Caste.- Exclusion from public conveyances. Mr. Sumner's amendments. — Strong speech of Reverdy Johnson. — Saulsbury. — Doolittle, Carlile. Sumner's defence. - Morrill's speech. Washington and Georgetown Railroad. - Mr. Sumner's amendment. — Opposed by Mr. Trumbull, Saulsbury, and Powell. - Adopted. — Basis of law. — Ignored by slavery. — Laws against colored witnesses. - Mr. Wilson's bill. - Sumner's amendment. - Amendment to the Civil Appropriation Bill, and speech. - Opposition. Saulsbury. Disqualifications for carrying the mails. - Mr. Sumner's bill. Adopted. - In the House. Report by Mr. Colfax. - Failed. — New bill. — Collamer, Powell, Hendricks. — Passage.

THOUGH the greed of gain and the lust of power and personal indulgence were unquestionably the largest factors, the most controlling motives in the production and perpetuation of the slave system, the principle and pride of caste had much to do therewith. Indeed, had not men persuaded themselves that the African belonged to an inferior race, that he occupied a lower plane of humanity than that on which they stood, they could never have found justification, even to themselves, for a system so full of injustice, so pregnant with evils to all and everything concerned, to the master as well as the slave, to society as well as the individual, to the religion as well as the civilization of any people who accepted it as a recognized institution. But accepting the postulate they were led and prepared to accept its natural inferences. Among them was the social ostracism which followed the poor victims of its proscription everywhere. No matter how much of worth and culture shone forth in the character; no matter what wealth of affections reposed beneath the dusky skin, or how piteously

the tender sensibilities of the soul entered their protest against such exclusion; no matter how sternly and authoritatively Christianity proclaimed the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man, the least infusion of color, so slight as to elude any but a microscopic vision, constituted a ban nothing could remove, a bar that no one could overleap. At home and abroad, in the house and by the way, in the realms of pleasure and in the sacred precincts of religion, everywhere the negro was made to feel his inferiority, and, in the hateful parlance of the hour, to know his place. This aspect of its essential wickedness and unreason was seen in the exclusion of colored persons from public conveyances. That there was no reason in nature for this exclusion was seen from the accompanying fact, that they who were thus proscribed as persons were proudly allowed to travel as servants and attendants of the lordly class.

Among the reforms, therefore, demanded by the removal of slavery, the dethronement of the Slave Power, and the general abrogation of the hateful slave codes, was the discontinuance of this most unjust and provoking ostracism. The attention of Congress was early called to it, and in the debates which accompanied the effort were very clearly foreshadowed the principles and arguments which were afterward so thoroughly and persistently urged and combated in connection with the civil rights bills of subsequent sessions. Nor was there any great advance or addition in the argument made in those subsequent discussions that occupied so much time and developed such acrimonious and determined opposition in the successive debates of Congress upon this general subject. Too axiomatic, the subject did not admit of much argument; too nearly a self-evident truth, it could not be made much plainer by any process of reasoning or demonstration. From the first it was little more than a question between right and wrong, principle and prejudice, and there was not large room or encouragement for mere argument, and what there was could hardly be other than brief. There was room for amplification, and it was improved. Illustrations could be multiplied, while rhetoric and eloquence found ample range for the exercise of

their choicest and most impressive appeals. And yet it was little more than the ringing of the possible changes upon those great and fundamental principles of human conduct and accountability, wrong doing and its perils, right doing and its rewards.

On the 27th of May, 1863, Mr. Sumner moved to amend the bill for extending the charter of the Washington and Alexandria Railroad by adding a provision "that no person should be excluded from the cars on account of color"; and, singularly enough, in view of subsequent opposition to the principle involved, it passed both houses without debate, and was approved by the President on the 3d of March, 1863.

