prohibit a free negro . . . from keeping a house of entertainment, and subject him to trial before two justices of the peace and free slaveholders for *100 violating . . . this law. The statutes of South Carolina make it a highly penal offense for any person, white or colored, to teach slaves; and similar provisions are to be found running through all the statutes of the late slaveholding States. . . . The purpose of the bill . . . is to destroy all these discriminations. . . ." Cong. Globe, supra, 474.
In the House, after Mr. Bingham's original proposal for a constitutional amendment had been rejected, the suggestion was also advanced that the bill secured for all "the right of speech,. . . transit,it extended the protections of the Bill of Rights as against state invasion, he believed the measure to be unconstitutional because of the Supreme Court's holding in Barron v. Baltimore, supra. While favoring the extension of the Bill of Rights guarantees as against state invasion, he thought this could be done only by passage of his amendment. His second objection to the Bill was that, in his view, it would go beyond his objective of making the states observe the Bill of Rights and would actually strip the states of power to govern, centralizing all power in the Federal Government. To this he was opposed. His views are in part reflected by his own remarks and the answers to him by Mr. Wilson. Mr. Bingham said, in part:
*101