n of marriage between the races.
He supported the bill in a speech of great strength and legal research.
He admitted at the outset that "some of the questions presented by the
measure are not entirely free from defects. Precedents, both judicial
and legislative, are found in sharp conflict concerning them. The
line which divides these precedents is generally found to be the same
which separates the early from the later days of the Republic. The
farther the Republic drifted from the old moorings of the equality of
human rights, the more numerous became the judicial and legislative
utterances in conflict with some of the leading features sought to be
re-established by this bill."

The debate was continued by Mr. Rogers of New Jersey, in the
opposition, by Mr. Russell Thayer of Pennsylvania, who made an
uncommonly able speech in its favor, and by Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin,
who tersely presented the objections entertained by the Democratic
party to such legislation. There were some apprehensions in the
minds of the members on both sides of the House that the broad
character of the bill might include the right of suffrage, but to
prevent that result Mr. Wilson moved to add a new section declaring
that "nothing in this Act shall be so construed as to affect the laws
of any State concerning the right of suffrage." Mr. Wilson said that
the amendment he proposed did not change his own construction of the
bill; he did not believe the term "civil rights" included the right of
suffrage; he offered it simply from excessive caution, because certain
gentlemen feared trouble might arise from the language of the bill.
The amendment was unanimously agreed to, not one voice on either side
of the House being raised against it. Mr. Bingham, Mr. Raymond and
other prominent members of the House, to the number of forty in all,
debated the bill exhaustively. It was passed by 111 _yeas_ to 38 _nays_.

The bill reached the President on the 18th of March (1866), and on the
27th he sent to the Senate a message regretting that it contained
provisions which he could not approve. "I am therefore constrained,"
he said, "to return it to the Senate, in which it originated, with my
objections to its becoming a law." The President stated that by the
first section the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to
taxation, the people called gypsies, as well as the entire race
designated as black,--people of color, negroes, mulattoes, and perso