what were the rights that an American citizen should enjoy). I know that I have left out other important
aspects of citizenship, such as the making of civic religion, education, economic and social citizenship, and
assimilation. These issues will be addressed in a fuller version of the paper.

The Founding Era. The seventeenth century English citizenship (subjectship) was defined as “natural, personal,
and perpetual”: once a person became a subject, he or she remained a subject forever and owed a lasting obedience
to his or her monarch.xiv American Colonists were British subjects, but the Revolution ended their allegiance to the
British king. The Declaration of Independence asserted that “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the Consent of the Governed.” By proclaiming to the world, the Declaration created a new
government and a new national people. But the very first act of creating the government and people, performed by
the delegates to the Continental Congress who wrote and signed the Declaration, was rather “undemocratic.” At the
time when the Declaration was signed, the so-called American people did not actually exist as a collected body of
people. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, used the word “We” anyway and the delegates signed the
document as “We”, consequently, the body of American people (and citizenry) was created. In this light, we may
argue that Jefferson and his cohorts, by imagination or by a democratic “coup,” had created a sovereign people.xv
But who were the people? Was every member of the people citizen? It was unclear. The ambiguity and vagueness
between “people” and “citizens” existed from the beginning. The founding documents, such as the Declaration of
Independence, various local resolutions, state constitutions, tended to use the word “people” instead of “citizen” to
signify the newly independent Americans. The Articles of Confederation, which served as the nation’s first
constitution from 1781 to 1789, declared the creation of the United States of America in the name of “the people of
states.”xvi The Constitution, made in 1787 and ratified in 1788, claimed the power of its creation came from “We,
the People of the United States.” The text of the Constitution used “people” three times, “person”/“persons” twenty-
two times, “inhabitants” three times, and “citizen”/“citizens” eleven times.xvii
The usages of the word “citizen”/“citizens” in the Constitution indicated that citizenship was primarily defined by
the state constitution or governments. Neither the Articles of Confederation nor the Constitution gave definition to
national citizenship. The Articles of Confederation provided that citizens of one state were entitled to enjoy the
privileges and immunities of citizens of other states. The Constitution simply borrowed the sentence and made no
effort to define national citizenship. The Constitution established a stronger and more powerful federal government,
but it left to the states the power to grant citizenship and to regulate the rights attached to citizens. Such arrangement
resulted from a series of compromises among the founders over the creation of the nation’s first constitutional order.
The compromises led to the creation of federalism, which divided sovereignty between state and federal
governments and created a de facto system of dual citizenship with the state citizenship being regarded as primary.
Thus, the power to define citizenship was regarded as a power not delegated to the federal government and reserved
by the states. The Constitution, however, empowered the federal government to establish a uniform law of
naturalization, indicating that the federal government would exclusively control citizenship of the incoming
immigrants. It is also important to note that the word “citizen” or “citizens” was not used at all in the Bill of Rights,
the first ten amendments added to the Constitution in 1791. The Bill of Rights used “people” five times and
“person”/“persons” four times. The implication is clear: the fundamental rights to be protected here were not the
rights to be granted to citizens but rights that had belonged to people before citizenship was created. These rights
were beyond the reach of the (federal) government. In other words, the founders thought about the difference
between “people” and “citizens,” but that difference was not clearly explained until the ruling of the Dred Scott case
in 1857.
State constitutions did not have a uniform way to define citizenship.xviii Their definitions of citizenship rights
also varied from each other. Most state constitutions contained a bill of rights, which listed a set of rights that
“people” should enjoy under the state constitutions. These rights included some of the traditional Englishmen’s
liberties and freedoms, such as the right to hold property, the habeas corps right (right to personal freedom), freedom
of speech and press, freedom of religion, right to petition, and right to criminal justice. xix These rights were very
much in line with what T. H. Marshall described as “civil rights” to which a British subject was entitled. When these
rights were included in the Bill of Rights, they acquired a uniformity of federal recognition and, more importantly,
 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029 7021

