Charles Sumner.
To the Committee.
THE SUPPLEMENTARY CIVIL-RIGHTS BILL AGAIN: IMMEDIATE ACTION URGED.
Remarks in the Senate, December 2, 1873.
MR. PRESIDENT,—If the Senate has no business before it, I think it cannot do better than to proceed to the consideration of Senate bill No. 1, the Bill Supplementary to the Civil-Rights Act.[230] It is a well-known bill, and I do not see how it will require any debate. I think its reading will be enough. Its terms are expressive; the bill proves itself. I move that the Senate proceed to its consideration.
Mr. Ferry, of Connecticut, objecting, that on the introduction of this bill, the day before, Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont, who was not now in his seat, had expressed an earnest desire that it should be referred to a committee, a feeling in which he himself sympathized, “especially because the constitutional question which was prominent in the former debate on it had been submitted to the consideration of the Supreme Court of the United States, and its decision promulgated since the Senate last met,”—