I ask what is a ichite man ? Is it the color of the skin that constitutes a white man ? Then there a]^3 twenty members of this House who are not white men by tBat criterion. I pledge myself to bring forward a hundred respectable colored men of this city with complexions whiter than those of twenty members of this House. Would you then say, would the courts say, that this should be settled by going into the genealogy of the per- son ? In this country it is a strnnge idea to look into a man's genealogy to ascertain whether he has a right to vole. Tell me why you insist on giving this pri\ilege to the worst of your own color, while you refuse it to the best of those who have a portion of the blood of anothei race?"
The southern members rejected with scorn all recognition of the Republic oi Hayti, on account of the complex- ion of its citizens ; and Mr. Adams incurred their indigna-.
tion by zealously maintaining the duty and policy of forming diplomatic relations with it.
In 1839, between thirty and forty Africans, recently imported into Havana, on their way from that port to the plantations of their two purchasers, took possession of the vessel, and arrived with their captive masters in our waters. The whole sympathy of the Government and of the slaveholders was immediately enlisted in behalf of the two men, who, in defiance of law and treaties, had ob- tained possession of these Africans, as legally entitled to freedom as themselves, and who had attempted to avoid capture by British cruizers by means of false and fraudu- lent Custom House passports. The case was brought into the Supreme Court of the United States, and Mr. Adams vokmteered his services as their counsel. He em- braced the opportunity of exposing the inhuman subserv- iency of the Government to the slaveholding interest, and obtained a judgment in behalf of the freedom of the un- fortunate Africans.