272 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



able rule which this Congress or any other 

 Congress may adopt in its adjustment, may 

 reach as high as five hundred millions more. 

 That may be possibly too large an estimate, 

 but gentlemen will see at once that how large 

 it may be and whether it reaches this limit 

 must depend on the rule which Congress shall 

 apply to the adjustment of those claims how 

 widely the door is thrown open. If it is dis- 

 posed to admit not only all legal claims, but 

 all claims that are equitable in the ordinary 

 sense of that word, and if we also include 

 pensions, I think I do not state the case too 

 strongly when I say it would reach five hun- 

 dred millions. 



" Do not fail to observe one other fact of our 

 financial condition ; and that is, that when you 

 get the national debt of this country, liquidated 

 and unliquidated, you do not reach the whole 

 marrow of the thing. Your State, county, 

 city, town, and parish debts all over this coun- 

 try, taken together, will make an aggregate 

 approaching at least half of the liquidated na- 

 tional debt at the end of the present fiscal year ; 

 and when you combine these debts, the liqui- 

 dated debt, the unliquidated debt, the liability 

 for pensions, the State, county, city, and town 

 debts, and consider, also, how much higher in- 

 terest we are paying than that paid by any 

 other people, the fact will stare you in the face 

 that this nation at the end of the next fiscal 

 year will be more heavily laden with debt than 

 any nation in Europe. 



" But to the money aspect of the question : 

 the bill, without disturbing the present army 

 at all, without diminution of its numbers, au- 

 thorizes the President of the United States to 

 enlist one hundred thousand, or two hundred 

 thousand, or three hundred thousand men of 

 African descent ; and every new man you put 

 into your army, according to the estimates of 

 intelligent gentlemen on the floor of this House, 

 costs you from seven hundred to a thousand 

 dollars, and if you raise one hundred and fifty 

 thousand men ? as was proposed by the gentle- 

 man from Pennsylvania originally, you increase 

 your expenses from one hundred to one hun- 

 dred and fifty millions a year. 



"Mr. Speaker, let me now turn to another 

 feature of this bill, the term of enlistment. It 

 provides for the enlistment of men for a period 

 of five years. "Why five years? I think there 

 is more significance in that word ' five ' in this 

 bill than in all other words written in it. Its 

 possible objects are not written. Do you mean 

 to say to the country that it is your expectation, 

 your reasonable expectation, and the basis on 

 which you propose to make enlistments for 

 your army, that this war is to continue for a 

 period of five years longer ? Do you mean to 

 say to the country that on the vast scale on 

 which the war is now prosecuted, and at the 

 expense of treasure and life at which it is pros- 

 ecuted, you expect to carry it on for five years 

 more ? If such be your expectation it is just 

 and manly to say so. If such be not your ex- 



pectation, pray add nothing to the anxiety and 

 alarm of the people. 



" Mr. Speaker, if the object of this war is 

 restoration, that involves a state of things 

 present or future which will soon be developed 

 and felt. A war for restoration proceeds upon 

 the ground that you will find in the rebel 

 States as your army advances and protection is 

 made possible, men who are ready to rally 

 again under the blessed flag of the Union and 

 to return to their allegiance to the National 

 Government. If that feeling exists and is de- 

 veloped, certainly it will be developed before 

 the lapse of five years ; never, indeed, by this 

 instrumentality, never. But if the object of 

 this war is not restoration ; if the purpose and 

 object of this war are as is sometimes declared 

 in the heated and brilliant rhetoric of gentle- 

 men on your left subjugation, extermination, 

 the recolonization of the whole rebel territory 

 then your term of enlistment is altogether 

 too short altogether too short. 



"If, Mr. Speaker, the object be extermina- 

 tion, there is not one of these pages, snatched 

 prematurely from his mother's arms or cra- 

 dle, who will live to see the end. You have 

 been waging the war two years, and yet the 

 number of inhabitants in the rebel States to- 

 day is larger than it was when the war was 

 bepun. You cannot, probably, if you would, 

 and you would not if you could, carry on a 

 war with a fierceness and severity that would 

 destroy life as rapidly as it germinates. Men, 

 in war even, will marry and women be given 

 in marriage ; children will be born to them, 

 and their mothers will hold them to their flow- 

 ing breasts as the storm sweeps by. The angel 

 of life will triumph over the angel of death. 

 Such is the blessed economy of God. The ex- 

 termination of eight millions of people, with 

 the use of all our power and all our resources, 

 is a moral and physical impossibility. Of this 

 war, if it is carried on for extermination, 

 neither you nor I, Mr. Speaker, may hope to 

 see its close but in one way, to us the way of 

 deepest humiliation, the intervention of other* 

 nations to stay its ravages. "Who talks of a 

 war of extermination is simply mad." 



The debate was further continued at some 

 length in the House ; the substitutes were re- 

 jected, and the bill passed in the following . 

 form: 



Be it enacted ly tJie Senate and Howe f Represen- 

 tatives of the United States of America in Congress 

 assembled, That the President be, and is hereby au- 

 thorized to enroll, arm, equip, and receive into the 

 land and naval service of the United States such num- 

 ber of volunteers of African descent as he may deem 

 useful to suppress the present rebellion, for such terna 

 of service as he may prescribe, not exceeding five 

 years. The said volunteers to be organized according 

 to the regulations of the branch of service in which 

 they may be enlisted, to receive the same rations, 

 clothing, and equipments as other volunteers, and u 

 monthly pay not to exceed that of other volunteers; to 

 be officered by persons appointed and commissioned b; 

 the President, and to be governed by the rules and ar- 

 ticles of war and such other rules and regulations a& 



