was then ordered to be engrossed, read a third time and passed, as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Cragin, Dixon, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Harris, Henderson, Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane of Indiana, Lane of Kansas, Morgan, Morrill, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Stew art, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, Willey, Williams,

Wilson, and Yates-33.

NATS-Messrs. Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Guthrie,
Hendricks, McDougall, Nesmith, Norton, Riddle,
Saulsbury, Stockton, and Van Winkle-12.
ABSENT-Messrs. Creswell, Doolittle, Grimes, John-
son, and Wright-5.

In the House, on March 1st, the bill to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, was called up and amended.

Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, said: "Mr. Speaker, I think I may safely affirm that this bill, so far as it declares the equality of all citizens in the enjoyment of civil rights and immunities, merely affirms existing law. We are following the Constitution. We are reducing to statute form the spirit of the Constitution. We are establishing no new right, declaring no new principle. It is not the object of this bill to establish new rights, but to protect and enforce those which already belong to every citizen. I am aware, sir, that this doctrine is denied in many of the States; but this only proves the necessity for the enactment of the remedial and protective features of this bill. If the States would all observe the rights of our citizens, there would be no need of this bill. If the States would all practise the constitutional declaration, that The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several Rates (Article four, section two, Constitution of the United States),

and enforce it, as meaning that the citizen has The right of protection by the Government, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursae and obtain happiness and safety; to claim the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus, to institute and maintain actions of any kind in the courts of the State; to take, hold, and dispose of property, either real or personal; to be exempt from higher taxes or impositions than are paid by the other citizens of the State (Corfield vs. Coryell, 4 Washington's Circuit Court Reports, p. 380),

we might very well refrain from the enactment of this bill into a law. If they would recognize that 'general citizenship' (Story on the Constitution, vol. ii., p. 604), which under this clause entitles every citizen to security and protection of personal rights (Campbell vs. Morris, 3 Harris & McHenry, 535), we might safely withhold action. And if, above all, Mr. Speaker, the States should admit, and practise the admission, that a citizen does not surrender these rights because he may happen to be a citizen of the State which would deprive him of them, we might, without doing violence to the dity devolved upon us, leave the whole subject to the several States. But, sir, the practice of the States leaves us no avenue of escape, and e must do our duty by supplying the protection which the States deny.

"Mr. Speaker, if all our citizens were of one race and one color, we would be relieved of most of the difficulties which surround us. This bill would be almost, if not entirely, unnecessary, and if the States, seeing that we have citizens of different races and colors, would but shut their eyes to these differences, and legislate, so far at least as regards civil rights and immunities, as though all citizens were of one race and color, our troubles as a But such is nation would be well-nigh over.

not the case, and we must do as best we can to lowest, from the whitest to the blackest, in the protect our citizens, from the highest to the enjoyment of the great fundamental rights which belong to all men.

"It will be observed that the entire structure of this bill rests on the discrimination relative to civil rights and immunities made by the States on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery.' That these things should not be, is no answer to the fact of their existence. That the result of the recent war, and the enactment of the measures to which the events of the war naturally led us, have intensified the hate of the controlling class in the insurgent States toward our colored citizens is a fact against which we can neither shut our ears nor close our eyes. Laws barbaric and treatment inhuman are the rewards meted out by our white enemies to our colored friends. We should put a stop to this at once and forever. And yet I would not do this in a way which would deprive a white man of a single right to which he is entitled. I would merely enforce justice for all men; and this is lawful, it is right, and it is our bounden duty."

Mr. Rogers, of New Jersey, said: "Now, sir, no bill has been offered in this House or in the

other, the freedmen's bill not excluded, which proposes to give to Congress such dangerous powers over the liberties of the people as this bill under consideration, and if it can be constitutionally passed by the Congress of the United States, and is no infringement upon the reserved or undelegated powers of the States, then Congress has the right, not only to extend all the rights and privileges to colored men that are enjoyed by white men, but has the right to take away. If Congress has the right to extend the great privileges of citizenship, which heretofore have been controlled by the States, to any class of beings, they have the right, by the same authority, to take away from any class of people in any State the same rights that they have the right to extend to another class of persons in the same State. In other words, if the Congress has power under our present organic law to decide what rights and privileges shall be extended to negroes, it has the same power and authority under that organic law to extend its legislation so as to take away the most inestimable and valuable rights of the white men and the white women of this country, and not only take away but destroy every blessing of life, liberty, and property, upon the principle

that Congress has unlimited sovereign power over the rights of the States; and whenever, in its judgment, it may see fit, it may carry this power on to an unlimited extent."

