that it is necessary to put these officers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau under the control of the military power.

"The Senator says the original law only embraced within its provisions the refugees in the rebellious States; and now this bill is extended to all the States, and he wants to know the reason. I will tell him. When the original bill was passed, slavery existed in Tennessee, Kentucky, Delaware, and in various other States. Since that time, by the constitutional amendment, it has been every-where abolished."

Mr. Saulsbury, aroused by the mention of his own State, interrupted the speaker: "I say, as one of the representatives of Delaware on this floor, that she had the proud and noble character of being the first to enter the Federal Union under a Constitution formed by equals. She has been the very last to obey a mandate, legislative or executive, for abolishing slavery. She has been the last slaveholding State, thank God, in America, and I am one of the last slaveholders in America.”

Mr. Trumbull continued: "Well, Mr. President, I do not see particularly what the declaration of the Senator from Delaware has to do with the question I am discussing. His State may have been the last to become free, but I presume that the State of Delaware, old as she is, being the first to adopt the Constitution, and noble as she is, will submit to the Constitution of the United States, which declares that there shall be no slavery within its jurisdiction." [Applause in the galleries.]

"It is necessary, Mr. President, to extend the Freedmen's Bureau beyond the rebel States in order to take in the State of Delaware, [laughter,] the loyal State of Delaware, I am happy to say, which did not engage in this wicked rebellion; and it is necessary to protect the freedmen in that State as well as elsewhere; and that is the reason for extending the Freedmen's Bureau beyond the limits of the rebellious States.

"Now, the Senator from Indiana says it extends all over the United States. Well, by its terms it does, though practically it can have little if any operation outside of the late slaveholding States. If freedmen should congregate in large numbers at Cairo, Illinois, or at Evansville, Indiana, and become a charge upon the people of those States, the Freedmen's Bureau would have a right to extend its jurisdiction over them, provide for their wants, secure for them employment, and place them in situations where they

could provide for themselves; and would the State of Illinois or the State of Indiana object to that? The provisions of the bill which would interfere with the laws of Indiana can have no operation there.

"Again, the Senator objects very much to the expense of this bureau. Why, sir, as I have once or twice before said, it is a part of the military establishment. I believe nearly all its officers at the present time are military officers, and by the provisions of the pending bill they are to receive no additional compensation when performing duties in the Freedmen's Bureau. The bill declares that the 'bureau may, in the discretion of the President, be placed under a commissioner and assistant commissioners, to be detailed from the army, in which event each officer so assigned to duty shall serve without increase of pay or allowances.'

"I shall necessarily, Mr. President, in following the Senator from Indiana, speak somewhat in a desultory manner; but I prefer to do so because I would rather meet the objections made directly than by any general speech. I will, therefore, take up his next objection, which is to the fifth section of the bill. That section proposes to confirm for three years the possessory titles granted by General Sherman. The Senator from Indiana admits that General Sherman had authority, when at the head of the army at Savannah, and these people were flocking around him and dependent upon him for support, to put them upon the abandoned lands; but he says that authority to put them there and maintain them there ceased with peace. Well, sir, a sufficient answer to that would be that peace has not yet come; the effects of war are not yet ended; the people of the States of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, where these lands are situated, are yet subject to military control. But I deny that if peace had come the authority of the Government to protect these people in their possessions would cease the moment it was declared. What are the facts? The owners of these plantations had abandoned them and entered the rebel army. They were contending against the army which General Sherman then commanded. Numerous colored people had flocked around General Sherman's army. It was necessary that he should supply them to save them from starvation. His commissariat was short. Here was this abandoned country, owned by men arrayed in arms against the Government. He, it is admitted, had authority to put these followers of his army upon

these lands, and authorize them to go to work and gain a subsistence if they could. They went on the lands to the number of forty or fifty thousand, commenced work, have made improvements; and now will the Senator from Indiana tell me that upon any principle of justice, humanity, or law, if peace had come when these laborers had a crop half gathered, the Government of the United States, having rightfully placed them in possession, and pledged its faith to protect them there for an uncertain period, could immediately have turned them off and put in possession those traitor owners who had abandoned their homes to fight against the Government?

