Why has it never been read as recognition of the Federal government's
role in protecting the rights of citizens within their own State?
The simple answer is that the plain language of the Section does not address protecting the rights of citizens within their own state; that was not the original intent of that Section of the Constitution.
Constitution of the United States, Article IV, Section 1 addresses comity between the Several States; for the Union to survive citizens of any State within the Union must be protected in any other State within the Union the same as the State's own citizens. Similarly, the Section addresses property rights; that is, the right to have property rights in the Several States; for example, return of property from another state; see, e.g., Fugitive Slave Act 1850
Section 5
And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of all marshals
and deputy marshals to obey and execute all warrants and precepts
issued under the provisions of this act, when to them directed; and
should any marshal or deputy marshal refuse to receive such warrant,
or other process, when tendered, or to use all proper means diligently
to execute the same, he shall, on conviction thereof, be fined in the
sum of one thousand dollars, to the use of such claimant, on the
motion of such claimant, by the Circuit or District Court for the
district of such marshal; and after arrest of such fugitive, by such
marshal or his deputy, or whilst at any time in his custody under the
provisions of this act, should such fugitive escape, whether with or
without the assent of such marshal or his deputy, such marshal shall
be liable, on his official bond, to be prosecuted for the benefit of
such claimant, for the full value of the service or labor of said
fugitive in the State, Territory, or District whence he escaped: and
the better to enable the said commissioners, when thus appointed, to
execute their duties faithfully and efficiently, in conformity with
the requirements of the Constitution of the United States and of this
act, they are hereby authorized and empowered, within their counties
respectively, to appoint, in writing under their hands, any one or
more suitable persons, from time to time, to execute all such warrants
and other process as may be issued by them in the lawful performance
of their respective duties; with authority to such commissioners, or
the persons to be appointed by them, to execute process as aforesaid,
to summon and call to their aid the bystanders, or posse comitatus of
the proper county, when necessary to ensure a faithful observance of
the clause of the Constitution referred to, in conformity with the
provisions of this act; and all good citizens are hereby commanded to
aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law,
whenever their services may be required, as aforesaid, for that
purpose; and said warrants shall run, and be executed by said
officers, any where in the State within which they are issued.
Amendment 14 to the Constitution of the United States addresses incorporating an entire class of persons into the Constitution - from the ratification date of that Amendment forwards, not retroactively.
The citizen of the United States created by the 14th Amendment is not the same citizen of a State described at Article IV, Section 1. Those prisoners of war who purportedly became citizens of the United States pursuant to the ratification of the 14th Amendment were, generally, with few exceptions, not considered citizens of the United States when the Constitution was signed; within the meaning of Article IV, Section 1, in general, see Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)
[p393] 1. But if the plea in abatement is not brought up by this writ of error, the objection to the citizenship of the plaintiff is still
apparent on the record, as he himself, in making out his case, states
that he is of African descent, was born a slave, and claims that he
and his family became entitled to freedom by being taken by their
owner to reside in a Territory where slavery is prohibited by act of
Congress, and that, in addition to this claim, he himself became
entitled to freedom by being taken to Rock Island, in the State of
Illinois, and being free when he was brought back to Missouri, he was,
by the laws of that State, a citizen.
...
- A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a "citizen" within the meaning
of the Constitution of the United States.
- When the Constitution was adopted, they were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State,
and were not numbered among its "people or citizens." Consequently,
the special rights and immunities guarantied to citizens do not apply
to them. And not being "citizens" within the meaning of the
Constitution, they are not entitled to sue in that character in a
court of the United States, and the Circuit Court has not jurisdiction
in such a suit.
...
- Since the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, no State can by any subsequent law make a foreigner or any other
description of persons citizens of [p394] the United States, nor
entitle them to the rights and privileges secured to citizens by that
instrument.
[p394] 8. A State, by its laws passed since the adoption of the Constitution, may put a foreigner or any other description of persons upon a footing
with its own citizens as to all the rights and privileges enjoyed by
them within its dominion and by its laws. But that will not make him a
citizen of the United States, nor entitle him to sue in its courts,
nor to any of the privileges and immunities of a citizen in another
State.
...
