MR. SUMNER. But when you exclude persons from the comforts of travel simply on account of color, do you not offer them an indignity? MR. HILL. I say it is the fault of the railroad companies, if they do not provide comforts for all their passengers, and make them equal where they pay equal fare. MR. SUMNER. The Senator says it is the fault of the railroad company. I propose to make it impossible for the railroad company to offer an indignity to a colored man more than to the Senator from Georgia. MR. HILL. Right there the Senator and I divide upon this question.… I confess to having a little _penchant_ for the white race; and if I were going on a long journey, and desired a companion, I should prefer to select him from my own race. MR. SUMNER. The Senator comes round again to his taste. It is not according to his taste; and therefore he offers an indignity to the colored man. MR. HILL. No, Sir. MR. SUMNER. It is not according to his taste; that is all. How often shall I say that this is no question of taste,--it is no question of society,--it is a stern, austere, hard question of rights? And that is the way that I present it to the Senate. … In old days, when Slavery was arraigned, the constant inquiry of those who represented this wrong was, “Are you willing to associate with colored persons? Will you take these slaves, as equals, into your families?” Sir, was there ever a more illogical inquiry? What has that to do with the question? A claim of rights cannot be encountered by any social point. I may have whom I please as friend, acquaintance, associate, and so may the Senator; but I cannot deny any human being, the humblest, any right of equality. He must be equal with me before the law, or the promises of the Declaration of Independence are not yet fulfilled. And now, Sir, I pledge myself, so long as strength remains in me, to press this question to a successful end. I will not see the colored race of this Republic treated with indignity on the grounds assigned by the Senator. I am their defender. The Senator may deride me, and may represent me as giving too much time to what he calls a very small question. Sir, no question of human rights is small. Every question by which the equal rights of all are affected is transcendent. It cannot be magnified. But here are the rights of a whole people, not merely the rights of an individual, of two or three or four, but the rights of a race, recognized as citizens, voting, helping to place the Senator here in this Chamber, and he turns upon them and denies them.