On the 16th of March, 1864, Mr. Sumner moved to amend a bill incorporating the Metropolitan Railroad of Washington City by inserting a similar provision. He did not make any protracted remarks on its introduction, though it led to a brief but earnest and suggestive debate. Mr. Johnson of Maryland made an able and, considering that he was from a slaveholding State, a singular and noteworthy speech. He argued with legal acumen that the amendment was unnecessary because the company had no right to exclude any one on account of color. There is no more right," he said, "to exclude a black man from a car designated for the transportation of white persons than there is a right to refuse the transportation in a car designed for black persons to white men." And yet he admitted that for prudential reasons it might be "convenient" for the company to provide separate cars, because, he said, it would "meet with the public wish and the public tastes of both classes." Concerning slavery, his views were very decided. Of it, he said, "if it is not dead it has upon it the wound of death"; and, though there might be, he admitted, 66 conscientious 99 men who believed it to be an institution to be preserved, they will soon find in the judgment of Christendom, outside of their own limits, and in the silent influences of the Christian's faith which has done so much to humanize society, an obstacle to its continuance which no purpose of man can much longer restrain." But while he was thus outspoken and emphatic on the legal rights of colored men; while

he so fully admitted the contrariety of Christianity to slavery, and his belief that before the mild and benignant sway of the one, the other must soon yield and pass away, he gave utterance to extremest opinions in the matter of caste, and endorsed sentiments as really in conflict with the spirit of the Christian religion as anything in the slavery he had just predicted must yield thereto. "When we come," he said, "to political rights and social enjoyment, there are other considerations that enter into such inquiries." He spoke deprecatingly of anything like political or social equality, and pronounced them "very perilous." Of the prejudice against color, he said, "it is a prejudice that comes from our Creator." Of the supposition, so often urged by the advocates of this caste of color, that a man's daughter should wed a colored man, he used these strong, not to say extravagant words: "A man can meet death, if he be a man, in a just cause; but no man can meet a calamity, such as I suppose that would be felt by every man, with anything but continued trembling anxiety, depressing, harassing, crushing fear."

But as no Senate debate at that time, involving the negro and his cause, would have been deemed complete without participation therein by the Senator of Delaware, the voice of Mr. Saulsbury was heard with his words of bitter scorn, denouncing the African race and discountenancing all efforts for its protection and improvement. He took issue with Mr. Johnson on several points. He contended, "as a man who has humbly assayed the pathway of law for twenty years," that the railroad company had the right to make the discrimination complained of; that slavery was not dead, and he expressed the hope that it would not die; and, if it was dead, he wanted a slave code for his State, to keep out presuming men of color. He contended, too, that slavery was the natural condition of the race, and that under it slaves had "prospered and been happy beyond the experience of any class of people of inferior character in the world's history." Free them, he said, “and the story of the poor Indian will be theirs." He declared this difference in character and condition of the two races to be divinely ordered. "It is," he said, "in the ordination of

God's providence." He spoke quite theologically of the matter, and exclaimed: "Sir, the finger of God Almighty has decreed the distinction between the races; and Abolitionism is infidelity, it is war upon the ordinance of God's providence." He inveighed bitterly against the attempts, "in the last three years," to "raise to their own elevation an inferior race, or to degrade themselves to an equality of an inferior race, as we have done." He said, if the nation must fall, this would be its epitaph: "Here lie thirty million white men, women, and children who lost their liberties in trying to equalize with themselves four million negroes." Others opposed the amendment; Mr. Doolittle, on the ground that railroads had the right to make the discrimination objected to, and Mr. Carlile on the ground that the subject might be better left to the courts.

In reply, Mr. Sumner agreed with Mr. Johnson in the proposition that "colored people have the legal right to enter the cars, and the proprietors are trespassers when they undertake to exclude them"; but he inquired of what use or benefit such a right can be to a colored man, poor and without position. He said that Congress should pass "a declaratory act," and he quoted parliamentary authority for the opinion, that in cases of doubt it should, in this way, interpret its meaning. Mr. Morrill of Maine replied with great force and beauty of expression to the remark of Mr. Saulsbury, that it would be better to leave the whole matter to the gentlemanly instincts of the superior race and to the principles of Christianity. Reminding him that "under the influence of these gentlemanly instincts of the superior race slavery has come to be cherished, cherished as a benefaction to the race; cherished as a great social good; cherished as the corner-stone upon which you are to rear American institutions, the cornerstone of civil and religious liberty," he asked for the grounds of hope that such principles would be any more effective in the future than in the past. "Could this question," he said, "be remanded to the tribunal of Christianity, there would be neither difficulty nor doubt in reaching a satisfactory and safe conclusion, for wherever that influence has prevailed slavery