MR. PRESIDENT,--This bill relates to the national judiciary. The Senate
is making rules for the courts of the United States, and now by its
vote sanctions the rule that a witness who happens to have a color
different from ours is incompetent to testify, he cannot be heard in
court. The practical effect of such exclusion is, that any outrage by
a white man on a colored person, if no other white person is present,
must go unpunished; and the Senate of the United States refuses to
interfere against this cruelty. I must say, Sir, that I lose my
interest in the bill, when it is associated with such wickedness,--for
such I must call it. If there is any outrage at this moment in the form
of law, and actually within our reach, it is what I now hold up to the
indignation of the country and of mankind. It is hard to think that
human beings can be placed thus defenceless by Act of Congress,--that
masters or overseers, being white, may offer to colored persons any
offence, any brutality, and the testimony of the witnesses, merely
because they are colored, shall be excluded absolutely. And yet, Sir,
that is what the Senate to-day declares.
The Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. HALE] has voted to sustain
this cruelty. Other Senators have voted to sustain it. It is their
privilege. Each Senator votes, I know, according to his conscience;
but, Sir, I call attention to the vote, and remind you of what occurred
on another occasion. Formerly, when I moved this proposition, it was
opposed on the allegation that it was not pertinent to the bill under
consideration. When I moved it, the other day, on what was known as the
Confiscation Bill, the other Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. CLARK]
mildly suggested, that, at a proper occasion, on a proper bill, he
would be ready to support it. I know that the motion must have the
approbation of that excellent Senator. He is too just and too humane
not to be in favor of it. And now, Sir, the time has come. Here is a
bill regulating evidence in courts of the United States,--not in courts
of the States, but in courts of the United States. The whole subject
is directly before you. It is within your province now to decide.
Yours the jurisdiction and power. And yet, Sir, you choose to continue
the wrong. I shall vote for the bill on its final passage, because in
other respects I think it ought to be a law; but I enter my protest
against the conclusion of the Senate. It is melancholy, disastrous,
discreditable.
Mr. Hale vindicated the vote of the Senate, and insisted that
the proper object of attack was the Supreme Court.