Imagine the confusion of a patient searcher after truth at learning that the defendant of the pellucid skin, in an action brought against him by the darker-hued plaintiff, interposed certain pleas and defences which, while confessing the civil right of the plaintiff, avoided it by certain new matter of law, or of fact, not found in either the spirit or the letter of the constitutional amendments or of any subsequent legislation; that, by reason thereof, it not infrequently happened that a colored plaintiff was wholly denied the identical civil rights, privileges, and immunities accorded absolutely and without question to each and every other of the sixty millions of American citizens whose skin happened to be white; and that the records of the nation did not present a single instance in which a white-skinned man or woman had ever complained that he or she had been deprived of a civil right by the darker-skinned citizen, whilst the national and State dockets literally swarmed with controversies in which complaint was made by colored citizens that these very rights had been denied them by white citizens of the United States.
Before this dangerous anomaly in the administration and practical adjustment of civil rights, acting thus injuriously against one class of American citizens, can be removed, and the constitutional amendments, which form a part of the organic structure of American jurisprudence, cleared of all obscurity, evidently some unknown factor, as yet concealed, and operating in the dark, must be brought to light; for our investigator would learn that heretofore no white philanthropist, publicist, layman, or even common scribbler, had so far ventured to display either his temerity, his learning, or his ignorance as to attempt the solution of the white- and dark-skin rulings in the multitudinous array of the cases of Black Civil Rights v. White Civil Rights. However clear his discernment, he would have to confess himself puzzled by the mysterious workings of these rulings, and his confusion would be greatly increased when he learned that the judges who presided over the trials were never of the darker-skinned race, but were chosen by white and black voters because of the imposing splendor of their learning, the purity of their characters, their lofty patriotism, ample experience, and profound judgment.
