"full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of
person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens." So, too, they are
made subject to the same punishment, pains, and penalties in common with
white citizens, and to none other. Thus a perfect equality of the white
and colored races is attempted to be fixed by Federal law in every State
of the Union over the vast field of State jurisdiction covered by these
enumerated rights. In no one of these can any State ever exercise any
power of discrimination between the different races. In the exercise of
State policy over matters exclusively affecting the people of each State
it has frequently been thought expedient to discriminate between the
two races. By the statutes of some of the States, Northern as well
as Southern, it is enacted, for instance, that no white person shall
intermarry with a negro or mulatto. Chancellor Kent says, speaking of
the blacks, that--

Marriages between them and the whites are forbidden in some of the
States where slavery does not exist, and they are prohibited in all the
slaveholding States; and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are
revolting, and regarded as an offense against public decorum.

I do not say that this bill repeals State laws on the subject of
marriage between the two races, for as the whites are forbidden to
intermarry with the blacks, the blacks can only make such contracts as
the whites themselves are allowed to make, and therefore can not under
this bill enter into the marriage contract with the whites. I cite this
discrimination, however, as an instance of the State policy as to
discrimination, and to inquire whether if Congress can abrogate all
State laws of discrimination between the two races in the matter of real
estate, of suits, and of contracts generally Congress may not also
repeal the State laws as to the contract of marriage between the two