February 8, 1864, on the day of introducing his Amendment of the Constitution, declaring that “all persons are equal before the law,” Mr. Sumner asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to bring in a bill to secure equality before the law in the courts of the United States, which was read the first and second times by unanimous consent, and, on his motion, referred to the Committee on Slavery and Freedmen. This was in harmony with other efforts on an earlier day.[1] February 29th, he reported the bill to the Senate without amendment, accompanied by the following report, of which three thousand extra copies were ordered to be printed for the use of the Senate. The success of this measure appears at a later date.[2] The Committee on Slavery and the Treatment of Freedmen, to whom was referred Senate Bill (No. 99) entitled “A Bill to secure equality before the law in the courts of the United States,” have had the same under consideration, and ask leave to report. Before making a change in our laws, it is important to consider the nature and extent of what is proposed; especially is this the case, if the change will be far-reaching in influence. Therefore the Committee have thought best, in proposing to prohibit all exclusion of colored testimony in the courts of the United States, to exhibit with some particularity the considerations bearing on the subject. EXCLUSION OF COLORED TESTIMONY RECOGNIZED BY CONGRESS. Congress has never, in formal words, declared that witnesses in the courts of the United States shall be incompetent to testify on account of color. The abuse has arisen indirectly. But it is none the less fastened upon the national jurisprudence. By Act of July 16, 1862, it was provided “that the laws of the State in which the court shall be held shall be the rules of decision as to the competency of witnesses in the courts of the United States, in trials at Common Law, in Equity, and Admiralty.”[3] And this rule, thus authoritatively declared, had been practically recognized by the courts of the United States from the beginning of the Government. It appears from the Judiciary Act of 1789, under which the national courts were organized, that jurors in these courts “shall have the same qualifications as are requisite for jurors by the laws of the State of which they are citizens”; and still further, “that the laws of the several States, except where the Constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States shall otherwise require or provide, shall be regarded as rules of decision in trials at Common Law in the courts of the United States, in cases where they apply.”[4] Under these injunctions it was very easy, if not natural, for the national courts to adopt the law of evidence in the States where they were respectively held; and thus the incapacity of colored testimony in those States where it prevailed became a rule of evidence in the national tribunals.