were transformed into constitutionally protected rights of citizens. (At this time, the so-called “protection” meant
that federal government could not remove or invade these rights.)
It was in defining the most fundamental right of citizenship-the right to vote and to hold offices-that differences
began to appear. All states continued to follow the colonial practice of restricting voting rights to a selected group of
people. Restrictions included property-holding, race, sex, residence, moral characters, etc. were imposed upon
voting. The founders-being large property holders themselves-were deeply concerned about the impact of
unqualified suffrage, which they feared would become “the tools of opulence and ambition for the undesirable
groups. Property qualifications for voting would serve, in the words of political scientist Alexander Keyssar, “as a
bulwark against the landless proletariat of an industrial future.”xx Under the pressure of lower class citizens or the
“lower sorts,” some states loosened the property qualifications as a recognition of these groups’ contributions to the
Independence. In its 1776 constitution Pennsylvania, for example, abolished property requirements and enfranchised
all taxpaying adult males, as well as non-taxpaying sons of freeholders. Free African Americans were tacitly
enfranchised in a number of states, including North Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
and Vermont, but they remained voteless in Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia. Every state barred women from
voting except New Jersey where women who met the state’s property qualifications were permitted to vote. The
Articles of Confederation allowed states to retain complete control over voting rights. The Constitution linked state
citizens’ right to vote to national suffrage by allowing those who were allowed to elect for the “most numerous
Branch of the state legislature” to vote for members of the House of Representatives, virtually leaving to the states
the power to define who should be voters. This “peculiar and indirect” linkage was a compromise to the reality, for
it was impossible for the delegates to work out a uniform national formula of voting qualifications to be
implemented nationally in 1787. Even so, more people voted as compared to the Colonial period. According to
Keyssar, roughly 60—70 percent of adult white men could vote.xxi The majority of voters were white male property
holders. Obviously, “citizenship” at this time was distinguished from “peoplehood.” A member of the peoplehood
might be able to enjoy some of the basic civil rights under the state constitutions, but only those who were eligible to
vote could be participate in the political process of the consent. Voting right was a privilege to belong to the political
nation.
The concept of eighteenth century citizenship inherently carried within itself the political understanding of its
time. Republican government was not exactly modem democracy. The right to vote was a privilege, instead of a
right, to be granted to those who could use it a responsible and virtuous way. Only property-holding males could do
that. Women, the poor, and people of color (slaves and free blacks alike) did not belong to the group of “political
citizens” due to their lacking of property, sense of responsibility, or republican virtues. The United States was not
alone in this case. During the early stages of the French Revolution citizens were divided into active (with suffrage)
and passive (without suffrage) groups.
Although a constitutional definition of citizenship was missing from the original Constitution, the federal
government made a number of attempts to define federal citizenship in the first half of the nineteenth century. The
Naturalization Act of 1790 provided that only “free white persons” were eligible to become citizens through the
process of naturalization.xxii In the ruling of Cherokee Nations v. Georgia (1831) the Supreme Court ruled that
Indians living in the United States were neither citizens nor aliens, but people of the “domestic dependent
nations.”xxiii The most devastating ruling on citizenship came in 1857 when chief justice Roger B. Taney announced,
in the infamous Dred Scott case, that persons of African descent, whether free or in bondage, could never become
citizens of the United States and could never enjoy the rights that white men were bound to enjoy. Attempting to
stop the national debate over the issue of slavery, Taney took up the task to interpret the doctrine of “all men are
created equal,” which in his view, did not cover persons of African descent at all. Africans were regarded by the
civilized world as such an inferior race at the time when the Constitution was made that it was impossible for the
founders to include them as part of the American people, much less equal citizens.xxiv Parallel to the exclusion of
the Africans was the removal of Indians in the 1830s. These various federal decisions contributed to what I call
racialization of American citizenship.
The citizenship rights developed rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century, both as a response to and result
of several developments. The evolution of mass-participating political party system, as well as the westward
migration created a strong popular impetus for expanding suffrage among white males. Starting in 1820s various
states began to lower their property qualifications for voting but continued to preserve the sex and color
qualifications. Among the eight states that joined the Union from 1796 to 1812, five granted suffrage to all white
7022 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029

males regardless of property-holding status. The other three asked only for taxpaying status. South Carolina was the
last state to abolish property-holding qualification for suffrage. Thus, on the eve of the Civil War, white male
suffrage, or political democracy for white males, was realized in the United States. The political citizenship was
expanded but only to a selected group of Americans. It is important to note that expansion of white male suffrage
was coincided with the nation’s first black disfranchisement. A number of states, including some original states,
revised their constitutions or passed new legislations either to set barriers for black voting or completely deny their
right to vote.xxv In 1807, New Jersey, the only original state that had permitted women to vote, took the vote away
from women.
In terms of civil rights, women citizens were barred from holding property under the practice of covertures.
There was a clear division between “public” and “private” spheres, which intended to maintain the male-dominated
social and economic hierarchy in the family and society.xxvi Thus, we see a parallel development: democratization
and egalitarianism among the white male citizens was juxtaposed with the deprivation of rights of women, nonwhite
citizens and their continued exclusion from full participation in politics. The “American democracy” that Alexis
Tocqueville so elegantly and influentially wrote about was in fact a “white male democracy” that was achieved at
the cost of un-democracy of the other half of Americans. Inclusion was accompanied by the exclusion. Such
exclusion had created a profound feeling of alienation among free blacks and women. The leading black abolitionist
Frederick Douglass frequently referred to the U.S. government and state governments as “your” governments in his
criticism of the racial prejudice against blacks before the Civil War.xxvii
The legacy of the founding era for citizenship and citizenship rights were highlighted by the coexistence of the
racialization of citizenship, white male democracy, separation of public and private spheres for women, state-
domination in deciding issues regarding citizenship, and a relative “invisibility” of citizenship rights in public
life.xxviii

