Offer any objection you please to the credibility of a witness, show that he is not intelligent, that he is not worthy of belief, that his character is bad, and make all proper deductions from his testimony on this account, but do not say that he is absolutely incompetent, that he cannot be heard in court, that, no matter how intelligent, truthful, or respectable, he cannot be admitted to testify, if he happens to be of another color than ourselves. Such exclusion is cruel to the witness, degrading to courts administering it, and destructive of justice, which seeks evidence from every quarter. I listened closely to the ingenious argument of the Senator, going along with him in what he claimed for the States and for their courts. He said, each State is entitled, within its own jurisdiction, to have its rules of evidence. Granted. He thought it better to leave every State its own rule on this question. Granted again, Sir, so far as the courts of the States are concerned. MR. FOSTER. Why allow them barbarism? MR. SUMNER. Because I have no right to interfere with them. MR. FOSTER. That answers the two questions. MR. SUMNER. There is the mistake of the Senator. He confounds our duties in the two different cases of national courts, where we are responsible, and of State courts, where we have no responsibility and no right to interfere. In his remarks he said: “It is competent for each State to make these rules for itself.” Granted again,--within its own jurisdiction. But he would allow each State its sovereign will on this question. Sir, where I cannot constitutionally interfere to check a barbarism, of course I do not interfere; sorrowfully I allow the sovereign will to prevail. But when a barbarism seeks shelter under the jurisdiction of Congress, when it falls under the direct responsibility of my vote, I cannot be silent. The Senator will pardon me, if I add, that he erred, when he undertook to transfer the rules of the State courts, without amendment or modification, to the National courts. The State courts have their rules of evidence,--they are beyond our control; but the United States courts are within our control, and the time has come to bring them at last within the pale of civilization. Why, Sir, has the good cause advanced thus far? to what end is it triumphant on this floor, if, in determining rules of evidence in the national courts, we take up and sanction this relic of barbarism?