by Anna O. Law
Abstract
This article traces the effect of the Reconstruction Amendments on the citizenship and migration of European immigrants, African Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Native Americans. The amendments produced contradictory effects for these groups’ mobility and ability to remain in the place of their choice by defining US national citizenship for the first time. With birthright citizenship, African Americans gained the right to remain in the US without fear of “repatriation” by colonization schemes to foreign lands they never saw before. US citizenship would facilitate the interstate travel of Black Americans which was previously restricted by states/localities for over a century. Foreign-born Chinese immigrants would not gain naturalization, but their US-born children would gain citizenship by birth on US soil. Incomplete and mixed as these advances were, the Civil War’s impact on Native peoples was mostly negative. Indigenous peoples suffered catastrophic losses in lives of genocidal proportions in the West and in land ownership during the Civil War. Native nations lost substantial sovereignty during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods in light of an ascendent Congress backed with federal capacity and military might. The rights-based framework of the Reconstruction Amendments as a restraint on government power would not realize Native Americans’ desire for sovereignty instead of rights or citizenship.