In the face of this report, the exclusion of colored persons continued, often attended by intolerable outrage. Aged persons were thrust into the street. At last an opportunity occurred of bringing this question to a vote in the Senate. March 16, 1864, the Senate had under consideration a bill to incorporate the Metropolitan Railroad Company in the District of Columbia, sometimes known as the F Street Road, when Mr. Sumner moved the following amendment:-- “_Provided_, That there shall be no regulation excluding any person from any car on account of color.” A debate ensued, in which Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, and Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, earnestly opposed the amendment. March 17th, the latter, while acknowledging that there was nothing in the bill giving “authority to exclude passengers at all,” insisted that colored persons so excluded should be remitted to the courts, and he did not see “why it is necessary to provide more special guaranties for the black man than are provided for the white man”; “if the black man is improperly excluded from one of these cars, … he has the right to go to the courts and seek his remedy there, and the white man has no greater right”; that Mr. Sumner “might just as well propose to pass a law providing that these black men and black women shall have the same right to visit the Presidential mansion on public occasions as the white men and the white women”; and he then discussed the questions of social and political equality, insisting that those just escaped from Slavery “are not the people to exercise the elective franchise, and to mix in society with the educated classes, of which and from which the public councils of the country should always be composed and taken.” Mr. Sumner replied:-- MR. PRESIDENT,--The question before the Senate is very simple. It is plain as one of the Ten Commandments. But the Senator from Maryland, with that nimbleness of speech which belongs to him, while undertaking to discuss it, has ranged over a very extensive field. He has treated the Senate to a discourse on almost everything, and something else also,--the elective franchise, social privileges of the Presidential mansion, the equality of races, the intermarriage of races, the state of Slavery in Maryland, also in some other States, and then the state of Slavery generally. Now, Sir, I shall not follow him on any of those topics. My desire is to present the precise point in issue. The Senate will then be prepared to vote.