Mr. Cook, of Illinois, in reply, said: “Sir, I know of no way by which these men can be protected except it be by the action of Congress, either by passing this bill or by passing a constitutional amendment. And when gentlemen tell me that they are in favor of protecting the people of color, and yet oppose every practicable method of protecting them, I beg leave most respectfully to doubt their judgment in the matter. The question is, shall we leave these men in this condition? It is idle to say we are not leaving them to a system of slavery. If it had not been for the acts of the military commanders, had not the laws which have already been enacted by the Legislatures of the rebel States been set aside, the negroes would all have been slaves now under the operation of their vagrant acts or other laws.

"I believe that this bill is a proper remedy for these evils. I believe that we have the constitutional power to pass it, and that it is our duty to pass it. I affirm that we shall be justly chargeable with want of good faith, want of honor and of common honesty, if we abandon these men, who by our invitation have aided us and have thereby made themselves obnoxious to the majority of the white men of the South, and leave them to the tender mercies of our enemies and theirs."

Mr. Thayer, of Pennsylvania, followed on the same side of the question, saying: "The sole purpose of the bill is to secure to that class of persons the fundamental rights of citizenship; those rights which constitute the essence of freedom, and which are common to the citizens of all civilized States; those rights which secure life, liberty, and property, and which make all men equal before the law, as they are equal in the scales of eternal justice and in the eyes of God.

"To accomplish this great purpose, the bill declares, in the first place, that all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, are citizens of the United States. Now, I do not regard that as the enunciation of any new principle. It is, in my judgment, but declaratory of the existing law. According to my apprehension, every man born in the United States, and not owing allegiance to a foreign power, is a citizen of the United States. It is a rule of universal law, adopted and maintained among all nations that they who are born upon the soil are the citizens of the State. They owe allegiance to the State, and are entitled to the protection of the State. Such is the law, whether you put it into this bill or not. So far as this declaration of the bill is concerned, it is but reiterating an existing and acknowledged principle of law.

"Well, conceding that this general proposition is true, either by the force of existing law, or by the declaration which it is proposed to put

into this bill, it is then asked, by what power, by what authority, do you propose to guarantee and protect the rights of the citizens of this Government? If the proposition which I have assumed as true be correct, that these people are citizens of the United States, does it not seem at the first blush to be a very singular proposition to say that the United States under its Constitution have no right to guarantee to its own citizens, by positive law, those great fundamental rights of citizenship which are enumerated in this bill? Does it not strike the mind of every man with wonder that the framers of the Constitution of the United States who made this great and wonderful fabric of human Government, and who evinced so much skill and foresight in making it, should have framed a Government which is incapable of protecting its citizens in these fundamental rights of citizenship? Would it not be an extraordinary circumstance if the framers of the Constitution had made a Constitution which was powerless to protect the citizens of the United States in their fundamental civil rights, their rights of life, liberty, and property? And yet to that position are these gentlemen driven who deny the existence of any power which authorizes Congress to pass this bill.

"If I am asked from whence the power is derived to pass this bill, I reply that I derive it, in the first place, from the second section of the late amendment to the Constitution. I say, further, that so far as regards the power to declare the freemen citizens is concerned, it may be clearly derived (if it be not inherent in the very frame of every Government) from that clause of the Constitution which gives the express power to Congress to pass laws for naturalization. And I might say, also, that in my judgment sufficient power is found, by impli cation at least, in that clause of the Constitu tion which guarantees to all the citizens of the United States their right to life, liberty, and property."

Mr. Eldridge, of Wisconsin, in opposition, said: "This bill is, it appears to me, one of the most insidious and dangerous of the various measures which have been directed against the interest of the people of this country. It is another of the measures designed to take away the essential rights of the States. I know that when I speak of States and State rights, I enter upon unpopular subjects. But, sir, whatever other gentlemen may think, I hold that the rights of the States are the rights of the Union. that the rights of the States and the liberty of the States are essential to the liberty of the individual citizen. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thayer) inquires what right of the States this bill proposes to take away. I reply, it seeks to lay prostrate at the feet of the Federal Government the judiciary of the States. It not only proposes to enter the States to regulate their police and municipal affairs, but it attempts to destroy the independence of the State judiciary.

