privileges enjoyed by white citizens, or because he was subjected to discrimination in the enjoyment of accommodations in inns, public conveyances, and places of amusement."
The court thus drew a line across, what seemed to them, the extravagant legislation of Congress in placing American citizens above degradation. They instituted a comparison between the civil rights of 1875 and ante-bellum freedom. Justice to the great framers of the Amendments and of the Civil-Rights Bill imperatively demands an answer to the question, What were the civil rights of free colored people according to the ante-bellum code? They were judicially expounded by the Supreme Court in Scott v. Sandford, concerning which case, Mr. Lincoln said, in speaking of a proposed measure, "it fits exactly the niche for the Dred Scott decision to come in and to declare the perfect freedom no freedom at all." In that pro-slavery opinion of Judge Taney it is declared that "neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in the Declaration of Independence;" that "they had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior race, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit;" that he was bought and sold, "and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it;" and that "this doctrine was at that time fixed and universal as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it, in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without for a moment doubting the correctness of this opinion."
