But the same failure may occur in the case of white persons. Let a white person be assaulted, or murdered, if you please, by another white person, but only in the presence of colored persons, and justice cannot be administered. The criminal will continue at large unpunished.
Therefore, for the administration of justice, that it may not fail to the colored person, and then again that it may not fail to the white person, there should be no exclusion of any citizens on account of color.
Let the witness always be admitted to testify, leaving the jury to be judges of his credibility. If his story seems improbable, or there be anything in his manner, conduct, or past life to excite distrust, the jury will be able to measure the just weight of his testimony.
It is hard to be obliged to argue this question. I do not argue it. I will not argue it. I simply ask for your votes. Surely, Congress will not adjourn without redressing this grievance. The king, in Magna Charta, promised that he would deny justice to no one. Congress has succeeded to this promise and obligation.
Mr. Sherman said he “trusted, that, after the experience of last night, when the thermometer here rose to ninety-three degrees, and we were all exhausted by a debate on irrelevant matter, the Senator from Massachusetts would not introduce upon this appropriation bill a topic of this kind.” He thought we had already voted on this amendment on two other bills.
Mr. Sumner, after remarking that he had not been able to bring the amendment applicable to the United States courts to a vote by itself, said:—
I can state to the Senator the different occasions on which this principle prevailed. It prevailed on the statute emancipating slaves in this District; but here it was applicable only to cases arising in questions of freedom under the statute. It was next broadened to all proceedings in the courts of the District. But it has not been applied beyond that. I have sought to apply it generally; I have moved it more than once on other bills, and have failed; and the measure is now pending as a bill reported by the Select Committee on Slavery and Freedmen, and it is also pending as a section of another bill reported by the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Collamer] from the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads. Therefore it has the approval, as a general proposition, of two separate committees of this body, while, as a proposition applicable to the District of Columbia, it has had the sanction of the Senate twice over; and now I plead with the Senate not to arrest it here.
Mr. Sherman replied: “I agree with the Senator in the general principle entirely; but I hope he will not press the proposition as an amendment to this bill, for I know it will create discussion.”
Mr. Sumner said:—
I believe it is always time for an act of justice, and I think this Congress ought not to separate without this act of justice. It ought to do it for the sake of the administration of justice. I have not put this case, you will bear witness, on any grounds of sympathy or sentiment or humanity; I plead for it now as essential to the administration of justice; and for one, as a Senator, I cannot willingly abandon the opportunity afforded me by my seat here of making this motion,—of making this effort to open the courts of my country to evidence without which justice must often fail.