Representative Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, claimed that he had been responsible for the section on the rights and duties of citizens. He explained to Congress in 1821 what he had in mind regarding civil rights for blacks: ‘I perfectly knew that there did not then exist such a thing in the Union as a black or colored citizen, nor could I then have conceived it possible such a thing could ever have existed in it; nor notwithstanding all that is said on the subject, do I now believe one does exist in it.’ He further charged that the Northern states were seeking to rid themselves of the black population by treating them on every occasion with the most marked contempt and denying them their civil rights. Roger Taney, Andrew Jackson’s attorney general, gave his opinion regarding Negroes’ constitutional rights in 1831:
The framers of the Constitution had not regarded Negroes as citizens, and the present condition of that race warranted no change in their legal status. The African race in the United States even when free are everywhere a degraded class, and exercise no political influence. The privileges they are allowed to enjoy, are accorded to them as a matter of kindness and benevolence rather than of right … And where they are nominally admitted by law to the privileges of citizenship, they have no effectual power to defend them and are permitted to be citizens by the sufferance of the white population and hold whatever rights they enjoy at their mercy. Negroes were thus a separate and degraded people and each state could grant or withhold such privileges as it deemed proper and expedient.