CONGRESS, U. S. 



351 



thority of the Government of the United States 

 may, if necessary, take into its service the 

 employe of any person, and the employer has 

 no remedy. 



" The power to do this cannot be questioned ; 

 and does the master hold his slave by any 

 stronger tenure ? You cannot draw a contract 

 so strong by which one person shall give his 

 time and services to another, that the para- 

 mount authority of the Government cannot 

 abrogate that contract, and take from your 

 control the person and bring him into the 

 service of the country. If this can be done in 

 reference to a hired man, or in reference to 

 your own child, why not in reference to a 

 slave ? By the laws of nearly all the States of 

 the Union, every parent has the control of his 

 child until he is twenty-one years of age ; and 

 yet, notwithstanding, if the necessity requires 

 it. if the public safety demands it, the Govern- 

 ment of the United States may take your sou 

 at eighteen years of age, or even younger, from 

 under your control, and bring him into the 

 army of the United States and into the battle- 

 field in defence of the 'honor and integrity of 

 the United States. And does a master hold 

 his slave by any stronger tenure than this ? 

 Why. sir. the persons, all the property, every- 

 thing connected with your enemy, may be 

 taken and condemned and destroyed, if it be 

 necessary to preserve the country ; and not only 

 of your enemy, but you may take the property 

 of your friend. We are now taxing the loyal 

 men of this country to the furthest limit, and 

 sacrificing thousands of valuable lives in sup- 

 port of this war. While all this is being done, 

 can it be pretended that we cannot touch the 

 negro of a man who is fighting against the 

 Government ? 



" The second section of the bill declares that 

 hereafter whenever any person claiming to be 

 entitled to the service or labor of any other 

 person, shall seek to enforce such claim, he 

 shall, in the first instance, and before any order 

 for the surrender of the person whose service 

 is claimed, establish not only his title to such 

 slave as now provided by law, but also that he 

 is and has been during the existing rebellion 

 loyal to the Government of the United States. 

 Is there any hardship in that provision ? Will 

 it not be a very easy matter for the owner of 

 any slave, when he sends his agent to reclaim 

 him. to send along the evidence that he him- 

 self is loyal to the Government of the United 

 States? 



Another portion of the section prohibits 

 the rendering of fugitives by our military and 

 naval officers, and forbids their undertaking to 

 piss upon the freedom or slavery of any person. 

 Xow we have various policies pursued by dif- 

 ferent commanders. One commander in the 

 West. General Halleck, forbids all fugitive slaves 

 to come within his lines. Xow, I want it upon 

 the statute-book that he shall not determine 

 anything about fugitive slaves, that he shall 

 not inquire whether a man is a fugitive slave 



or not ; and if he knows him to be so, that he 

 shall not surrender him. but shall treat him as 

 a person, as he is, and make no distinction be- 

 tween him and other persons whom he may 

 meet in the country. 



" The third section makes provision for the 

 colonization of negroes who may be freed by 

 the act, and are willing to emigrate. There is 

 a very great aversion in the West I know it 

 to be so in my State against having free 

 negroes come among us. Our people want 

 nothing to do with the negro. When we tell 

 them that slavery has been the cause of this re- 

 bellion, and that the traitors who are fighting 

 us are supported by their slaves, they admit it ; 

 but they say : ' What will you do with them ; 

 we do not want them set free to come in among 

 us; we know it is wrong that the rebels should 

 have the benefit of their services to fight us; 

 but what do you propose to do with them ? ' 

 This bill proposes and it is in harmony with 

 the recommendation of the President of the 

 United States to colonize them, and it author- 

 izes the President to provide for their settle- 

 ment in some country beyond the limits of the 

 United States." 



Mr. Willey, of Virginia, said : " I should like 

 to have heard the Senator's opinion as to where 

 and how he derives the constitutional power to 

 vest authority in the President of the United 

 States to make provision for the transportation, 

 colonization, and settlement of emancipated 

 negroes ; and moreover, if there be such power 

 and we shall be satisfied of its existence, in 

 what manner should the President exercise it? 

 Here is a general duty prescribed, a general 

 authority vested in the President, without any 

 limitation, without any prescription of the man- 

 ner in which he shall exercise it. Where is he 

 to get the funds ? How are they to be raised I" 1 



Mr. Ten Eyck, of Xew Jersey, also said : We 

 cannot close our eyes to the state of things 

 which must necessarily exist in the Southern 

 States, where they have this institution of hu- 

 man slavery, by setting at liberty all the slaves 

 that have heretofore belonged or that the reb- 

 els have claimed to belong to themselves, and 

 leaving them there in that locality to roam at 

 lanre under the circumstances in which they 

 will be placed in their ignorance, destitution, 

 want of knowledge, and want of care and prov- 

 idence. What is to become of them, and what 

 is to become, under such a state of things, of 

 the loyal Union men of the South, with millions 

 of freed slaves left to roam the country at large, 

 to go and come when and where they will ? I 

 may be mistaken in the view which I take of 

 this case ; but it seems to me that if we were 

 by an enactment to declare all the slaves of reb- 

 els in the South free, without making pro vision 

 of some kind for their removal to a district 

 where they may be safe, and where the com- 

 munity may be safe, where they themselves 

 may be taken care of, we may have ruin and 

 destruction and even all the horrors which have 

 been witnessed hi some of the West India LI- 