The Civil War and Reconstruction Era. The period of the Civil War and Reconstruction was the transforming
period of American citizenship and citizenship rights. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (ratified in
1865) abolished slavery and provided constitutional guarantee for the freed slaves. Emancipation, unexpected at the
beginning of the Civil War, became the driving force for redefining American citizenship and rights of citizens. The
Civil Rights Act of 1866, the nation’s first civil rights law, for the first time defined the qualifications for American
citizenship in a clear and unequivocal language. It pronounced “all persons born in the United States...are hereby
declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color... shall have the same right, in
every State and Territory in the United States... \[as are˹ enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like
punishment, pains, and penalties....” The law overthrew Taney’s Dred Scott ruling and, in addition, provided a
number of specific rights that belonged to American citizens, including the right to possess, transfer property, right
to sign and implement contract, right to jury and testify in the court. The principle of birthright citizenship was later
incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified in 1868). The Amendment also prohibited state governments
from depriving American citizens of their privileges or immunities. It further prohibited state governments from
depriving any person of their life, liberty and property without due process of law or denying them the equal
protection of the laws.xxix
The Fourteenth Amendment was the most crucial constitutional mechanism that transformed the concept and
practice of American citizenship. It established the principle of birthright citizenship, reversed the antebellum
relationship between the federal and state citizenships, and made the federal citizenship a primary citizenship for
American citizens. It also transferred the responsibility of protecting citizens’ rights from the state governments to
the federal government, enabling the latter to play a greater role in the nation-building process. The Fifteenth
Amendment (ratified in 1870) affirmed the principle of universal manhood suffrage as established by the
Reconstruction Act of 1867 and made black male suffrage a nationwide right, extending right to political
participation to newly freed black men, who regarded voting right not just as a privilege of citizenship but as a
symbol of social standing.xxx
But again, the expansion of democracy stopped short of a true universal suffrage. Women were once again denied
the right to vote in spite of their continuous struggles since 1848. American women citizens would wait for another
fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment was to be adopted to enfranchise women nationwide.xxxi
The implementation of the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment were severely weakened and
disrupted in the post-Reconstruction era. The conservative interpretations of the Supreme Court did much of the
 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029 7023

damage. The Court’s ruling over the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) gave a rather narrow and conservative
interpretation of the scope and intent of the Fourteenth Amendment and virtually revived the antebellum
constitutional theory on dual citizenship. State governments were given back the power to define and regulate the
rights of citizens. The power of the federal government was diluted and removed. Southern states, which by the late
1870s had returned power to the whites, seized the opportunity to first implement laws of racial segregation and then
conduct political campaigns to drive enfranchised blacks out of politics. African American citizens were subjected
to racial discrimination, political disempowerment, and outright economic exploitation in the South, all this were
conducted in the name of exercising the power of state governments that were largely endorsed by white citizens.
Racial segregation was written into the southern state laws and implemented as a local ritual or custom, justified by
law. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, southern states revised their state constitutions and
launched a counterrevolution against the democratic spirit of Reconstruction. A variety of legal mechanisms, such as
poll tax, literacy test, and white primary, were adopted to disfranchise black voters in the South.xxxii It is also to be
noted that the Fourteenth Amendment, granting citizenship to blacks and ex-slaves, specifically excluded Native
Americans (who were not given the birthright citizenship). Native Americans were continued to be denied the right
to be naturalized under the 1870 naturalization act. This “double exclusion” was not redressed until Congress passed
the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924.xxxiii
The counterrevolution was not confined to the South. Racial and ethnic citizenship revived in the late nineteenth
century. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 took the lead. The law barred contract labor from China from entering
the United States and made those who were already in the country ineligible for naturalization (and subsequently
barred them from becoming citizens).xxxiv The law extended several times and eventually extended to bar almost all
Asian contract labor from migrating to the United States.xxxv Other restrictions had been added to the rights of no
citizens. An 1887 law, for example, provided that only citizens or those who had declared their intent to become
citizens could own real estate property in the United States. The 1924 Immigration Law implemented the national
origin quota system, which set the annual quota of any quota nationality at two percent of the number of foreign-
born persons of such nationality resident in the continental United States in 1890. xxxvi This system gave the
advantage to the immigrants from Western European nations over those from the Eastern and Southern Europe
while Asians were continued to be barred.
Citizenship was also increasingly defined along the gender line. In 1910, many states established laws to define
and regulate ineligible aliens and deprived them of the right to own land property and provided that any women who
married such persons would lose their citizenship status. The Expatriation Act of 1907 provided that American
women who married aliens actually lost their citizenship even if they continued to reside in the U.S. The Cable Act
of 1922, a work by women voters, modified or revised the Expatriation Act, allowing American women who
married foreigners to retain their citizenship only if they married men from countries whose subjects were eligible
for U.S. citizenship, that is, not from China or Japan. American born women who married a Chinese or Japanese
would loss their citizenship under this law.xxxvii
It is important to note that in the late nineteenth century the concept of citizenship rights had an interesting and
important change. For most part of the antebellum period, civil rights or citizenship rights did not occupy a
prominent position in the judicial process. Most of the legal disputes on rights involved the right of property and due
process.xxxviii The enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the three constitutional amendments (13th, 14th,
and 15th) initiated a new era of rights of citizenship (not just civil rights) in American history. Rights and citizenship
were now more intimately identified with each other. The right to life, liberty and property, originally placed in the
Fifth Amendment and later in the Fourteenth Amendment, would be absorbed into the process of intensive judicial
review. The right to own property was first articulated in the Civil Rights of 1866 as a protection for the former
slaves to negotiate labor contract and to own land property, this right, however, was transformed into one most
contested citizenship rights in the late nineteenth century. xxxix The right to own property went through a
metamorphosis and came out as a “freedom of contract,” a powerful weapon for the industrialists in the industrial
America. Thus, the revolutionary attempt to establish a right to economic equality for the freed slaves had
transformed into a constitutional claim for the capitalists to practice laissez faire economy, reject any governmental
interference and deny the right of the working class to protest.xl
At the same time, the organized labor also gave its own interpretations of the economic right. Finding it no longer
possible to restore or maintain the traditional economic self-sufficiency, the organized labor fought to protect their
rights as a viable citizen in the market economy. They demanded the right to negotiate and to bargain for better
7024 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029

