Mr. Trumbull replied: "I desire simply to remark that the speech from which I quoted, made by the Senator from Maryland, was made upon this very bill. It was in reference to this bill that he was speaking when he laid down the proposition that every person born in the United States since the abolition of slavery was a citizen of the United States, and if there was any doubt about it, it was proper for us to declare them so, and not only proper, but our duty to do so; and to make the matter specific, the honorable Senator voted for this proposition, which I will now read, on the yeas and nays:
"'All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign Power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States, without distinction of color.'
"Upon the adoption of that proposition as an amendment, it not being in the bill as originally introduced, the Senator from Maryland, with thirty others, voted in the affirmative. So we have his high authority for saying that all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign Power, are citizens of the United States, exactly as it appears in this bill."
"Mr. Yates, of Illinois, remarked: "I remember very well that the Senator from Maryland offered an amendment to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill to this effect: to strike out the words 'without distinction of color.' The Freedmen's Bureau Bill applied legislation by Congress to the freedmen in the States and to the condition of the freedmen in the States. It was legislation that affected the freedmen in the rebellious States. If I remember aright the Senator from Maryland moved to strike out the words 'without distinction of color' in one section of that bill, and for that motion he gave this reason: because, under the Constitution of the United States, as amended, abolishing slavery in all the States and Territories of the United States, the freedmen occupied precisely the same position with any other citizen of the United States in any State or Territory. I understood him as taking the broad position, which I have maintained, and which Republican Senators have maintained, and which I think the country maintains, that under the Constitution, as amended, the freedman occupies precisely the same position as any man born in any State or Territory of the United States; and that was the object, if I understood the Senator from Maryland, of his moving to amend the Freedmen's Bureau Bill by striking out the words 'without distinction of color.'
"I recognize the authority of the decisions quoted by the Senator from Maryland before the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution. The States had the power over the question of slavery in the States before the amendment to the Constitution; but by the amendment to the Constitution, in which the States have concurred, the freedman becomes a free man, entitled to the same rights and privileges as any other citizen of the United States."
Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, spoke in favor of the veto, premising that his words, "if they are not to convince any body in the Senate, may go to the country and be reflected on there." Mr. Cowan said he was quite willing that all the people of this country should enjoy the rights conferred upon them by this bill. But, supposing the bill had all the merit in the world, it would not be effective to attain the ends hoped for by its friends; and apart from that, its provisions were exceedingly dangerous. It gave married women and minors the right to make and enforce contracts. The grammatical structure of a portion of the bill was such as to enable a corrupt, passionate, or prejudiced judge to take advantage of it in order to widen the jurisdiction of the United States courts, and drag into them all the business which had heretofore occupied the State courts. This would be enough in this nineteenth century to make a man tremble for the fate of constitutional government. "If," said Mr. Cowan, "we had undoubted authority to pass this bill, under the circumstances I would not vote for it, on account of its objectionable phraseology, its dubious language, and the mischief which might attend upon a large and liberal construction of it in the District and Circuit Courts of the United States." The trouble and expense of obtaining justice in the United States courts, but one, or at most two existing in any of the Southern States, would debar the African from applying to them for redress. "Your remedy," said the Senator, "is delusive; your remedy is no remedy at all; and to hold it up to the world as a remedy is a gross fraud, however pious it may be. It is no remedy to the poor debtor that you prosecute his judge, and threaten him with fine and imprisonment. It is no remedy to the poor man with a small claim that you locate a court one or two hundred miles away from him which is so expensive in its administration of justice that he can not enter there.
[Illustration: WM. M. Stewart, Senator from Nevada.]
"There is another provision of the bill, which, notwithstanding the act of Congress relied upon by the honorable Senator from Illinois, I think is unquestionably anomalous, and to me not only anomalous, but atrocious; and that is, the substitution of an indictment for the writ of error. What has been the law of these United States heretofore? When an act of Congress came in contact with a State law, and the judge of a State court decided that the law of Congress was unconstitutional, there was an appeal given to the debated party to the Supreme Court of the United States in order to determine the constitutionality of the law. But, sir, who, until the last few months, ever heard of making the judge a criminal because he decided against the constitutionality of a law of the United States? One would think we were being transported back to the dark ages of the world when a man is to be accused and perhaps convicted of a crime who has done nothing more than honestly and conscientiously discharged his duty. I know that the persons of embassadors are sacred, and I know that it is a very high offense against the law of nations, which no civil judge of any court could justify, to invade this sacred right of the embassador, but every body knows that that is an exceptional case. Every body knows that in all times and at all ages the judge was punishable who did not respect the person of an embassador. But that is not this case. That analogy will not help the third section of this bill. It is openly avowed upon the floor of the Senate of the United States, in the year of our Lord 1866, in the full blaze and light of the nineteenth century, that the indictment is to be a substitute for the writ of error, and it is justified because a judge ought to be indicted who violates the sacred person of an embassador! What potency there must be in the recent amendment of the Constitution which has foisted the negro and set him upon the same platform as the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain or of all the Russias to the United States of America, and made him as sacred as an embassador, and the judge who decides against him is to be punished as a criminal!"
Mr. Stewart showed that States might easily avoid all the annoying operations of this bill which were feared by its opponents: "When I reflect how very easy it is for the States to avoid the operation of this bill, how very little they have to do to avoid the operation of the bill entirely, I think that it is robbed of its coercive features, and I think no one has any reason to complain because Congress has exercised a power, which it must be conceded it has, when it has exercised it in a manner which leaves it so easy for the States to avoid the operation of this bill. If passed to-day, it has no operation in the State of Georgia; it is impossible to commit a crime under this bill in the State of Georgia; and the other States can place themselves in the same position so easily that I do not believe they ought to complain."
He then read the second section of an act passed in Georgia, precisely similar to the first section of the Civil Eights Bill. Nothing could be done in Georgia under "color of law," which would subject officers to the penalties provided by the Civil Rights Bill. "It being so easily avoided by being complied with, by doing a simple act of justice, by carrying out the spirit of the constitutional amendment, I can not give my consent to defeat a bill the purpose of which is good, the operation of which is so innocent, and may be so easily avoided."