Charles Sumner

Congress can do nothing to set up a religious establishment.

It is simply setting up the Declaration of Independence in its primal truths, and applying them to churches as to other institutions.

Suppose Congress declares that no person shall be excluded from any church on account of race, color, or previous condition; where is the interference with the constitutional provision?

He strikes down the safeguards of justice for the whole colored race; and what is the excuse?

The Senator makes a mistake, when he deals his blow in the very Temple of Justice.

I say, therefore, from the necessity of the case, and also from the analogy of witnesses, the courts should be opened to colored jurors.

I am in the receipt of letters almost daily, complaining of the impossibility of obtaining justice in State courts because colored fellow-citizens are excluded from juries.

This is plain, and presents a case of startling wrong.

Denying to colored fellow-citizens their place on the juries, you actually deny them justice.

How can justice be administered throughout States thronging with colored fellow-citizens, unless you have them on the juries?

I speak now of colored jurors; and I submit, as beyond all question, that every reason or argument which opens the courts to colored witnesses must open them to colored jurors.

The right to be a juror is identical in character with the right to be a witness.

If the courts are opened to colored witnesses, I insist by the same title they must be opened to colored jurors.

They were originally witnesses from the vicinage; so that, if you go back to the very cradle of our jurisprudence, you find jurors nothing but witnesses: and now I insist that they must come under the same rule as witnesses.

He knows well the history of trial by jury; he knows that at the beginning jurors were witnesses from the neighborhood,--afterward becoming judges, not of law, but of fact.

Now I ask the Senator from Wisconsin to consider what is the difference in character between the right to testify and the right to sit on a jury.

I say, this measure, linked as it is with the great title-deeds of our country, merits the support not only of the Judiciary Committee, but of this Chamber.

I wish it had their sanction; but I do not hesitate to say that this bill is more important to the Judiciary Committee than that committee is important to the bill.

Therefore, Sir, I am not without precedent, when I bring forward an important measure and ask your votes, even though it have not the sanction of this important committee.

I did not intend to add anything of my own; but the subject is to me of such incalculable interest, and its right settlement is so essential to the peace of this country, to its good name, to the reconciliation we all seek, that I could…

I rose to-day merely to enable the absent to speak,--that colored fellow-citizens, whose own Senators had failed them, might be heard through their written word.

The power to do justice leaps forth from every clause of the Constitution; it springs from every word of its text; it is the inspiration of its whole chartered being.

I do not question the former; but I say to my excellent friend from Maine that the power to remove the disabilities of colored fellow-citizens is, if possible, stronger, clearer, and more assured than the other.

One thing I know: if it has the power to amnesty Rebels, it has the power to enfranchise colored fellow-citizens.

There are colored voters in that State far more than enough to turn the scale one way or the other, as they incline; and those voters, by solemn petition, appeal to you for their rights.