wages, short work hours and safer working conditions. Their action transformed the original dispersed, individual
and personal pursuit of property into a collective, organized right of market negotiation. The labor exercised their
other rights as citizens, especially the right to vote, right to petition and right to protest, to fight for the change of
their economic status. The organized labor’s protests, together with the populist movement in the late nineteenth
century, served as the prelude to the Progressive Movement, which was a major social reform and laid the
foundation for the third phase of citizenship transformation.xli
The Progressive Movement redefined the purpose of the American state and nation. The Movement gave a new
interpretation of the original constitutional principles of “general welfare” and “social justice.” These principles
were new American national commitment, echoing Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom” of the Civil War period. The
Movement also forced the federal government (or the national state) to shoulder the responsibility of implementing
reforms essential to the well being of the nation. Like the Civil War, the World War I remade the nation (in the U.S.,
as well as in Europe). In the eyes of the state-and nation-builders, the national state was not only capable of waging
wars, but also implementing programs to promote general welfare and social justice.xlii

The New Deal-Great Society Era. The third phase of citizenship development was rooted in the Progressive
movement, but materialized during the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and reached its maturity in
the Civil Rights Movement in late 1950s and 1960s. The New Deal was a proactive reform of the American
capitalist state that had confronted an unprecedented economic crisis. The economic reform led to redefinition of the
meaning and practice of American citizenship. The two most important rights of citizenship established by the New
Deal legislation were the right to collective bargaining and the right to social security.
The right to organize and to negotiate was a significant development in citizenship right. It was more than a right
to negotiate for a better salary or working conditions. The right contained a wide range of economic rights and social
values, including the right to work, the right to earn a decent wage (a living wage), the right to safe and healthy
working conditions, and the right to organize and join union. These were not merely economic rights, but social and
political rights, too. The “right to earn” was a right to have fair, respectable and protected participation in the
national economy.xliii The right to organize was a modern version of the freedom to assemble, but the right was
suppressed by the Supreme Court during the age of industrialization in the name of protecting “freedom of
contract.” Now the New Deal made this right a citizenship right, sanctioned and enforced by the federal government.
The right to social security, in spite of its slow evolution and modest nature at the beginning as compared to the
social legislation in Europe during the same period, was a landmark achievement. The American welfare system
started during the Civil War period and was now extended to a much wider populace. It may be understood as an act
of state-building—a policy of “client group formation,” to borrow political scientist Richard Bensel’s term—but it
was unmistakably an action of nation-building: to permanently linking the economic well-being of ordinary citizens
to the economic policy of redistribution of the state. xliv It required the federal government to take up new
responsibility and bound the interests of ordinary citizens with that of government. Loyalty to the nation was no
longer a political imperative, but also an economic one.
The New Deal changed the meaning of conventional American liberalism. The new liberalism, or New Deal
liberalism, stressed an activist state and the extension of citizenship rights. Such ideology was also a response to the
changed international political and economic order. As the Civil War in the nineteenth century, the World War I and
World II both served as important pushing force for the centralization of the national state and globalization of
American interests. In the 1950s and 1960s, a new wave of immigration policy reform took place that gradually flow
removed the traditional national origins as the criteria for immigration. Large numbers of non-European immigrants
were able to enter the United States, changing the demographic composition of the American population. Under the
immigration law of 1965, between 1966 and 1991, 15.53 million immigrants were admitted to the United States.xlv
But the most enduring reform was in the area of citizenship rights. The Civil Rights Movement, resulted from
culminated efforts of many generations of black and white American citizens, compelled the federal government to
deal with the issue of racial segregation and second-class citizenship in the South. Starting from the Truman
administration, federal governments began to abolish racial segregation laws in the military and federal-related
workplaces. The Supreme Court led the way in 1954 to overthrow the 58-year-old doctrine of “separate but equal”
in public education. The Civil RightsAct of 1964 wiped out educational and job discriminations against people of
color and women. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society reform further expanded the contents of citizenship rights. His
plan expanded the federal responsibilities in the areas of providing education for citizens, improved the living
 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029 7025

