use him or them to be arrested and imprisoned for
trial at such court of the United States or Territorial court as, by
this Act, has cognizance of the case." Any person who should obstruct
or hinder an officer in the performance of his duty or any person
lawfully assisting him in the arrest of an offender, or who should
attempt to rescue any person from the custody of an officer, was in
turn subjected to severe penalties.

The bill was designed, in short, to confer upon the manumitted negro
of the South the same civil rights enjoyed by the white man, with the
exception of the right of suffrage; to give him perfect equality in
all things before the law, and to nullify every State law wherever
existing, that should be in conflict with the enlarged provisions of
the Federal statute. It left no loophole for escape on the question
of the citizenship of the negro. As the decisions of the Supreme
Court of the United States then stood he was not a citizen of the
United States; and to prevent this question being raised the word
_inhabitant_ was used,--thus making the conferment of civil rights so
broad that it was impossible to defeat the full intent of the law by
any technical evasion. It was undoubtedly a very sweeping enactment,
the operation of which was not confined to the States which had been
slave-holding, but bore directly upon some of the free States where
the negro had always been deprived of certain rights fully guaranteed
to the white man.

Lest "inhabitant" might be held to mean "citizen" in the connection
in which it was used Mr. Trumbull proposed, at the initial point of
the discussion, to amend by inserting the declaration that "all persons
born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power are
hereby declared to be citizens of the United States without distinction
of color." Mr. Guthrie of Kentucky and Mr. Howard of Michigan both
asked whether that would naturalize all the Indians in the United
States. Mr. Trumbull thought not, because "we deal with the Indians
as foreigners--as separate nations;" but he was willing to change it
so as specifically to exclude Indians. Mr. Cowan asked "whether the
amendment would not have the effect of naturalizing children of Chinese
and gypsies born in this country." Mr. Trumbull replied that it
undoubtedly would. Mr. Cowan then thought it would be proper to hear
the senators from California on that question, because "at the present
rate of emigration the