whatever his race or color. I submit that it is a serious matter of
doubt whether or not that simple provision would not be sufficient to
defeat this constitutional amendment which we here so laboriously
enact and submit to the States."

Mr. Conkling thought that this criticism could have no practical
importance, from the fact that the proposed amendment was to operate
in this country, where one race, and only one, has been held in
servitude.

Mr. Pike replied: "In no State in the South has slavery been confined
to any one race. So far as I am acquainted with their statutes, in no
State has slavery been confined to the African race. I know of no
slave statute, and I have examined the matter with some care, which
says that Africans alone shall be slaves. So much for race. As to
color, it was a common thing throughout the whole South to advertise
runaway slaves as having light hair and blue eyes, and all the
indications of the Caucasian race, and 'passing themselves off for
white men.' I say further to the honorable gentleman from New York,
that well-authenticated instances exist in every slave State where men
of Caucasian descent, of Anglo-Saxon blood, have been confined in
slavery, and they and their posterity held as slaves; so that not only
free blacks were found every-where, but white slaves also abounded."

Mr. Kelley, who next addressed the House, also brought proof to
controvert the "hasty assertion" that but one race had been enslaved:
"The assertion that white persons have been sold into slavery does not
depend on common report, but is proven by the reports of the superior
courts of almost every Southern State. One poor German woman, who had
arrived in our country at thirteen years of age, was released from
slavery by the Supreme Court of Louisiana, but not until she had
become the mother of three mulatto children, her owner having mated
her with one of his darker slaves. Toward the close of the last
century, the Supreme Court of New Jersey decided that American Indians
could be reduced to and legally held in slavery. And so long ago as
1741 white slave women were so common in North Carolina, that the
Legislature passed a law dooming to slavery the child of every 'white
servant woman' born of an Indian father."

Mr. Kelley thought that the enforcement of this long-dormant power of
the Constitution would be for the benefit not merely of the poor, the
ignorant, and the weak, but also of the wise, "the strong,