Abraham Lincoln's Citizenship Test

On the Fourth of March, 1861, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office as the six-teenth president from Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney—and managed, at the same time, to box the chief justice on the judicial ear. Or, at least, to draw a bright line of constitutional understanding between himself and the author of Dred Scott v. Sanford. "There is some difference of opinion," Lincoln announced, about whether the Constitution's fugitive slave clause "should be enforced by national or by state authority." This distinction might be immaterial to the fugitive, but if Congress was to pass laws on the subject, shouldn't "all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave?" And just to make sure that no one assumed that he was merely calling for more accurate identification of suspects, Lincoln asked whether any such legislation should also explicitly "provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guaranties that 'The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States?' "