The Passport in America: The History of a Document (24 page)

With citizenship an increasingly contested category the official belief that that passports should only be issued to citizens became more prevalent by the mid-nineteenth century; this despite the fact that while the text of the passport identified the bearer as a citizen no law stated that passports could only be issued to citizens. Clayton’s successor, Secretary of State Daniel Webster made this clear when he wrote that African American men could not be issued passports because as “colored men” they were not citizens. Buchanan and Clayton had justified their refusals on the grounds of the color of the applicant but not explicitly linked that to legal understandings of citizenship.
²⁸
The issuance of a special document that promised protection to free African Americans (however inconsistently enforced) indicated a further attempt to make the passport a certificate of citizenship first and a travel document second. However, despite these attempts the public perception of the passport as primarily a travel document that offered protection and character endorsement continued to exist, at least among white men who were deemed eligible for it. In 1846 the State Department received a passport request on behalf of a family who were not even going abroad but were planning to travel from Massachusetts to Oregon. On the possibility that they were traveling by sea not land the State Department issued a passport.
²⁹
The ease with
which a passport was issued when it would likely not be needed was in sharp contrast to the issuance of documents to free African Americans. In addition the request for an internal travel document stood out against the expectation and occasional demand that free African Americans carry documents when they traveled within the United States.
³⁰

The purported basis in citizenship of the request for protection (and the implicitly acknowledged promise of protection by the United States) was complicated by the issuance to free African Americans of a document with the same request found on a passport. The existence of the two documents made clear that in the eyes of the State Department (on most occasions) African Americans were not citizens, while acknowledging some relationship between them and the federal government. In contrast, declarants were denied such a document. This possible inconsistency spoke to the complicated and often contradictory understandings of citizenship within different presidential administrations, and the racial underpinnings of those interpretations. The question of whether any protection would ever be offered to free African Americans abroad who carried letters of protection was further muddied when in one particularly complicated case a declarant traveling abroad without a State Department issued document received protection from the U.S. government in a relatively spectacular manner.

A diplomatic controversy over the rights of a former Hungarian revolutionary to the protection of the United States offers a different articulation of race, citizenship, and documentation. After the unsuccessful 1848–49 revolution against the Austrian Habsburgs, Martin Koszta had fled to Turkey before eventually arriving in the United States in 1851 (though, significantly, he was not issued a U.S. passport for the final leg of the journey as some of his compatriots were). The events of the revolution had captured the imagination of the U.S. public; it was perceived as one of the last opportunities for an American-style republic to develop in Europe. The most notable leader to end up in the United States, albeit on short fundraising trip, was Lajos Kossuth, who arrived in December 1851. He called on a receptive public to support the Hungarian cause; his speeches drew large audiences and were printed in full in newspapers and Americans were fascinated with the “Hungarian Washington.” By the time of his departure in July 1852, Kossuth’s popularity had begun to wane, partly because he refused to become involved in U.S. politics, particularly to support abolition.
³¹
Around the same time Martin Koszta also left the United States on a journey to Europe, possibly at the request of his employer, three months after declaring his intention to become a U.S. citizen. The following year while Koszta was in Smyrna(now Izmir, Turkey), Austrian representatives seized him from a coffee shop and held him on a navy vessel. When he had fled Austria following the revolution, Turkey had refused to extradite Koszta to Austria, but released him on the understanding he would not return to Turkey. Following his arrest Koszta claimed the protection of the United States. However, before the local U.S. consul in Smyrna and officials in Constantinople could verify the documents Koszta carried to support his request for protection, the captain of a U.S. naval sloop in port in Smyrna rescued him; as a result of this action the captain was awarded a medal from Congress. Several months later, when news of the events reached the United States, newspapers gave the subsequent diplomatic controversy between Austria and the United States detailed coverage, reprinting full transcripts of the lengthy diplomatic dispatches on their front pages. The disagreement centered both on the right of the U.S. government to “rescue” an individual on foreign soil, and given the complex legal nature of Koszta’s relationship to the United States, whether he had any right to receive U.S. protection.

The Koszta controversy derived from the murky relationships among citizenship, protection, and documentation. The vagaries of U.S. citizenship law and the uncertainty associated with the modern practice of documenting identity meant that four different documents issued by four different authorities were offered to support Koszta’s claim to the protection of the United States: a declaration of intention to become a U.S. citizen issued by a New York court, a Turkish
tezkereh
issued by the U.S. legation in Constantinople, a copy of Koszta’s declaration made by a U.S. diplomatic official, and a certificate of “affiliated citizenship” issued to Koszta by a New York notary. As none of the officials involved questioned Koszta’s personal identity, the verification of a legal identity, and the reciprocal acceptance of official identification between states, became the issue in this controversy. Collectively, these documents also help clarify the authority and status of a document Koszta did not offer to support his claims—a U.S. passport—the one document that explicitly linked citizenship to a right to protection while abroad. However, he apparently did not need it to receive the protection of the U.S. government.

