Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

In Corfield v. Coryell, often considered the most important ruling on citizenship offered by a federal judge before the Civil War, Washington acknowledged that the “privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states” encompassed “fundamental” rights, among which was the “right of a citizen of one state to pass through or reside in any other state, for the purposes of trade, agriculture, professional pursuits, or otherwise.” Eight years after the Corfield decision, Story explained in his treatise that the privileges and immunities clause was intended to “confer on” state citizens “a general citizenship; and to communicate all the privileges and immunities which the citizens of the same state would be entitled to under the like circumstances.”48 Bradburn claimed that the writings of Washington and Story supported his argument that southern states were violating the constitutional rights of Black sailors.