conditions and expanded welfare programs for the needy. A number of rights that had been reserved as state
governments’ responsibilities were absorbed into the protection of the federal government. The Civil Rights
Movement created a number of new citizenship rights, including the right to education, to equality in using public
facilities, to live in a healthy environment and to get out of poverty, most importantly, the right not to be
discriminated against.
The 1960s was known as the age of rights. One striking feature of the expansion of citizenship rights in the
twentieth century was the emphasis of group rights and social citizenship rights. African Americans as a group,
played a leading role in the Civil Rights Movement, the initial goal of which was to obtain racial equality in
receiving protection of the laws. This pattern also helps inspiring other groups, such as women, Native Americans,
Hispanics, and other racial minorities. Classic liberalism and individual rights confronted new social challenges and
could not resolve the injustice and inequality of modern times.xlvi Poverty, for example, might be perceived as a
result of the deficiency of personal morality and capability, but now it was regarded as a social disease that was
caused by market economy. Under this social context, the continuous emphasis of traditional personal rights would
mean a total neglect of the basic rights to life for those who lived on the margins of the market economy. Market
was never free and capital was a privilege to begin with, not only in economic terms, but also in political terms.xlvii
To challenge and break the dominance of the capital over the politics and economy and civic society was to use
collective citizenship rights to demand a redefinition of the citizenship rights and the state responsibilities.
Another retraction occurred during the period after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The post 9/11 period was
perceived as a time of national crisis, which briefly brought back an upsurge of nationalism and patriotism back to
the United States. The overwhelming popular and elite support given to the Bush administration demonstrated the
power of American nationalism. Even when the Iraqi War did not go well as expected, the popular support remained
strong for a quite some period of time and began to recede only recently. On the other hand, the rise of Hispanic
population in the United States, now surpassing African American population as the largest minority, caused some
serious concerns. Samuel P. Huntington’s new book, Who Are We (2004), openly expressed the grave concern about
Hispanization of American politics and culture, which he perceives as a threat to the further erosion of American
national identity.xlviii He called for a national recognition of the Anglo-American culture as the cultural foundation
for American national identity. The debate over the meaning and boundaries of American citizenship continues as
we speak.

3. American Citizenship and American Nation-building: Some Observations

Several observations may be drawn form this brief review of the evolution of American citizenship. First, the
definition of American citizenship and citizenship rights were in a state of change. Citizenship was originally
defined by race, ethnicity and national origins. Citizens were differentiated in rights and status, most visibly between
those who had the right to participate in the government and those who were excluded. But as citizenship evolved
toward a more inclusive and embracing direction, dropping the early restrictions in ethnicity and race, it became an
inwardly inclusive legal entity. But this legal entity remained large an abstract concept of equality until equal rights
were accorded to all citizens. The evolution of equal citizenship rights moved much slowly and encountered many
retreats and regressions. The development was never in a straight line and was never a simple story of triumph. In
terms of civil equality, African Americans did not enjoy civil equality until more than a century later after they were
freed from slavery. Women did not achieve equal voting rights until 1920, nearly a century after the Jacksonian
democracy began. But the general direction of the development was toward a more inclusive community of the
consent.
Second, the inclusive development of citizenship and the expansion of citizenship rights were a result of
contested ideas and pursuits and appeals. Those who were excluded by the community of consent never stopped
thinking as citizens and never stopped challenging the system that excluded them.
Third, citizenship was not merely a legal identity, it was a sense of political and national belonging, as well as “a
social standing.” To enjoy citizenship, one needs to have not only the right to vote, but also the right to earn. The
latter right was not really part of the original understanding of the citizenship rights.
Fourth, the citizenship development reflected the experience of American nation-building. In this case, “nation-
building” refers to the construction of a national citizenry that is politically and ideologically committed to the
fundamental values of the nation and pledges its allegiance to it. In each of the above-mentioned three periods, we
7026 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029

