Volume 8 — TESTIMONY OF COLORED PERSONS IN JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS FOR CONFISCATION AND EMANCIPATION.

Resolution in the Senate, May 12, and Remarks, June 28, 1862.

RESOLVED, That the Select Committee on the confiscation of Rebel property be directed to consider the expediency of providing, that, in all judicial proceedings to confiscate the property and free the slaves of Rebels, there shall be no exclusion of any witness on account of color.

This was objected to by Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, but on the next day it was agreed to.

The Select Committee failing to adopt this provision in the bill reported by them, entitled “A bill to suppress insurrection, punish treason and rebellion, and for other purposes,” Mr. Sumner sought to engraft it on the bill by motion in the Senate.

June 28th, Mr. Sumner moved the following amendment:—

“And in all proceedings under this Act there shall be no exclusion of any witness on account of color.”

Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, Chairman of the Select Committee, said, that, “while they had no hostility to the general principle of the amendment, they thought it was better not to engraft it upon this bill.”

Mr. Sumner replied:—

This bill is to operate in the Slave States. But, with the rule of evidence prevailing there, I see insuperable difficulties in the way of conviction. If Congress choose to authorize criminal proceedings against Rebels, as is done by this bill, then in good faith they must see that the proceedings are not entirely nugatory, through failure of evidence, under the operation of an irrational rule of exclusion.

Mr. Clark said, that the Committee was influenced by the consideration, that under the bill slaves would become free on the conviction of their masters for treason; and the Committee “thought it would look a little like inducing the slave to come forward and swear against the master, … if we put such a provision in the bill; and we rejected it on that ground.”

Mr. Sumner replied:—

But the Senator will not forget that there are other slaves besides those of the master under trial, as well as colored persons who are not slaves. Whether slaves or not, even if freemen, the Senator knows well that there is one cruel rule of evidence everywhere in the Rebel States, which excludes the testimony of colored persons.

The amendment was rejected: Yeas 14, Nays 25.

This was the third move against exclusion of witnesses on account of color.[310]