Thomas Jefferson. Letter Signed as Secretary of State, to “His Excellency the President of Pennsylvania” [David Redick, Acting President], “Office of Secretary of State”; [New York], March 31, 1790.

Historical Background: The Constitution gave Congress the right to determine the process by which the foreign-born could obtain citizenship. Thus, this 1790 Act of the First Congress spelled out the actual law for naturalization. The law has been revised numerous times—most notoriously under the Naturalization Act of 1798 (part of the Alien and Sedition Acts which extended the required period of residence for citizenship to fourteen years).

Nonetheless, this original Congressional Act established the precedents that all subsequent laws on naturalization would follow. By restricting naturalization to “free white” persons, this legislation effectively prevented aliens who were people of color, as well as indentured servants and women (technically dependents, and thus considered incapable of casting their own vote) from gaining citizenship. Step by step over the next century and a half, those restrictions were eliminated from naturalization law. Two years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the Nationality Act of 1870 revised the “free white persons” limitation to include “persons of African nativity and African descent.”

That change still restricted naturalization of immigrants from Asia and India, however. In 1882, such limitations were further strengthened by passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which specifically barred naturalization of Chinese persons. The prohibition, reaffirmed in 1904, was not repealed until December of 1943. Three years later, legislation was passed allowing naturalization of individuals from India and persons of Filipino descent. Naturalization regulations affecting women evolved differently. Passage of an act on February 10, 1855, allowed immigrant women to automatically acquire citizenship upon marriage to a U.S. citizen. Further tying a woman’s citizenship to that of her husband, a 1907 law stipulated that U.S.-born women who married aliens would lose their American citizenship. It was not until 1922 that women were allowed to acquire citizenship in their own right.

Article I of the Constitution provided that “representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states...according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole numbers of free persons...three-fifths of all other Persons [slaves].” It further stipulated that “The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of Congress..., and within every subsequent term of ten years....It was only as a result of this requirement, to ensure equal democratic representation, that the United States became the first nation to provide by law for a periodic census. When completed, largely under the careful direction of Jefferson, the census results were published as Return of the Whole Number of Persons within the Several Districts of the United States...(Philadelphia: Childs & Swaine, 1791).

This 1790 appropriations bill was tied to the controversial assumption of state revolutionary war debts which forced the federal government to find new sources of revenue. By virtue of the appropriations clause, the power of the purse extended to the disbursement as well as the raising of funds, and both were subject to congressional control. The First Congress of 1789 had not been meticulous in defining how the money appropriated should be spent. Responding to this oversight, the Congressional statute of 1791 would appropriate lump sums for the expenses of the civil list “as estimated by the Secretary of the Treasury,” a formulation that was intended to bind the Secretary—in this case, Alexander Hamilton—to the allocation of funds that had been proposed. In 1791, Congress, under the urging of Hamilton, would pass one of the most controversial tax measures in American history: the Excise Act, or “Whiskey Tax,” which imposed duties not only on imported and domestic spirits. Passage of the act immediately stirred resentments among western residents who depended on whiskey for income. Whiskey provided the most efficient means to process their harvests into an easily transportable commodity and was even used as a currency. Riots against collection of the tax broke out in western Pennsylvania in 1794. President Washington called up 12,000 troops, but there was no significant violence and the rebels were quickly dispersed.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) Author of the Declaration of Independence, governor of Virginia, secretary of state under George Washington, third president of the U.S., (1801-1809) and Founder of the University of Virginia. Under Jefferson, the country began its westward expansion with the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Lewis & Clark Expedition (1804-1806).

David Redick (d. 1805), born in Ireland, became a surveyor, lawyer and elected official in Washington County in western Pennsylvania and was admitted to the bar in 1782. At the state level he was a member of the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council, and became vice-president (the equivalent of lieutenant-governor) of the state in 1788. He was a member and signer of Pennsylvania’s constitutional convention in 1790. In 1794, as clerk of courts in Washington County, he participated in the Whiskey Rebellion.

References: “Thomas Jefferson Papers, Series X, General Correspondence, 1651-1827,” American Memory, Library of Congress, memory.loc.gov.; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, uscis.gov.; University of Pennsylvania, www.archives.upenn.edu.; David P. Currie, “The Constitution in Congress: Substantive Issues in the First Congress, 1789-1791,” The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 61, No. 3. (Summer, 1994), pp. 775-865.