280 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



an opportunity to perfect or modify the bill, 

 as the House thought proper." 



Mr. Holman further said : " There is no in- 

 tention, or at least wish, to filibuster upon this 

 bill, and there is no gentleman, I presume, op- 

 posed to its details who cares to discuss it, un- 

 less an opportunity to offer amendments is 

 afforded. For what can debate amount to 

 without an opportunity to amend ? It is not 

 for the mere purpose of expressing opinions 

 hostile to the measure that discussion is de- 

 sired, but for the purpose of perfecting the bill, 

 so that, shorn of its objectionable features, it 

 may pass with some degree of unanimity 

 through this house. It is important that a 

 well-digested militia bill should be passed by 

 Congress, curing the defects in the existing 

 law." 



Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, moved to amend 

 the motion to refer by instructing the commit- 

 tee to report back the bill with the following 

 provision : 



That it shall be the duty of the commander of troops 

 at any post, in any State, on the days of election, by 

 the citizens of such State, held for the purpose of elect- 

 ing State officers, or officers of the United States, or 

 Representatives to Co_ngress, or electors for the Pres- 

 ident and Vice President, to remove and keep his 

 troops at least one mile from the place of voting during 

 said election. 



Mr. Cox, of Ohio'moved to amend by adopt- 

 ing the following proviso : 



Provided, That no one shall be enrolled under this 

 act except able-bodied white male citizens of the 

 United States. 



An extended discussion ensued, involving"the 

 general administration of public affairs rather 

 than the points of the bill, which were only 

 incidentally mentioned. Mr. Biddle, of Penn- 

 sylvania, urged objections to the bill as fol- 

 lows : " This is part of a series of measures, 

 which, to my mind, seem materially to alter 

 the construction of the Government under 

 which we live. The bill to transfer to the 

 President, without limitation of time or place, 

 our power over the writ of habeas corpus, the 

 bill of indemnity which, to use the words of 

 the Senate's amendment, secures for all wrongs 

 or trespasses committed by any officer of the 

 Government full immunity if he pleads in the 

 courts of justice the order of the President, and 

 which also deprives State courts of their juris- 

 diction in such cases ; the bank bill, which puts 

 the purse strings in the same hand with the 

 sword these bills, to my mind, couple them- 

 selves with this bill, and they seem to me, taken 

 together, to change the whole framework of 

 this Government, and instead of the constitu- 

 tional Government which was originally so 

 carefully devised for this country, they leave ns 

 a system which does not materially differ, ac- 

 cording to any definition I can frame, from the 

 despotism of France or of Russia. 



" This particular bill, to sum it up in a word, 

 for I shall not continue at any length these 

 general objections, turns the militia of the 

 United States into a regular army. That is 



its leading feature. I do not intend to animad- 

 vert upon small particulars, such as, for in- 

 stance, that while the executive departments 

 of the Government are exempted from the 

 draft, members of Congress are made subject to 

 it. I allude to that merely as one of those 

 straws which shows which way the wind blows 

 in these times. But the two sections to which 

 I hoped to offer amendments successfully are 

 the fifth and seventh sections of this bill. 



" Look at these provisions : a provost-marshal 

 in every congressional district, to ' inquire into 

 and report all treasonable practices,' arresting 

 summarily under this act, or under no act, but 

 under some order or proclamation, any one who 

 may be obnoxious to him or his superiors. 

 Five of tfiese functionaries will reign at once in 

 Philadelphia twenty-five in Pennsylvania ; a 

 proportional number in all the other States. 

 Why, Athens had but thirty imposed on her by 

 military power, and such was their rule that, in 

 Grecian history, the year of the thirty tyrants 

 was known as ' the year of anarchy.' 



" These two sections, Mr. Speaker, cover the 

 whole country with a network of military au- 

 thority. For the first time this new character 

 in civil society, the provost-marshal, is recog- 

 nized by law, and without those limitations on 

 his authority which are necessary for the pro- 

 tection of the citizen from those extraordinary 

 abuses of power of which we have already seen 

 so many examples. I do not speculate on what 

 will be the construction of the authority of 

 these officers. I have no occasion to speculate 

 on it. I presume that we may fairly ' judge 

 the future by the past.' 



" In order, Mr. Speaker, to exhibit the more 

 clearly the aim of the course of argument 

 which I am pursuing, I will state to the House 

 the general purport of the amendments which 

 it is the object of my remarks to recommend 

 to its favor. At the end of the seventh section, 

 which gives vague powers to provost-marshals 

 to inquire into the vague 'offence of treasonable 

 practices, I propose to add a proviso, that noth- 

 ing in this act contained shall authorize the ar- 

 rest or trial by military authority of any per- 

 son who is not in the military service of the 

 United States, nor drafted into the same under 

 the provisions of this act ; nor shall the said 

 provost-marshal, or any other officer of the 

 united States interfere with the lawful exer- 

 cise of the elective franchise in any State or 

 Territory wherein the execution of the laws of 

 the United States is not obstructed by force of 

 arms." 



Mr. Wright, of Pennsylvania, also objected 

 to it as interfering with the personal liberty of 

 the citizen, thus: "There is, then, the great 

 question involved in the bill of depriving the citi- 

 zen of his personal liberty without a trial by jury, 

 or even without the ordinary forms of law ; and 

 that citizen may be the most loyal man in the 

 land. You put at defiance the constitutional safe- 

 guards which have been wisely placed around 

 him. This House cannot have forgotten the 



