The question of Passports for Colored Citizens was embarrassed
by the Dred Scott decision, and the usage of the State
Department, refusing to recognize colored persons as citizens.
The position of the latter was set forth in a letter of Mr.
Thomas, Assistant Secretary, communicating the judgment of Mr.
Marcy, Secretary of State.
“DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, November 4, 1856.
“Your letters of the 29th ult. and 3d inst., requesting
passports for eleven colored persons, have been received,
and I am directed by the Secretary to inform you that the
papers transmitted by you do not warrant the Department
in complying with your request. The question whether free
negroes are citizens is not now presented for the first
time, but has repeatedly arisen in the administration
of both the National and State governments. In 1821 a
controversy arose as to whether free persons of color
were citizens of the United States, within the intent and
meaning of the Acts of Congress regulating foreign and
coasting trade, so as to be qualified to command vessels,
and Wirt, Attorney-General, decided that they were not, and
he moreover held that the words ‘citizens of the United
States’ were used in the Acts of Congress in the same sense
as in the Constitution. This view is also fully sustained
in a recent opinion of the present Attorney-General.
“The judicial decisions of the country are to the same
effect.… Such being the construction of the Constitution in
regard to free persons of color, it is conceived that they
cannot be regarded, when beyond the jurisdiction of this
Government, as entitled to the full rights of citizens;
but the Secretary directs me to say, that, though the
Department could not certify that such persons are citizens
of the United States, yet, if satisfied of the truth of
the facts, it would give a certificate that they were born
in the United States, are free, and that the Government
thereof would regard it to be its duty to protect them,
if wronged by a foreign government while within its
jurisdiction for a legal and proper purpose.”[146]
Amidst the general anxieties of the time this important
question was presented for revision. A colored youth of
Boston, son of Robert Morris, Esq., a practitioner in the
courts of Massachusetts, unable to obtain a college education
at home, proposed to seek it in France, where there was no
exclusion on account of color, and Mr. Sumner, in a written
communication to the Secretary of State, requested a passport
for him, at the same time inclosing the description of his
person duly authenticated, in which his complexion was said
to be “colored” and his hair “short and curly.” There being
some delay, Mr. Sumner called at the Department to urge
personally his formal application. Mr. Seward did not like
to issue a passport on the description furnished, but at the
same time would furnish a passport to Mr. Sumner for anybody
whom he certified to be a citizen, without description. The
authenticated description was then returned, and Mr. Sumner, at
Mr. Seward’s own desk, and on the ordinary despatch paper of
the Department, wrote at once the following.
WASHINGTON, 27 June, ’61.
SIR,--Please send me a passport for Robert Morris, Jr., of
Boston, a citizen of the United States.
Faithfully yours,