and in 1871 the legislature[24] said that in the courts of that State there shall be no exclusion of any witness on account of color.
Virginia,[25] in 1866, provided that Negroes and Indians should be competent to testify in cases in which a Negro or Indian was a party. The testimony of Negroes had to be "ore tenus, and not by deposition." The next year, this law was repealed and a statute[26] enacted that colored persons should be competent to testify "as if they were white."
Thus far the legislation on Negro testimony in the Southern States only has been given. Similar questions have arisen in some of the other States. Thus, by an early statute of California[27] "no Indian, or person having one-half or more Indian blood, or Mongolian, or Chinese," was permitted to give evidence in favor of or against a white person. The Supreme Court[28] of the State held in 1869 that this statute violated the Civil Rights Bill and was therefore null and void. A minority of the court, however, dissented on the ground that the Civil Rights Bill itself was unconstitutional as interfering with the domestic relations of citizens.
A law of Indiana[29] of 1865 provided that all persons of competent age, without distinction as to color or blood, should be competent as witnesses, but provided that no Negro or mulatto who had come, or who should thereafter come into this State in violation of the thirteenth article of the Constitution of the State (prohibiting the immigration of free Negroes) should, while said article continued in force, be competent as a witness in any case in which a white person was a party in interest. It also provided[30]
