Alluding to the passage in the Senate of the bill to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment the Washington Chronicle of the 27th ult., refers to Senator Casserly’s position with regard to the clause which protects Chinamen from outrage as follows :
What was the dismay and mortification of the Democratic Senator from California to find that a section of the bill prohibited his partisan from oppressing the poor Chinese who might emigrate to our shores. How cruel to California Democrats to deprive them of the opportunity of gratifying their instincts by trampling upon a defenseless people! They would not hold their Senator guiltless for permitting such an act to pass the Senate without his protest! In order to set himself right with them he took an hour of the Senate’s time in trying to make it appear that the sixteenth section had not really passed, because he had not embraced an opportunity of making a speech against it. The fact that the Republican Senators did not see fit to make long speeches in dilating up its merits, and the Democratic Senators did not set off their customary tirades against it, by no means invalidates the section, and Mr. Casserly himself acknowledged that it was fairly enacted.
We cannot help baring the impression that Mr. Casserly, being an intelligent gentleman, with some sense of justice, notwithstanding his Democracy, was not so much dissatisfied as he seems to be with the passage of this section of the bill. It was veery judicious in him to be so much occupied with opposition to other parts of the bill as not to notice this. Democratic Senators have given such uniform and consistent opposition to every measure of liberal legislation which had previously been passed that it is a relief to know that one measure of justice and liberality has got through the Senate without their opposition.
The Carson Daily Appeal, Carson City, NV, June 5, 1870