200 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, said : " This bill 

 is a wasp ; its sting is in its tail. Sir, what is 

 the bill? It provides, in the first place, that 

 the civil rights of all men, without regard to 

 color, shall be equal ; and, in the second place, 

 that if any man shall violate that principle by 

 his conduct, he shall be responsible to the court ; 

 that he may be prosecuted criminally and pun- 

 ished for the crime, or he may be sued in a civil 

 action and damages recovered by the party 

 wronged. Is not that broad enough ? Do Sen- 

 ators want to go further than this ? To recog- 

 nize the civil rights of the colored people as 

 equal to the civil rights of the white people, I 

 understand to be as far as Senators desire to 

 go ; in the language of the Senator from Mas- 

 sachusetts (Mr. Sumner), to place all men upon 

 an equality before the law ; and that is proposed 

 in regard to their civil rights. 



" Why, sir, this bill provides that there shall 

 be commissioners, not ordinary commissioners 

 that the courts in the exercise of their judgment 

 and discretion shall appoint, but extraordinary 

 commissioners, and from its language it seems 

 to contemplate that there shall bo a commis- 

 sioner in every county of the United States, and 

 these commissioners are authorized to appoint 

 as many agents or deputy marshals as they may 

 see fit to appoint, and these deputy marshals 

 may call upon the body of the people, for what 

 purpose ? To pursue a runaway white man. Oh, 

 I recollect how the blood of the people was 

 made to run cold within them when it was said 

 that the white man was required to run after 

 the fugitive slave ; that the law of 1850 made 

 you and me, my brother Senators, slave-catch- 

 ers ; that the posse comitatus could be called to 

 execute a writ of the law for the recovery of a 

 runaway slave under the provisions of the Con- 

 stitution of the United States ; and the whole 

 country was agitated because of it. Now slave- 

 ry is gone ; the negro is to be established upon 

 a platform of civil equality with the white man. 

 That is the proposition. But we do not stop 

 there ; we are to reenact a law that nearly all 

 of you said was wicked and wrong; and for 

 what purpose? Not to pursue the negro any 

 longer ; not for the purpose of catching him ; 

 not for the purpose of catching the great crim- 

 inals of the land ; but for the purpose of placing 

 it in the power of any deputy marshal in any 

 county of the country to call upon you and me, 

 and all the body of the people to pursue some 

 white man who is running for his liberty be- 

 cause some negro has charged him with denying 

 to him equal civil rights with the white man." 



Mr. Lane, of Indiana, said : " What are the 

 objects sought to be accomplished by this bill? 

 That these freedmen <\hall be secored in the 

 possession of all the rights, privileges, and im- 

 munities of freemen ; in other w\ords, that we 

 shall give effect to the proclamation of emanci- 

 pation and to the constitutional amendment. 

 How else, I ask you, can we give them effect 

 than by doing away with the slave codes of the 

 respective States where slavery was lately tol- 



erated ? One of the distinguished Senators from 

 Kentucky (Mr. Guthrie), says that all these 

 slave laws have fallen with the emancipation of 

 the slave. That, I doubt not, is true, and by a 

 court honestly constituted of able and upright 

 lawyers, that exposition of the constitutional 

 amendment would obtain. 



" But why do we legislate upon this subject 

 now ? Simply because we fear and have reason 

 to fear that the emancipated slaves would not 

 have their rights in the courts of the slave 

 States. The State courts already have juris- 

 diction of every single question that we propose 

 to give to the courts of the United States. Why, 

 then, the necessity of passing the law ? Simply 

 because we fear the execution of these laws if 

 left to the State courts. That is the necessity 

 for this provision." 



Various amendments to the bill were offered 

 and rejected. Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, 

 moved to amend the second line of the first 

 section by adding after the words " civil rights" 

 the words "except the right to vote in the 

 States." He said : " I do hold that under the 

 words ' civil rights ' the power to vote is given, 

 because it is a civil right. The honorable chair- 

 man of the Judiciary Committee, who has this 

 bill under charge, says he does not mean to 

 confer that right. His meaning cannot control 

 the operation or the effect of this law, if the 

 bill shall become a law. I believe that if this 

 bill is enacted into a law your judges in most 

 of the States will determine that under these 

 words the power of voting is given. The hon- 

 orable Senator cited an authority the other day, 

 from Maryland I think it was, in which it was 

 decided that that right was conferred after dom- 

 icile had been acquired according to the laws 

 of the State. Sir, I wish to exclude that very 

 idea ; and if you do not mean to confer that 

 power I want you to say so. However highly 

 I esteem the learning of the honorable .chair- 

 man of the Judiciary Committee, I am not will- 

 ing to trust to his declaration that that power 

 is not to be conferred, and I want this Congress 

 to say that in conferring these civil rights they 

 do not mean to confer the right to vote. 



"Talk to me, sir, about the words 'civil 

 rights ' not including the right to vote ! What 

 is a civil right ? It is a right that pertains to 

 me as a citizen. And how do I get the right 

 to vote ? I get it by virtue of citizenship, and 

 I get it by virtue of nothing else. When this 

 act is passed into a law, and I find a Repub- 

 lican judge in any of the States of this coun- 

 try deciding that under it a negro has the right 

 to vote, I am not going to quarrel with the 

 opinion of that judge, because I believe he is 

 deciding the law correctly. Sir, if you do not 

 intend to confer that right, say so. If you do 

 not mean to invade the States of this Union, 

 and take from them the right to prescribe the 

 qualifications of voters, say so. That is all I 

 ask. Do not leave it in doubt." 



The amendment was rejected, and the bill 

 reported to the Senate ord concurred in. I* 



