History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. William Horatio Barnes
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 probably 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 hand in hand together to the consummation of this great object of securing to every human being within the jurisdiction of the republic equal rights before the law, and I preferred to seek for points of agreement between all the departments of Government, rather than to hunt for points of divergence. I have not said any thing in my remarks about reconstruction. I have not attempted to discuss the question whether these States are in the Union or out of the Union, and so much has been said upon that subject that I am almost ready to exclaim with one of old, 'I know not whether they are in the body or out of the body; God knoweth.' It is enough for me to know that the State organizations in several States of the Union have been usurped and overthrown, and that up to the present time no State organization has been inaugurated in either of them which the various departments of Government, or any department of the Government, has recognized as placing the States in full possession of all the constitutional rights pertaining to States in full communion with the Union.
"The Executive has not recognized any one, for he still continues to exercise military jurisdiction and to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in all of them. Congress has not recognized any of them, as we all know; and until Congress and the Executive do recognize them, let us make use of the Freedmen's Bureau, already established, to protect the colored race in their rights; and when these States shall be admitted, and the authority of the Freedmen's Bureau as a court shall cease and determine, as it must when civil authority is fully restored, let us provide, then, by other laws, for protecting all people in their equal civil rights before the law. If we can pass such measures, they receive executive sanction, and it shall be understood that it is the policy of the Government that the rights of the colored men are to be protected by the States if they will, but by the Federal Government if they will not; that at all hazards, and under all circumstances, there shall be impartiality among all classes in civil rights throughout the land. If we can do this, much of the apprehension and anxiety now existing in the loyal States will be allayed, and a great obstacle to an early restoration of the insurgent States to their constitutional relations in the Union will be removed.
"If the people in the rebellious States can be made to understand that it is the fixed and determined policy of the Government that the colored people shall be protected in their civil rights, they themselves will adopt the necessary measures to protect them; and that will dispense with the Freedmen's Bureau and all other Federal legislation for their protection. The design of these bills is not, as the Senator from Indiana would have us believe, to consolidate all power in the Federal Government, or to interfere with the domestic regulations of any of the States, except so far as to carry out a constitutional provision which is the supreme law of the land. If the States will not do it, then it is incumbent on Congress to do it. But if the States will do it, then the Freedmen's Bureau will be removed, and the authority proposed to be given by the other bill will have no operation.
"Sir, I trust there may be no occasion long to exercise the authority conferred by this bill. I hope that the people of the rebellious States themselves will conform to the existing condition of things. I do not expect them to change all their opinions and prejudices. I do not expect them to rejoice that they have been discomfited. But they acknowledge that the war is over; they agree that they can no longer contend in arms against the Government; they say they are willing to submit to