notice a major expansion of citizens along with a major expansion of citizenship rights. Independence created a new
“people” and extended voting rights to the white male population. The Civil War and Reconstruction transformed
former slaves into citizens and voters. The New Deal-Great Society extended citizenship to many non-Anglo-Saxon
peoples and linked the economic and social well-beings to the responsibilities of the government. The gradual
inclusion of noncitizens and gradual expansion of rights created a growing client group of citizens, but also
significantly changed government responsibilities.
As mentioned earlier, I have left out several topics closely related to citizenship. The craft of civic religion or
core values of the nation, for instance, is an enormously important subject, which is a rich and eventful American
experience. The founding generation was also the first nation-builders. People like Thomas Jefferson, who by
writing and rewriting his Notes of Virginia, performed the task of imagining, or remembering the nation’s past. The
“American Creed” was created by the founders, who had hoped the later generations might inherit. Education
always received special attention and care even when the national state was weak and vulnerable. The Northwest
Ordinance of 1787 required the allocation of a lot of land in all newly organized county to be set aside for
establishing schools. By Land Grant Acts of the Civil War period the federal government began thehistory of
supporting higher education. The Blair Educational Act in late nineteenth century emphasized the importance of
education in creating modem citizenry. The Supreme Court’s Brown ruling (1954) won a unanimous approval in
part because the issue of racial segregation in public school directly threatened citizens’ faith in the nation’s
proclaimed principles.
Citizenship was also profoundly connected to the process of state-building. The Civil War provided the first
opportunity for the federal government to create citizens in large numbers and extended rights to millions who had
been excluded from the political community. The war linked citizens, black and white, to the survival of the nation.
The War of Independence created the Union, but it was the Civil War that created the American nation and
completed the process of state-making by resolving the issue of divided sovereignty. The other wars—WWI, WWII,
and the Cold War—continued the trend of increasing centralized control of citizenship in the twentieth century,
which subsequently created a cliental of citizens. Modem citizenship has been so profoundly connected to a number
of other state functions, especially redistribution. As the state responsibilities expanded, from providing education,
welfare, and health, citizens became more and more dependent upon the state. The sense of national belonging
became real because of the economic benefits citizens received or expect to receive from the national state. A
community of interests between the citizens and the national state became consolidated.
But challenges remain. The trajectory of American citizenship shows a paradox development: inwardly inclusive
but externally exclusive. The very nature of national identity and national belonging run opposite to the
cosmopolitan and transnational citizenship. Thus we see the driving force for the greater inclusion of American
citizenship, or greater expansion of citizenship rights, was by nature nationalistic. The need to create a loyal and
committed citizenry was an imperative to the domestic political stability and the overseas expansion of American
interests. The very form of the American system of government-representative democracy-made it impossible to
image a relentless expansion of American interests abroad without the support of its citizens. The
internationalization of American interests unfortunately did not quite internationalize the American perception of the
world, and instead it further nationalized American sense of self and created an somewhat more inward outlook of
the American interests. Patriotism, or the American version of nationalism, continued to supersede internationalism.
The rise of multiculturalism in the 1990s, an outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement, worried contemporary
American nation-builders, who saw it as a most dangerous threat from within.xlix

References
i
For the classical discussion of the connotations of “citizenship rights,” see T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). Also see J. M. Barbalet, Citizenship: Rights Struggle and Class Inequality (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
ii
The Chinese translation of the word “citizenship” could not capture the multifaceted meanings of the word and has to use a number of phrases
to reveal its connotations. For examples of recent literature on Chinese citizenship study, see Chu Songyan, The Development of Citizenship
Rights and Political Participation in China, Beijing, Zhongguo fazhi chuban she 2006. Also see Yu Xinzhong, “Citizenship, Ideology and the
PRC Constitution” and other essays in Merle Goldman and Elizabeth Perry, eds., The Changing Meaning of Citizenship in Modern China
 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029 7027

