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Early American citizenship was defined inconsistently by individual states.

Findings

Additional insights we found via National Constitution Center

  1. The US Constitution did not define national citizenship, leaving it to the states to apply their own rules.

  2. This led to inconsistent and often exclusionary standards across the country until after the Civil War.

  3. These discrepancies were resolved by the Constitution's 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, which granted citizenship to nearly everyone born on US soil.

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