With this peremptory rule opening the doors of inns to all travellers, without distinction, to the extent of authorizing not only an action, but an indictment, for the refusal to receive a traveller, it is plain that the pending bill is…

The first and most general obligation on their part is to carry passengers, whenever they offer themselves and are ready to pay for their transportation.

The company is under a public duty, as a common carrier of passengers, to receive all who offer themselves as such and are ready to pay the usual fare, and is liable in damages to a party whom it refuses to carry without a reasonable…

As the inn cannot close its doors, or the public conveyance refuse a seat, to any paying traveller, decent in condition, so must it be with the theatre and other places of public amusement.

Here are institutions whose peculiar object is “the pursuit of happiness,” which has been placed among the Equal Rights of All.

How utterly irrational the pretension to outrage a large portion of the community!

The law can lend itself to no such intolerable absurdity; and this, I insist, shall be declared by Congress.

Like the others, it must open to all, or its designation is a misnomer and a mockery.

It is not a school for whites, or a school for blacks, but a school for all,--in other words, a common school.

It is an inn where children rest on the road to knowledge.

It is a public conveyance where children are passengers.

It is a theatre where children resort for enduring recreation.

It is easy to see that the separate school, founded on an odious discrimination, and sometimes offered as an equivalent for the common school, is an ill-disguised violation of the principle of Equality, while as a pretended equivalent it…

Colored children, living near what is called the common school, are driven from its doors, and compelled to walk a considerable distance--often troublesome, and in certain conditions of the weather difficult--to attend the separate school.

This could not have occurred, had the child been received at the common school in the neighborhood.

Now it is idle to assert that children compelled to this exceptional journey to and fro are in the enjoyment of Equal Rights.

The superadded pedestrianism and its attendant discomfort furnish the measure of Inequality in one of its forms, increased by the weakness or ill-health of the child.

What must be the feelings of a colored father or mother daily witnessing this sacrifice to the demon of Caste?

This is an illustration merely, but it shows precisely how impossible it is for a separate school to be the equivalent of the common school.

The indignity offered to the colored child is worse than any compulsory exposure; and here not only the child suffers, but the race to which he belongs is degraded, and the whole community is hardened in wrong.

The separate school wants the first requisite of the common school, inasmuch as it is not equally open to all; and since this is inconsistent with the declared rule of republican institutions, such a school is not republican in character.

The child is not trained in the way he should go; for he is trained under the ban of Inequality.

How can he grow up to the stature of equal citizenship?

He is pinched and dwarfed while the stigma of color is stamped upon him.

This is plain oppression, which you, Sir, would feel keenly, were it directed against you or your child.