(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002), 289-307; Dorothy J. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants,
the State, and the Logic of the Market (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
iii
See James Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608—1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978); Judith N.
Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals:
Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Linda Kerber, No Constitutional Right To Be
Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York, Hill and Wang, 1998); Desmond King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race
and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000); Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How
Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002); Mae N. Ngai, Impossible
Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
iv
Derek Heater, Citizenship: The Civic Ideal in World History, Politics and Education (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 17;
Keith Faulks, Citizenship (London: Routledge, 2000), 14-21.
v
In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes argued that until the citizens consciously withdrew their support from the monarch, he must be deemed to act
with their authority. In practice, therefore, the citizen’s role was in normal circumstances the passive function of obedience. See Thomas Hobbes,
Levianthan; Jean Bodin, Six Books of the Commonwealth, (trans. and ed. M. Tooley) (1967), 21; quoted in Heater, Citizenship, 17, 26, 32.
vi
Quoted in David Wootton, ed., Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writings in Stuart England (Penguin Books, 1986),
286-68.
vii
Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),
5-6; Faulks, Citizenship, 30-45. Also see David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) and Anthony Smith, Nations and
Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
viii
Heater, Citizenship, 59.
ix
In his essay On the Jewish Question, Marx followed Hegel to distinguish civil society from political state although he reversed Hegel’s
interpretation of the relative significance of the two concepts. Marx argues that civil society presented a greater reality to individuals who would
always pursue his own selfish, economic interests within the context of the prevailing economic system. So the individual’s role in the state as
citizen was therefore rather theoretical in comparison. Only when man has tamed his selfish, bourgeois nature by acting truly as a social and not
individual being will the limitations of “the present world order” be transcended. “The actual individual man,” he wrote, “must take the abstract
citizen back into himself.” In other words, if the state goes away, citizenship would lose its meaning and individuals would lose their political
affiliations and responsibilities. Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, reprinted in Karl Marx, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 46-47, 57.
x
Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays, 25-26.
xi
See Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1943), Friedrich A. von Hayek, Road to Serfdom (1944), and John Rawls,
A theory of Justice (1973).
xii
Challenging the conventional notion that the United States was a country of immigrants, Samuel P. Huntington argues that the United States
also started as a nation of setters. Had American immigration stopped in 1790, the 1990 American population, according to his calculation, would
have been about 122 million instead of 249 million. This observation leads him to conclude that “toward the end of twentieth century, America
was demographically roughly half the product of early settlers and slaves and half that of immigrants who joined the society the settlers had
created.” Samuel P. Huntington, Who We Are? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2004), 45.
xiii
As Walt Whitman wrote: “Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.” See Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass
(1855).
xiv
Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 8-9.
xv
Bruce Burgett, Sentimental Bodies: Sex, Gender, and Citizenship in the Early Republic (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998), 182. For
the discussion of the creation of the ideologies of the Revolutionary America, see Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American
Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967); Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of American Republic (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1971); Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), Edmund S.
Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, Norton, 1988); also see Hannah Arendt’s
comments on the Declaration of Independence in Arendt, The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978).
xvi
The preamble of the Constitution reads: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Unionǃestablish Justice, insure
domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
xvii
“Citizen” or “citizens” were in the following places in the Constitution: (1) Article I, Section II, Clause 2 (qualifications of members of the
House of Representatives), (2) Article I, Section III, Clause 3 (qualifications of members of the Senate), (3) Article II, Section I, Clause 5
(qualifications for president), (4) Article III, Section 2, Clause 1 (5 uses in this clause, all referring to the judicial power), (5) Article IV, Section 2
Clause 1 (privileges of state citizenship, the so-called comity clause).
xviii
In their first state constitutions, most of the states did not clear define citizens. The distinction lies more in the voters and nonvoters. See G.
Alan Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), chapter 3.
xix
For an excellent discussion of the etymological difference between “liberty” and “freedom,” see David Hackett Fischer, Liberty and Freedom
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3-12.
xx
Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, 2000), 9-12.
xxi
It is to be noted that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (reaffirmed in 1789) provided that citizens and aliens alike must own fifty acres of land
in order to vote in this then largest piece of federal territory. This was the first explicit federal suffrage qualifications. Keyssar, The Right to Vote,
23-24.
7028 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029

