## Facts

- The Secretary of the Treasury requested guidance prompted by a Norfolk, Virginia customs collector’s inquiry about vessel documentation under federal foreign and coasting trade laws.
- The navigation statutes required a vessel’s master to be a “citizen of the United States.”
- The question concerned whether free Black persons residing in Virginia qualified as “citizens of the United States” and could lawfully serve as masters of vessels.
- The Attorney General treated “citizen of the United States” as a term that should carry a consistent meaning across the Constitution and federal statutes enacted under it.
- The opinion assumed that, under Virginia law and practice, free persons of color did not possess the full civil and political privileges enjoyed by white citizens.

## Issues

1. Whether free persons of color residing in Virginia were “citizens of the United States” within the meaning of federal navigation statutes regulating foreign and coasting trade.
2. Whether the constitutional phrase “citizens of the United States” and the same phrase in federal statutes should be given a uniform meaning.
3. Whether national citizenship depended on possessing full state citizenship rights in the state of residence.

## Decision

- The Attorney General advised that free persons of color in Virginia were not “citizens of the United States” for purposes of the navigation laws.
- Because they were not considered national citizens under that interpretation, they were not legally qualified to command vessels under the federal statutes.
- The opinion reasoned that constitutional meaning should control statutory meaning, so Congress’s use of “citizen of the United States” in navigation acts carried the same scope as in the Constitution.

## Legal Principles

- The phrase “citizen of the United States” should have the same meaning in the Constitution and in federal statutes enacted under constitutional authority.
- A person is within the constitutional description “citizen of the United States” only if the person has the full rights of a citizen in the state of residence.
- Interpreting citizenship to include persons lacking full state citizenship privileges would, in the opinion’s view, create results inconsistent with the Privileges and Immunities Clause by allowing acquisition of full privileges in other states despite lacking them at home.
- If “citizen of the United States” were read broadly enough to include free persons of color irrespective of state-imposed disabilities, the constitutional eligibility requirements for high federal office would not exclude them; the opinion treated that consequence as inconsistent with the framers’ intent.
- For Virginia, the opinion treated enjoyment of the full and equal privileges associated with white state citizenship as a condition for being a “citizen of the United States.”

## Conclusion

The Attorney General concluded that, because national citizenship tracked full state citizenship rights and Virginia did not accord free persons of color the full privileges of white citizens, they were not “citizens of the United States” under the Constitution or the navigation statutes and therefore could not serve as masters of vessels governed by those laws.


Rights of Free Negroes in Virginia (Wirt, Att’y Gen.), 1 Op. Att’y Gen. 506 (1821)