Once convinced of the applicant's "good character", the court would administer an oath of allegiance to support the Constitution of the United States.

Though the act did not specifically preclude women from citizenship, courts absorbed the common law practice of coverture into the United States legal system.

[12] Jurisprudence on domestic relations held that infants, enslaved people, and women should be excluded from participation in public life and conducting business because they lacked discernment, the right to free will and property, and there was a need to prevent moral depravity and conflicts of loyalty.

By the end of the 19th century, the overriding consideration to determine a woman's citizenship or ability to naturalize was her marital status.

[15] The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which the US Congress ratified in 1831, allowed those Choctaw Indians who chose to remain in Mississippi to gain recognition as US citizens, the first major non-European ethnic group to become entitled to US citizenship.

The Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 granted citizenship to people born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, irrespective of race, but it excluded untaxed "Indians" (Native Americans living on reservations).

[16] Under the Fourteenth Amendment and despite the 1870 Act, the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) recognized US birthright citizenship of an American-born child of Chinese parents who had a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and who were there carrying on business, and were not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China.