xxii
Statutes-at-Large 103. A number of additional naturalization laws were passed in the subsequent years (1795, 1798, 1802, 1819) that changed
the residence requirements, but did not remove the race restriction.
xxiii
Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 288-300; Peter H. Schuck and Rogers M. Smith, Citizenship Without Consent: Illegal
Aliens in the American Polity (New Haven, 1985), 63; Cherokee Nations v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831).
xxiv
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (Howard 19) 393 (1857), 405-407, 410-412. Taney’s interpretation was deeply flawed, as pointed out by his
colleague Justice Curtis, who argued that in Massachusetts blacks were regarded as citizens and enjoyed full legal rights as whites in the post-
Revolution era, but Taney’s purpose was to give constitutional sanction to slavery. For a comprehensive discussion of the Dred Scott decision,
see Don E. Fehrenbacher: The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
xxv
Kessyar The Right to Vote, 32-33; Xi Wang, “Building African American Suffrage in the 19th Century,” in The Voting Rights Act, ed.
Richard Valelly (Washington, D.C. CQ Press, 2006), 1-18.
xxvi
For a good discussion of how women challenged the practice of covertureˈ see Kerber, No Constitutional Rights to be Ladies, Chapter 1.
xxvii
Frederick Douglass, “We Ask Only For Our Rights: An Address Delivered in Troy, New York, On 4 September 1855,” in The Frederick
Douglass Papers, Series One, Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, ed. John Blassingame, 5 vols., (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979—
1992), 3:91-96.
xxviii
By the last point I meant that during this period, there were relatively fewer legislations from federal level made to address the citizens’
rights. The Supreme Court dealt with a number of cases relating to the Bill of Rights, but most of the cases were concerned with property rights
and due process rights, not the expansive rights that we witness in the late nineteenth and twentieth century.
xxix
The Fourteenth Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens
of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It is to be noted that “citizens” was used in the “privilege or immunity” clause, but
“person” is used in the “due process” and “equal protection” clauses, which had a much wider scope of applications. The usage of different terms
in this context continued the tradition of the Bill of Rights, that is, to distinguish fundamental civil rights from the “privileges” enjoyed by
citizens.
xxx
This point was made clear by Frederick Douglass who argued that black soldiers’ participation in the war should qualify them to be voters:
“Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace?” See Shklar’s American Citizenship for the discussion of the relations between voting and
social standing. For the history and analysis of the constitutional amendments during the Reconstruction era, see Robert J. Kaczorowski, The
Nationalization of Civil Rights: Constitutional Theory and Practice in a Racist Society, 1866—1883 (Taylor & Francis, 1987); Michael Les
Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863—1869 (New York: Norton, 1974), Michael
Verenberg, The Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2001); William E. Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1988), Xi Wang, The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860—1910 (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1997).
xxxi
Wang, The Trial of Democracy, Kessyar, The Right to Vote, chapter 4; Kerber, No ConstitutionĮI Right to Be Ladies, chapter 3.
xxxii
For the evolution of Jim Crow laws and black disfranchisement, see C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1974); Robert J. Kaczorowski, Robert J. The Politics of Judicial Interpretation: The Federal Courts, Department of
Justice, and Civil Rights, 1866—1876 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005, c1985); Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery:
Disfranchisement in the South, 1888—1908 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
xxxiii
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom, 25; Benjamin Ringer, “We the People” and Others: Duality and America’s Treatment of Its
Racial Minorities (New York, 1983), 127-148.
xxxiv
22 Statutes-at-Large 58. The anti-Chinese immigration debate actually began much earlier. The 1870 Naturalization Act (16 Statutes-at-
Large 254) continued to allow only whites to be eligible for naturalization. To eliminate the possible conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment
(which gave blacks citizenship), the law allowed Africans to enter the United States as immigrants with the understanding that Chinese
immigrants would be restricted for naturalization. See Najia Aarim-Heriot, Chinese Immigrants, African Americans, and Racial Anxiety in the
United States, 1848—1882 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003); Wang, The Trial of Democracy, chapter 2.
xxxv
39 Statutes-at-Large 874; also see Desmond King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy
(Havard University Press, 2000), chapters 5-6.
xxxvi
43 Statutes-at-Large 153; King, Making Americans, chapters 6-7.
xxxvii
Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies, 41-42; King, Making Americans, chapters 7-8.
xxxviii
For a discussion on the Court’s use of citizenship-related legal principles, see Earl M. Maltz, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Law of
the Constitution (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2003).
xxxix
But the right did not help blacks in a real sense because the federal government never made efforts to systematically and sincerely
implement an effective plan of land redistribution. Most of the freed people remained landless and economically impoverished. They later
became part of the American urban proletariat at the beginning of the 20th century.
xl
Richard L. Aynes, “Unintended Consequences of the Fourteenth Amendment,” in Unintended Consequences of Constitutional Amendment, ed.
David E. Kyvig (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000).
xli
See Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: Norton, 1998), 124-131.
xlii
For general background, see Foner, The Story of American Freedom, chapter 7.
xliii
The “right to earn” is Shklar’s phrase.
 Wang Xi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 7017–7029 7029

xliv
Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859—1877 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
xlv
King, Making Americans, chapter 8.
xlvi
For a discussion on the issue of individual rights and group rights, see Nathan Glazer, “Individual Rights against Group Rights,” in E.
Kamenka and A. Erh Soon Tay (eds.), Human Rights (1978), 87-103.
xlvii
These ideas were first articulated in my essay, “The Evolution of American Citizenship and Citizenship Rights,” for Dushu (April 2003).
xlviii
Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenge of American National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). Also see his
article, “The Erosion of American National Interests,” Foreign Affairs, (September/October 1997):18-38.
xlix
See Huntington, Who We Are? For an enlightening discussion on new Americanization, see Noah M. J. Pickus, “Introduction,” Charles
Kesler, “The Promise of Americanization,” and David A. Hollinger, “Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and the United States,” and the responses to
the latter two pieces, in Noah M. J. Pickus, ed., Immigration and Citizenship in the Twenty-first Century (Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield, 1998).