History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. William Horatio Barnes
also to purchase sites and buildings for schools and asylums, to be held as United States property until the refugees or freedmen shall purchase the same, or they shall be otherwise disposed of by the commissioner.
"Whenever in any State or district in which the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the rebellion, and wherein, in consequence of any State or local law, ordinance, police or other regulation, custom, or prejudice, any of the civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons (including the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate), are refused or denied to negroes, mulattoes, freedmen, refugees, or any other persons, on account of race, color, or any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or wherein they or any of them are subjected to any other or different punishment, pains, or penalties, for the commission of any act or offense, than are prescribed for white persons committing like acts or offenses, it is to be the duty of the President of the United States, through the commissioner, to extend military protection and jurisdiction over all cases affecting such persons so discriminated against.
"Any person who, under color of any State or local law, ordinance, police, or other regulation or custom, shall, in any State or district in which the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the rebellion, subject, or cause to be subjected, any negro, mulatto, freedman, refugee, or other person, on account of race or color, or any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or for any other cause, to the deprivation of any civil right secured to white persons, or to any other or different punishment than white persons are subject to for the commission of like acts or offenses, is to be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and be punished by fine not exceeding $1,000 or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both. It is to be the duty of the officers and agents of this bureau to take jurisdiction of and hear and determine all offenses committed against this provision; and also of all cases affecting negroes, mulattoes, freedmen, refugees, or other persons who are discriminated against in any of the particulars mentioned in this act, under such rules and regulations as the President of the United States, through the War Department, may prescribe. This jurisdiction is to cease and determine whenever the discrimination on account of which it is conferred ceases, and is in no event to be exercised in any State in which the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has not been interrupted by the rebellion, nor in any such State after it shall have been fully restored in all its constitutional relations to the United States, and the courts of the State and of the United States within its limits are not disturbed or stopped in the peaceable course of justice."
Other business occupying the attention of the Senate, the consideration of the Freedman's Bureau Bill was not practically entered upon until the 18th of January. On that day, Mr. Stewart made a speech ostensibly on this bill, but really on the question of reconstruction and negro suffrage, in reply to remarks by Mr. Wade on those subjects.
Mr. Trumbull moved as an amendment to the bill that occupants on land under General Sherman's special field order, dated at Savannah, January 16, 1865; should be confirmed in their possessions for the period of three years from the date of said order, and no person should be disturbed in said possession during the said three years unless a settlement should be made with said occupant by the owner satisfactory to the commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau.
Mr. Trumbull explained the circumstances under which the freedmen had obtained possessory titles to lands in Georgia, and urged the propriety of their being confirmed by Congress for three years. He said:
"I should be glad to go further. I would be glad, if we could, to secure to these people, upon any just principle, the fee of this land; but I do not see with what propriety we could except this particular tract of country out of all the other lands in the South, and appropriate it in fee to these parties. I think, having gone upon the land in good faith under the protection of the Government, we may protect them there for a reasonable time; and the opinion of the committee was that three years would be a reasonable time."
On the following day, Mr. Hendricks presented his objections to the bill in a speech of considerable length. He was followed by Mr. Trumbull in reply. As both were members of the Judiciary Committee from which the bill was reported, and both had carefully considered the reasons for and against the measure, their arguments are given at length.
[Illustration: Hon. T. A. Hendricks, Senator from Indiana.]
Mr. Hendricks said: "At the last session of Congress the original law creating that bureau was passed. We were then in the midst of the war; very considerable territory had been brought within the control of the Union troops and armies, and within the scope of that territory, it was said, there were many freedmen who must be protected by a bill of that sort; and it was mainly upon that argument that the bill was enacted. The Senate was very reluctant to enact the law creating the bureau as it now exists. There was so much hesitancy on the part of the Senate, that by a very large vote it refused to agree to the bill reported by the Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Sumner,] from a committee of conference, and I believe the honorable Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Trumbull,] who introduced this bill, himself voted against that bill; and why? That bill simply undertook to define the powers and duties of the Freedmen's Bureau and its agents, and the Senate would not agree to confer the powers that that bill upon its face seemed to confer, and it was voted down; and then the law as it now stands was enacted in general terms. There was very little gained, indeed, by the Senate refusing to pass the first bill and enacting the latter, for under the law as it passed, the Freedmen's Bureau assumed very nearly all the jurisdiction and to exercise all the powers contemplated in the bill reported by the Senator from Massachusetts.
"Now, sir, it is important to note very carefully the enlargement of the powers of this bureau proposed by this bill; and in the first place, it proposes to make the bureau permanent. The last Congress would not agree to this. The bill that the Senate voted down did not limit the duration of the bureau, and it was voted down, and the bill that the Senate agreed to provided that the bureau should continue during the war and only for one year after its termination. That was the judgment of the Senate at the last session. What has occurred since to change the judgment of the Senate in this important matter? What change in the condition of the country induces the Senate now to say that this shall be a permanent bureau or department of the Government, when at the last session it said it should cease to exist within one year after the conclusion of the war? Why, sir, it seems to me that the country is now, and especially the Southern States are now in better condition than the Senate had reason to expect when the law was enacted. Civil government has been restored in almost all the Southern States; the courts are restored in many of them; in many localities they are exercising their jurisdiction within their particular localities without let or hinderance; and why, I ask Senators, shall we make this bureau a perpetual and permanent institution of the Government when we refused to do it at the last session?
"I ask Senators, in the first place, if they are now, with the most satisfactory information that is before the body, willing to do that which they refused to do at the last session of Congress? We refused to pass the law when it proposed to establish a permanent department. Shall we now, when the war is over, when the States are returning to their places in the Union, when the citizens are returning to their allegiance, when peace and quiet, to a very large extent, prevail over that country, when the courts are reëstablished; is the Senate now, with this information before it, willing to make this a permanent bureau and department of the Government?
"The next proposition of the bill is, that it shall not be confined any longer to the Southern States, but that it shall have a government over the States of the North as well as of the South. The old law allowed the President to appoint a commissioner for each of the States that had been declared to be in rebellion—one for each of the eleven seceding States, not to exceed ten in all. This bill provides that the jurisdiction of the bureau shall extend wherever, within the limits of the United States, refugees or freedmen have gone. Indiana has not been a State in insurrection, and yet there are thousands of refugees and freedmen who have gone into that State within