แ

second section of the bill as affording discriminating protection to colored persons, as providing for counteracting forbidden legislation by imposing fine and imprisonment upon legislators who may pass conflicting laws, he said: But, sir, there is another answer, in my judgment, more conclusive, to all these objections to this second section, which is the vital part of the bill. Without it, it would scarcely be worth the paper on which the bill is written, a law without a penalty, without a sanction, is of little value to anybody. What good does it do for the Legislature to say, 'Do this, and forbear to do that,' if no consequence is to follow the act of disobedience? This is the vitality of the bill. What is the objection that is made to it, and which seems even to have staggered some friends of the measure? It is because it reads in the first section that any person who 'under color of law' shall commit these offences shall be subject to the penalties of the law. Suppose those words had been left out and the bill read, any person who shall subject any inhabitant of a State to different punishment by reason of his color shall be punished,' would there have been any objection to the bill then? That is the way most criminal laws read. That is the way the law punishing conspiracies against the Government reads. If two or more persons conspire together to overthrow the Government, or by force to resist its authority, they are liable to indictment, and, upon conviction, to imprisonment in the penitentiary and to heavy fine. Would the fact that the persons engaged in the conspiracy were judges or Governors or ministerial officers, acting under color of any statute or custom, screen them from punishment? Surely not.

"These words under color of law' were inserted as words of limitation, and not for the purpose of punishing persons who would not have been subject to punishment under the act if they had been omitted. If an offence is committed against a colored person simply because he is colored, in a State where the law affords him the same protection as if he were white, this act neither has nor was intended to have any thing to do with his case, because he has adequate remedies in the State courts; but if he is discriminated against under color of State laws, because he is colored, then it becomes necessary to interfere for his protection.

"The assumption that State judges and other officials are not to be held responsible for violations of United States laws, when done under color of State statutes or customs, is akin to the maxim of the English law that 'the king can do no wrong.' It places officials above the law. It is the very doctrine out of which the rebellion was hatched."

Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, in opposition to the bill, said: "Now, what does this bill do? It says that every man born within the United States, whether born as a slave or not-for it is not prospective, operating only upon those who may be born subsequent to the abolition

of slavery in the United States-but whoever was born at any time, though born in slavery, is to be considered a citizen by reason of the fact of his being born alone. The States where slavery existed declared, at the time of the birth, if he was born of a slave mother, that he was a slave. The constitutions and laws of the States, undisputed, declared-I mean the States in which slavery existed-that no descendant of a colored mother, whether she was free or not, was to be considered a citizen by virtue of birth; and yet my friend from Illinois, and the Congress of the United States in passing this bill, have declared that those who were born in a state of slavery, who were never citizens as long as that condition existed, who were prevented from becoming citizens by the constitution of the State in which they resided, which has never been changed, shall, by force of this enactment, be considered as citizens of the United States, and of course for all purposes. If it be true that whether birth is to give citizenship of the United States depends upon the fact whether the party born by the laws of the State in which he is born becomes a citizen of that State, then I should like to know where is the authority in Congress to interfere with what the State has done in the past, or may be doing in the present, or may do in the future, unless it can be accomplished under the constitutional amendment."

The debate on the message was continued by Messrs. Cowan, Stewart, Wade, Brown, Doolittle, and others, when the question was taken on the passage of the bill, "the objections of the President of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding," and the vote resulted as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Cragin, Creswell, Edmunds, Fessenden, Foster, Grimes, Harris, Henderson, Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane of Indiana, Morgan, Morrill, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, Willey, Wil liams, Wilson, and Yates-33.

NAYS-Messrs. Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Doolittle, Guthrie, Hendricks, Johnson, Lane of Kansas, McDougall, Nesmith, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, Van Winkle, and Wright-15.

ABSENT-Mr. Dixon.

The President pro tempore thus announced it: "The yeas being 33, and the nays 15, the bill has passed the Senate by the requisite constitutional majority, notwithstanding the objection of the President to the contrary."

On April 9th the bill and message were received by the House from the Senate. A motion was made to lay the same on the table, and lost-yeas 37, nays 122. The question of the passage of the bill was then taken and decided as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Alley, Allison, Delos R. Ashley, James M. Ashley, Baker, Baldwin, Banks, Barker, Baxter, Beaman, Benjamin, Bidwell, Boutwell, Brandagee, Bromwell, Broomall, Buckland, Bundy, Reader W. Clark, Sidney Clarke, Cobb, Colfax, Conkling, Cook, Cullom, Darling, Davis, Dawes, Defrees, Delano, Deming, Dixon, Dodge, Donnelly, Eckley,

Eggleston, Eliot, Farnsworth, Farquhar, Ferry, Garfield, Grinnell, Griswold, Hale, Abner C. Harding, Hart, Hayes, Henderson, Higby, Hill Holmes, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Asahel W. Hubbard, Chester D. Hubbard, John H. Hubbard, James R. Hubbell, Hulburd, James Humphrey, Ingersoll, Jenckes, Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Ketcham, Laflin, George V. Lawrence, William Lawrence, Loan, Longyear, Lynch, Marston, Marvin, McClurg, McIndoe, McKee, McRuer, Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, Morrill, Morris, Moulton, Myers, Newell, O'Neill, Orth, Paine, Pat terson, Perham, Pike, Plants, Pomeroy, Price, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Rollins, Sawyer, Schenck, Schofield, Shellabarger, Spalding, Starr, Stevens, Thayer, Francis Thomas, John L. Thomas, Trowbridge, Upson, Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, Robert T. Van Horn, Ward, Elihu B. Washburne, Henry D. Washburn, William B. Washburn, Welker, Wentworth, James F. Wilson, Stephen F. Wilson, Windom, and Woodbridge-122.

