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The attempt to establish the meaning of American citizenship was central to constitutional development during the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Previous generations had not done much to clarify the concept. Neither judicial decisions nor legal commentators offered "a clear and satisfactory definition of the phrase citizen of the United States," Attorney General Edward Bates observed in the middle of the war. He sighed that "eighty years of practical enjoyment of citizenship, under the Constitution, have not sufficed to teach us either the exact meaning of the word or the constituent elements of the thing we prize so highly." The best-known analysis of American citizenship had emerged from the interpretation of Article IV, section 2 of the Constitution, which provides that "the Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several...