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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt:...was given, and was thereafter due to the individual states, and the general government must look to the states for the allegiance of the people. As citizenship is based upon allegiance, it followed that to the states belonged the authority to confer citizenship. When the constitution was adopted and this government established, this idea that the allegiance of the people was primarily due to the state, was not eliminated, and in the course of time it proved a bitter heritage. The idei that a man's allegiance was due to the state from which he derived his citizenship was the shibboleth of the rebellion which plunged this nation in civil war. Brought to a realizing sense of the justice of this new doctrine, and the conditions and institutions constructed thereon, it was the lawyer in national life who builded further, and brought the nation to change this rule, by the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the constitution, the purpose and effect of which were to confer allegiance upon the general government, and to enable the general government to reciprocally confer citizenship. The doctrine that a man can transfer his allegiance without the consent of his sovereign being accepted by the United States, our government proceeded to enact naturalization laws in harmony with this doctrine, and asserted the correlative right to accept the transfer of allegiance without the consent of the sovereign of the subject. The nations of Europe, founded on the feudal system, rejected the doctrine, and denied the right of the United States to enforce this theory of law, and continued to assert sovereign powers over prior subjects who had made this tranfer. This led to the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. The continued adherence to th...