[p405] In discussing this question, we must not confound the rights of
citizenship which a State may confer within its own limits and the
rights of citizenship as a member of the Union. It does not by any
means follow, because he has all the rights and privileges of a
citizen of a State, that he must be a citizen of the United States. He
may have all of the rights and privileges of the citizen of a State
and yet not be entitled to the rights and privileges of a citizen in
any other State. For, previous to the adoption of the Constitution of
the United States, every State had the undoubted right to confer on
whomsoever it pleased the character of citizen, and to endow him with
all its rights. But this character, of course, was confined to the
boundaries of the State, and gave him no rights or privileges in other
States beyond those secured to him by the laws of nations and the
comity of States. Nor have the several States surrendered the power of
conferring these rights and privileges by adopting the Constitution of
the United States. Each State may still confer them upon an alien, or anyone it thinks proper, or upon any class or description of persons, yet he would not be a citizen in the sense in which that word is used in the Constitution of the United States, nor entitled to sue as such in one of its courts, nor to the privileges and immunities of a citizen in the other States. The rights which he would acquire would be restricted to the State which gave them. The Constitution has conferred on Congress the right to establish an uniform rule of naturalization, and this right is evidently exclusive, and has always been held by this court to be so. Consequently, no State, since the adoption of the Constitution, can, by naturalizing an alien, invest him with the rights and privileges secured to a citizen of a State under the Federal Government, although, so far as the State alone was concerned, he would undoubtedly be entitled to the rights of a citizen and clothed with all the [p406] rights and immunities which the Constitution and laws of the State attached to that character.
It is very clear, therefore, that no State can, by any act or law of
its own, passed since the adoption of the Constitution, introduce a
new member into the political community created by the Constitution of
the United States. It cannot make him a member of this community by
making him a member of its own. And, for the same reason, it cannot
introduce any person or description of persons who were not intended
to be embraced in this new political family which the Constitution
brought into existence, but were intended to be excluded from it.
It is true, every person, and every class and description of persons
who were, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, recognised
as citizens in the several States became also citizens of this new
political body, but none other; it was formed by them, and for them
and their posterity, but for no one else. And the personal rights and
privileges guarantied to citizens of this new sovereignty were
intended to embrace those only who were then members of the several
State communities, or who should afterwards by birthright or otherwise
become members according to the provisions of the Constitution and the
principles on which it was founded. It was the union of those who were
at that time members of distinct and separate political communities
into one political family, whose power, for certain specified
purposes, was to extend over the whole territory of the United States.
And it gave to each citizen rights and privileges outside of his State
[p407] which he did not before possess, and placed him in every other
State upon a perfect equality with its own citizens as to rights of
person and rights of property; it made him a citizen of the United
States.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to determine who were citizens of the
several States when the Constitution was adopted. And in order to do
this, we must recur to the Governments and institutions of the
thirteen colonies when they separated from Great Britain and formed
new sovereignties, and took their places in the family of independent
nations...
In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the
times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show
that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves nor
their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then
acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in
the general words used in that memorable instrument...
Therefor, a so-called "negro", "african-american" or "black" person was not ever originally intended to be a citizen of the United States within the original meaning of the Constitution of the United States. That or those classes cannot invoke Article IV, Section 1 in any Court of competent Jurisdiction without having a firm understanding of the original construction of the Constitution of the United States and be prepared for potentially years of litigation dealing with assertion of Jurisdiction alone - more any merits of the case are reached, if ever.
These words were then paraphrased in the first section of the 14th
Amendment.
The 14th amendment created a separate class of "citizen", the citizen created by the 14th Amendment cannot claim "Privileges and Immunities" under Article IV, Section 1 - unless they are a "white man". Those "white men" citizens described in the organic Constitution for the United States needed property right protections as they did business to and fro throughout the Union. Not individual protection by the federal government, but rather, comity between the Several States as to not denying a citizen of one of the Several States those "Privileges and Immunities" guaranteed to its own citizens; else, the Union would spiral into a multitude of factions and dissemble from being a Union.
The fact that certain classes are not and cannot be a citizen within the original meaning of the Constitution is one reason why assertion of Jurisdiction under Article III alone in federal court by a so-called non-"white" person is generally attempted to be converted to a "Civil Rights" under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, et al. by a magistrate; because so-called "African-Americans" are still not citizens of the United States within the meaning of the organic Constitution of the United States. So-called "African-Americans" or "blacks" or "negros" were granted civil rights under Amendment 14 to the Constitution of the United States, Civil Rights Act, and Voting Rights Act; that class are not and cannot be a "citizen" within the meaning of the term within the organic Constitution of the United States.
Article IV, Section 1 deals with so-called "white men", the only original citizens of the United States under the original intent of the Constitution, and the Privileges and Immunities that they can assert when traveling and doing business among the Several States in the Union; Amendment 14 deals with U.S. citizens created by statute - not the Constitution. Amendment 14 did not and cannot retroactively change the original intent of the Constitution. The text of the two sections is similar though the legislative history of the provisions reveal that the original intent of the the provisions are applicable to two entirely different classes of "citizens"; the former being "citizens" (so-called "white" men) within Article IV, Section 1; the latter being statutory "citizens" created by Congress, having not natural rights granted by the Constitution, but civil rights granted by Congress.
Thus, the words are not "paraphrased" in the first section of Amendment 14 from Article IV, Section 1; the words apply to an entirely different class - from that point forwards - who the federal government conferred certain "civil rights" upon - not organic constitutional rights.