NAYS-Messrs. Ancona, Bergen, Boyer, Coffroth, Dawson, Denison, Eldridge, Finck, Glossbrenner, Aaron Harding, Harris, Hogan, Edward N. Hubbell, James M. Humphrey, Latham, Le Blond, Marshall, McCullough, Niblack, Nicholson, Noell, Phelps, Radford, Samuel J. Randall, William H. Randall,' Raymond, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Rousseau, Shanklin, Sitgreaves, Smith, Strouse, Tabor, Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, Whaley, Winfield, and Wright-41.

NOT VOTING-Messrs. Ames, Anderson, Bingham, Blaine, Blow, Chanler, Culver, Driggs, Dumont, Goodyear, Grider, Demas Hubbard, Johnson, Jones, Julian, Kerr, Kuykendall, Sloan, Stillwell, Warner, and Williams-21.

The Speaker thus announced the result: "On the question, Shall this bill pass notwithstanding the objections of the President?' the yeas are 122 and the nays 41. Two-thirds of the House having, upon this reconsideration, agreed to the passage of the bill, and it being certified officially that a similar majority of the Senate, in which the bill originated, also agreed to its passage, I do, therefore, by the authority of the Constitution of the United States, declare that this bill, entitled 'An act to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights and furnish the means of their vindication,' has become a law."

In the Senate, on January 12th, the bill "to enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau" was reported from the Committee on the Judiciary, with amendments, which were agreed

to.

Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, said: "Mr. President, I desire to make a few remarks in reply to the Senator from Ohio, and this bill being before the Senate, calls up the precise question upon which I desire to occupy the attention of the Senate for a moment upon the subject discussed by the Senator from Ohio. Without attempting to make a speech, I wish to remark that here is a practical measure before the Senate for the benefit of the freedman, carrying out the constitutional provision to protect him in his civil rights. I am in favor of this bill. It goes to the utmost extent that I think we are catitled to go under the constitutional amendment. There is another bill introduced by the Senator from Illinois which must go along with it, which provides civil jurisdiction for the pro

tection of the freedman. Under this constitutional amendment we can protect the freedman and accomplish something for his real benefit.

"So far as this question of negro suffrage is concerned, I say it stands upon a different basis from the other propositions discussed by the gentleman, and the other positions assumed by the President. I do not believe that we must arrive at the conclusion that there must be universal suffrage throughout the South, without regard to color, before we can organize those States. This is the only issue between us now. If this question were out of the way, we could settle every thing else in two weeks, at least so far as a portion of the Southern States are concerned, and we could receive such Southern representatives as are loyal and none other. As the Senator from Ohio has said, there would be no difficulty in agreeing upon every thing else, if it were not for the question of negro suffrage in the South. We may as well meet the issue here and understand each other. This is the issue-the only issue before the country. We all want the Union; we all want the Constitution; we all want to see each State enjoying the blessings of that Union and Constitution alike; but there are some who are determined to sacrifice the Union and the Constitution unless they can achieve the right of suffrage for the negro."

Mr. Wade: "I wish to ask the Senator this

question: if it was the verdict of the war that slavery should be abolished, was it not also the verdict, if it was further necessary for the security of the country, that suffrage should be free? Why was not that as much a verdict of awarded to the colored people that you had set the war as the other?"

But

Mr. Stewart: "The Senator from Ohio asthe country that the right of suffrage should be sumes that it is necessary for the security of granted to the negro; that the Government cannot be carried on without it. That is an assumption that is hardly warranted. even if that were true, it would not be as inuch a verdict of the war as the other." Mr. Wade: "Why not?" Mr. Stewart : Because the other was named; this was not. The other was named in the pleadings upon which we went to trial and fought it out; this is an issue outside of the pleadings, one that was not named, and consequently not as much a verdict of the war. That is the reason.

"But, sir, I contend that it is not necessary to call in the aid of the black man to the government of this country. I do not pretend to say that he shall not at some future time have the right of suffrage under restrictions. But when he shall receive it, it will be for his benefit, not ours. I believe the Anglo-Saxon race can govern this country. I believe it because it has governed it. I believe it because it is, the only race that has ever founded such institutions as ours. I believe it because we have a peculiar situation, peculiar education, peculiar