"The Government having placed these people rightfully upon these lands, and they having expended their labor upon them, they had a right to be protected in their possessions, for some length of time after peace, on the principle of equity. That is all we propose to do by this bill. The committee thought it would not be more than a reasonable protection to allow them to remain for three years, they having been put upon these lands destitute, without any implements of husbandry, without cattle, horses, or any thing else with which to cultivate the land, and having, up to the present time, been able to raise very little at the expense of great labor. Perhaps the Senator thinks they ought not to remain so long. I will not dispute whether they shall go off at the end of one year or two years. The committee propose two years more. The order was dated in January, 1865, and we propose three years from that time, which will expire in January, 1868, or about two years from this time.

"On account of that provision of the bill, the Senator asks me the question whether the Government of the United States has the right, in a time of peace, to take property from one man and give it to another. I say no. Of course the Government of the United States has no authority, in a time of peace, by a legislative act, to say that the farm of the Senator from Indiana shall be given to the Senator from Ohio; I contend for no such principle. But following that up, the Senator wants to know by what authority you buy land or provide school-houses for these refugees. Have we not been providing school-houses for years? Is there a session of Congress when acts are not passed giving away public lands for the benefit of schools? But that does not come out of the Treasury, the Senator from Indiana will prob

ably answer. But how did you get the land to give away? Did you not buy it of the Indians? Are you not appropriating, every session of Congress, money by the million to extinguish the Indian title-money collected off his constituents and mine by taxation? We buy the land and then we give the land away for schools. Will the Senator tell me how that differs from giving the money? Does it make any difference whether we buy the land from the Indians and give it for the benefit of schools, or whether we buy it from some rebel and give-no, sir, use-it for the benefit of schools, with a view ultimately of selling it for at least its cost? I believe I would rather buy from the Indian; but still, if the traitor is to be permitted to have a title, we will buy it from him if we can purchase cheaper.

"Sir, it is a matter of economy to do this. The cheapest way by which you can save this race from starvation and destruction is to educate them. They will then soon become self-sustaining. The report of the Freedmen's Bureau shows that to-day more than seventy thousand black children are being taught in the schools which have been established in the South. We shall not long have to support any of these blacks out of the public Treasury if we educate and furnish them land upon which they can make a living for themselves. This is a very different thing from taking the land of A and giving it to B by an act of Congress.

"But the Senator is most alarmed at those sections of this bill which confer judicial authority upon the officers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau. He says if this authority can be exercised there is an end to all the reserved rights of the States, and this Government may do any thing. Not at all, sir. The authority, as I have already shown, to be exercised under the seventh and eighth sections, is a military authority, to be exerted only in regions of country where the civil tribunals are overthrown, and not there after they are restored. It is the same authority that we have been exercising all the time in the rebellious States; it is the same authority by virtue of which General Grant issued the order which I have just read. Here is a perfect and complete answer to the objection that is made to the seventh and eighth sections.

"But, says the Senator from Indiana, we have laws in Indiana prohibiting black people from marrying whites, and are you going

to disregard these laws? Are our laws enacted for the purpose of preventing amalgamation to be disregarded, and is a man to be punished because he undertakes to enforce them? I beg the Senator from Indiana to read the bill. One of its objects is to secure the same civil rights and subject to the same punishments persons of all races and colors. How does this interfere with the law of Indiana preventing marriages between whites and blacks? Are not both races treated alike by the law of Indiana? Does not the law make it just as much a crime for a white man to marry a black woman as for a black woman to marry a white man, and vice versa? I presume there is no discrimination in this respect, and therefore your law forbidding marriages between whites and blacks operates alike on both races. This bill does not interfere with it. If the negro is denied the right to marry a white person, the white person is equally denied the right to marry the negro. I see no discrimination against either in this respect that does not apply to both. Make the penalty the same on all classes of people for the same offense, and then no one can complain.

"My object in bringing forward these bills was to bring to the attention of Congress something that was practical, something upon which I hoped we all could agree. I have said nothing in these bills which are pending, and which have been recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary-and I speak of both of them because they have both been alluded to in this discussion-about the political rights of the negro. On that subject it is known that there are differences of opinion, but I trust there are no differences of opinion among the friends of the constitutional amendment, among those who are for real freedom to the black man, as to his being entitled to equality in civil rights. If that is not going as far as some gentlemen would desire, I say to them it is a step in the right direction. Let us go that far, and, going that far, we have the coöperation of the Executive Department; for the President has told us 'Good faith requires the security of the freedmen in their liberty and their property, their right to labor, and their right to claim the just return of their labor.' "Such, sir, is the language of the President of the United States in his annual message; and who in this chamber that is in favor of the freedom of the slave is not in favor of giving him equal and exact justice before the law? Sir, we can go along