EQUAL RIGHTS OF COLORED PERSONS TO BE PROTECTED BY THE NATIONAL COURTS.
Bill in the Senate, to enforce the Constitutional Amendment abolishing Slavery, December 4, 1865.
A Bill supplying appropriate legislation to enforce the Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting Slavery.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That, if any person shall attempt to control, or shall by act or word claim any right to control, the services of any other person, contrary to the provisions of the foregoing section, the person so offending shall, upon indictment and conviction in the District Court of the United States for the district where the crime was committed, be punished by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years, or by both, to be inflicted at the discretion of the court; and it shall be no defence, nor cause of mitigation of sentence, that such claim or attempt is sanctioned by any pretended law of a State, or any judgment of a State court. But nothing herein contained shall be held to impair any other remedy now existing by Habeas Corpus or otherwise.
Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That, in further enforcement of the provision of the Constitution prohibiting Slavery, and in order to remove all relics of this wrong from the States where this Constitutional prohibition takes effect, it is hereby declared that all laws or customs in such States, establishing any oligarchical privileges and any distinction of rights on account of race or color, are hereby annulled, and all persons in such States are recognized as equal before the law; and the penalties provided in the last section are hereby made applicable to any violation of this provision, which is made in pursuance of the Constitution of the United States.
Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That, in further enforcement of the provision of the Constitution, the courts of the United States in the States shall have exclusive jurisdiction of all offences committed by persons not of African descent upon persons of African descent; also of all offences committed by persons of African descent; and also of all causes, suits, and demands to which any person of African descent shall be a party; and it is hereby declared that all such cases are to be treated as cases arising under the Constitution of the United States.
This bill was read, passed to a second reading, and ordered to be printed.