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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



bring home to the Senator that nearly one- 

 half of the people of Georgia are now ex- 

 cluded from those equal rights which my 

 amendment proposes to secure; and yet I 

 understand that the Senator disregards their 

 condition, sets aside their desires, and pro- 

 poses to vote down my proposition. The 

 Senator assumes that the former rebels are 

 the only people of Georgia. Sir, I see the 

 colored race in Georgia. I see that race once 

 enslaved, for a long time deprived of all rights, 

 and now under existing usage and practices 

 despoiled of rights which the Senator himself 

 is iii the full enjoyment of." 



Mr. Hill: "The Senator will pardon me 

 for saying that, if I understand the purport of 

 his bill (and I think I have some recollection 

 of it), I never can agree with him in the prop- 

 osition that if there be a hotel for the enter- 

 tainment of travellers, and two classes stop at 

 it, and there is one dining-room for one class 

 and one for another, served alike in all re- 

 spects, with the same accommodations, the 

 same attention to the guests, there is any thing 

 offensive, or any thing that denies the civil 

 rights of one more than the other. Nor do I 

 hold that if you have public schools, and you 

 give all the advantages of education to one 

 class as you do to another, but keep them 

 separate and apart, there is any denial of a 

 civil right in that. I also contend that even 

 upon the railways of the country, if cars of 

 equal comfort, convenience, and security, be 

 provided for different classes of persons, no 

 one has a right to complain if it be a regula- 

 tion of the companies to separate them. I go 

 further, and I illustrate it by my own observa- 

 tion and experience : in the town in which I 

 live the fact bears me out, that prior to the 

 Avar the slave and his master worshipped in 

 the same church, and were members of the 

 same congregation ; but on the motion of the 

 former slave after the close of the war, and 

 with appeals to his w s hite friends to aid 

 him, separate churches have been built 

 for the special accommodation of the col- 

 ored people, and to-day colored ministers 

 in those churches serve colored congrega- 

 tions to the exclusion of white ministers, un- 

 less they happen to be invited as matter of 

 courtesy, which is sometimes done. I take it 

 that this is done because the colored people 

 prefer having it so. I have been appealed to 

 myself, and I have yielded to it upon my own 

 premises, to give to a colored congregation an 

 acre of ground for the erection of a church. 

 This is no uncommon thing with landed pro- 

 prietors in the State. It is conveyed to trus- 

 tees in the usual manner, and as long as it is 

 occupied for the purpose they propose, for 

 religious uses, and by a particular congrega- 

 tion, it is theirs. Whenever they cease to 

 occupy it in that manner it lapses, and comes 

 back to the grantor. 



" Now, sir, there is a radical difference be- 

 tween the Senator from Massachusetts and 



myself; it is irreconcilable. I never can see 

 this as the Senator sees it, and yet I think I 

 can safely hazard one remark by way of com- 

 parison with the Senator, whose humanity and 

 generosity are so proverbial. I believe that 

 the colored people who know me in Georgia 

 would rely, any of them, upon my benevolence 

 and sense of justice as soon as they would 

 upon that of the Senator, or of any other man 

 in any portion of this country. I think I have 

 that standing among them, and I think I do 

 them no disservice in taking the views I do 

 respecting their rights." 



Mr. Sumner : " Mr. President, we have a 

 vindication on this floor of inequality as a 

 principle, as a political rule." 



Mr. Hill: "On which race, I would in- 

 quire, does the inequality to which the Senator 

 refers operate ?" 



Mr. Sumner: "On both. Why, the Sen- 

 ator would not allow a white man to go into 

 the same car with a colored man." 



Mr. Hill : " Not unless he was invited, per- 

 haps." 



Mr. Sumner: "Very well. The Senator 

 mistakes substitutes for equality. Equality is 

 where all are alike. A substitute can never 

 take the place of equality. It is impossible ; 

 it is absurd. And still further, I must remind 

 the Senator that it is very unjust ; it is terribly 

 unjust. Why, sir, we have had in this Cham- 

 ber a colored Senator from Mississippi ; but 

 according to the rule of the Senator from 

 Georgia we should have set him apart by him- 

 self ; he should not have sat with his brother 

 Senators. Do I understand the Senator from 

 Georgia as favoring such a rule ? " 



Mr. Hill: "No, sir." 



Mr. Sumner : " The Senator does not," 



Mr. Hill : " I do not, for this reason : it is 

 under the institutions of the country that he 

 becomes entitled by law to his seat here ; we 

 have no right to deny it to him." 



Mr. Sumner: " Very well ; and I intend, to 

 the best of my ability, to see that under the 

 institutions of his country he is equal every- 

 where. The Senator says he is equal here in 

 this Chamber. I say he should be equal in 

 rights everywhere ; and why not, I ask the 

 Senator from Georgia? Why not? He 

 comes forward now the vindicator of a dis- 

 carded barbarism, of inequality. I wish him 

 to vindicate it. Let him assign the reason." 



Mr. Hill : " If the Senator will allow me, I 

 will say that I think his definition of rights 

 differs materially from my own. What he 

 may term a right may be the right of any man 

 that pleases to come into my parlor and to be 

 my guest. That is not the right of any col- 

 ored man upon earth, nor of any white man, 

 unless it is agreeable to me. The Senator 

 may contend that it is the right of any man, 

 under the institutions of this nation, to inter- 

 marry with any caste that he pleases. I think 

 that such matters are subject to municipal 

 regulation by the States for their own people ; 



