I am accustomed to that class of questions on this floor. When, some two or three years ago, I felt it my duty to move, on one bill after another, that there should be no exclusion from the street cars on account of color, I was encountered by learned lawyers, and by none more constantly than my friend opposite, the Senator from Maryland [Mr. JOHNSON], with precisely the suggestion which my friend from New York now makes: that in point of law it was unnecessary; that under the actual law, which was none other than the Common Law, there could be no exclusion on account of color: and yet, in the face of that Common Law, Senators all know that there was an exclusion from the cars on account of color, and the grossest outrages committed. Colored persons were precipitated into the streets, into the mud, under a pelting rain, and they could obtain no redress; and when I asked for redress, grave Senators said, “Let them apply to the courts”; and it was suggested that perhaps I had better volunteer as counsel in court rather than appear in this Chamber. Now the question of my friend from New York is precisely in the same spirit. I cannot doubt, that, under the existing Reconstruction law, there can be no exclusion on account of color,--that nobody is for that reason disqualified from the exercise of any function. What is there to prevent a colored person from being a Senator of the United States? and who can doubt that within a very few months it will be our business to welcome a colored Senator on this floor? I cannot doubt it. MR. JOHNSON [of Maryland]. How many? MR. SUMNER. That I do not know. But I ask you who look to the colored vote in these States as the means of security and peace, through which you are to find protection for this Republic, and for white fellow-citizens there as well as for the colored themselves, to see that this stigma is not put upon them by any commanding general pretending to act by virtue of our legislation. It is not enough to tell me, that, under the actual law, colored persons may be designated. To that I reply, in the State of Virginia they have not been designated; and I wish now that Congress should declare that any exclusion on account of color is without the sanction of law. And that brings me to the inquiry of my friend from Illinois, as to the penalty, I think, or as to the extent of the remedy. MR. TRUMBULL. The question was, whether your proviso afforded any remedy.