Koszta had with him the document certifying his declaration of intent to become a U.S. citizen at a New York court. Newspapers gave particular
attention to his status as someone who had declared an intention to become a U.S. citizen. This liminal status was almost universally understood in the United States to entitle the bearer to the benefits of U.S. citizenship, as the frequent use of a declarant’s certificate abroad indicates. In addition Koszta’s actions against the Habsburgs seemed to rekindle memories of the revolutionary origin of the United States and made him the embodiment of the revolutionary man. Therefore, it is fair to believe that the historical context in which the Austrian empire sought to claim someone who was viewed as “American” in spirit, if not in fact, trumped any public uncertainty about his status and right to protection.

While the declaration of intention was popularly understood as an oath of allegiance, it was not the primary evidence the State Department offered to support Koszta’s claim to protection and to justify the actions of U.S. government representatives. A lengthy letter to the Austrian chargé d’affaires in Washington, D.C., signed by the recently appointed Secretary of State William Marcy but written by long-time clerk William Hunter, defended the United States’ action on the grounds that Koszta’s “kidnapping” by Austrian representatives occurred in a neutral country that did not claim his allegiance.
³²
In such cases, Marcy argued, international law “looks only to the national character in determining what country has the right to protect.”
³³
In this defense of U.S. actions, while Koszta was not legally a citizen his domicile and declaration of intention meant he nonetheless had under international law gained a “national character” as American. This contestable claim had little legal standing outside of the complicated specifics of Koszta’s case but given the coverage of the case it not surprisingly resulted in the State Department receiving numerous requests for protection from declarants throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.
³⁴
The letter also clarified that U.S. actions were further justified by the document Turkish law required Koszta to carry.

A contributing factor to the uniqueness of Koszta’s case was his possession of a “tezkereh.” Variously translated as “passport,” “guaranty certificate,” “traveling permit,” or “nationality credential,” it existed to fulfill the requirement that all foreigners “whose religion and social manners do not assimilate with the religion and manners” of Turkey had to have the protection of a state which shared their religion. In practice, this meant that Christian visitors had to be under the protection of a Christian state that had official representatives near the courts of the sultan. This made Turkey one of the few NineteenthCentury states that consistently required foreigners to
carry documentation within its borders. However, unlike with the passport, it was on the basis of their religious beliefs that foreigners gained the required document to facilitate safe travel. Turkish authorities had no interest in whether the individual had any preexisting relationship with a specific state—shared religious history was the only factor that mattered. Although it challenged claims to the primacy of nationality as an identity to facilitate international travel, the
tezkereh
was ultimately issued in a manner associated with “national character,” which reinforced the authority of states. It was issued by a state (not a church), and from the perspective of the head of the U.S. legation in Constantinople, the Turkish demand meant that “some nationality is necessary to every foreigner.”
³⁵
He explained to Secretary Marcy that when a representative

consents to receive [a foreigner]… they are treated in all respects as the subjects of the protecting power. This is every day’s practice; and for a long period there has not been a Legation at Constantinople or a Frank Consulate in Turkey which has not had foreign non-naturalized Franks under its full protection and jurisdiction. In some cases the protégés have been counted by hundreds and even thousands.
³⁶

Koszta’s possession of a
tezkereh
sponsored by the U.S. consulate in Constantinople became the rationale by which U.S. action was most easily explained. While the appeal to international law still raised doubts about the meaning of “domicile,” the possession of a
tezkereh
located the rationale for action in the specifics (and ultimate peculiarity) of Turkish law. And it illustrated the authority a document could exhibit if it was issued under clearly marked lines of authority to verify a specific identity.

The U.S. legation in Constantinople produced another document that played a part in the diplomatic controversy—a copy of Koszta’s declaration of intent. However, in contrast to the
tezkereh
, it further fueled Austrian claims to the illegality of U.S. actions. The concerns over the authenticity and accuracy of this documentation of his declaration originated in the actions of an official who seemingly struggled to grasp the developing relationship between identity, identification, and documentary authority. Shortly after Koszta’s “rescue” by the U.S. navy, Austrian officials contacted the U.S. legation in Constantinople to demand evidence of his claim to U.S. citizenship. John Brown, a career official who was acting chargé d’affaires of the legation
during the Koszta controversy, explained his response in a subsequent dispatch to Marcy. “I, at that period, did not possess a copy of Koszta’s declaration of allegiance; but having its date, I filled up one with it and sent it to the Internonce.”
³⁷
It was the nature of Brown’s attempt to document Koszta’s declaration that angered Austrian officials. In a letter of complaint, Johann Georg von Hülsemann, the Austrian chargé d’affaires at Washington, D.C, questioned how this document could prove anything:

It is difficult to conceive how the representative of the United States [in Smyrna] could have sought to found proof of the pretended naturalization of Koszta upon a document destitute of all authentic character, seeing that the form of legalization which is affixed to it, and which alone could have invested it with that character, leaves in blank both the name of the tribunal before which the declaration of Koszta must have been made, and the name of the Clerk, who is supposed to be the depository of the original document, and that, moreover, this pretended legalization has neither signature nor official seal attached to it.
³⁸