CONGRESS, U. S. 



of the earth with the blunders of this Adminis- 

 tration would have been destroyed and utterly 

 ruined. It shows the immense resources of this 

 country and its great powers of endurance, 

 when it can stand so many blunders and so 

 much mismanagement. But, sir, suppose we 

 adopt a little different policy ; suppose that in- 

 stead of pursuing this policy that has done so 

 much michief we turn our attention to another. 

 We have the lights of history thrown along 

 our path. Let us be instructed by them. Let 

 us proclaim to these people real amnesty not 

 such as has been proclaimed by Mr. Lincoln 

 and give them six or nine months to accept it, 

 and limit the time of its operation. Do that, 

 and this difficulty will be settled very speedily. 

 Open some door to those men who have gone 

 into rebellion by which they can escape from 

 the position which they are in, and they will 

 retire from it very soon. My opinion is that if 

 the President of the United States had pro- 

 claimed universal amnesty at any time within 

 the last eighteen months, this war would now 

 be over." 



On the 21st of March the subject came up 

 r<gain in the Senate, on the following amend- 

 ment, proposed by Mr. Wilson, of Massachu- 

 setts : 



That when any person of African descent, whose 

 service or labor is claimed in any State under the laws 

 thereof, shall be mustered into the military or naval 

 service of the United States, his wife, meaning there- 

 by the woman regarded and treated by him as such, 

 and his children, if any he have, shall forever there- 

 after be free, any law, usage, or custom whatever to 

 the contrary notwithstanding. 



Mr. Davis offered the following as an amend- 

 ment to the amendment : 



And the loyal owner or owners of the wife or chil- 

 dren of all slaves taken into the military service of 

 the United States shall be entitled to a just com- 

 pensation for such wife and children of said slaves, 

 which may be taken from such owner or owners, to be 

 ascertained by three commissioners to be appointed 

 by the judge of the United States district court for 

 the district in which the wife and children of any 

 slave so mustered into the military service may reside, 

 which commissioners shall make a detailed report to 

 said judge, who shall approve or remand the same 

 to the said commissioners, and when the report shall 

 have been affirmed by said judge, the owner or own- 

 ers of any wife and children aforesaid, shall be paid 

 such sums as said report may state they are entitled 

 to, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise 

 appropriated. 



He said : " Mr. President, I assumed some days 

 ago, and I think established by the most over- 

 whelming amount of authority, that property ex- 

 isted in slaves, and furthermore, that I thought 

 no sane man could controvert that position. I 

 shall consider both these propositions to be 

 established by the authorities which I then ad- 

 duced, and shall treat the subject as though the 

 property of the owners of slaves, as well in the 

 husband that is taken into the military service 

 as in his wife and children, was conceded ; at 

 any rate that it is established. 



" I hold, sir, that the Constitution and the 

 laws in relation to private property, and the 



power of the General Government over private 

 property, are the same exactly without regard 

 to the class of property. The General Govern, 

 ment has no higher right to interfere with prop- 

 erty in slaves than it has in lands, or horses, 

 or any other subject of property. Here is a 

 plainly-written provision of the Constitution 

 of the United States, and almost every State in 

 the Union has in its constitution a similar pro- 

 vision : 



No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or prop- 

 erty, without due process of law; nor shall private 

 property be taken for public use, without just com- 

 pensation. 



" Sir, what does this bill propose to do ? To 

 take the wife and the child of every slave man 

 who may be mustered into the military service of 

 the United States from their owners, not only 

 without just compensation but without any 

 compensation at all. Was there ever a more 

 unjust and unconstitutional proposition made 

 in a legislative body ? I estimate that the aver- 

 age number of slaves to the soldier that would 

 be taken by this provision would be four a 

 wife and three children. The average price 

 of the wife and three children would be at 

 least $500, and I believe more. I have entire 

 confidence that if the United States Govern- 

 ment would cease its war upon that property it 

 would soon rise largely above that sum. It is 

 now proposed in the Senate of the United 

 States, as a legislative measure, under a Consti- 

 tution guaranteeing to all property-holders a just 

 compensation for their property before it shall 

 be taken for public use, to deprive the owners 

 of every such wife and children of them of a 

 property worth $2,000, without making any 

 compensation for that property." 



Mr. Wilkinson, of Minnesota, dissented, say- 

 ing : " Mr. President, if I believed that slaves 

 were property, if I entertained on that question 

 the same views which are entertained by the 

 Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Davis), I should 

 certainly vote for his amendment. If I believed 

 that under the Constitution of the United 

 States slaves are property in the sense in which 

 the honorable Senator regards them, I should 

 support his amendment. But as I do not believe 

 that a human being who is in the Constitution 

 denominated a ' person ' is to be regarded as 

 property in the same sense in which a horse or 

 a mule is considered property, I dissent entirely 

 from the positions he has assumed. 



" This bill, Mr. President, is to give freedom 

 to the jsvives and children of the soldiers who 

 fight our battles for the Government and for 

 freedom. It has been claimed that if this bill 

 shall pass it will work the emancipation of the 

 whole negro race within the United States. It 

 has also been argued that it is unjust to free the 

 wife and children of a soldier in our Army 

 where they belong to or are claimed as the 

 slaves of a loyal man. To this I answer that it 

 will be equally unjust to free the soldier him- 

 self where he belongs to a party who is loyal to 

 the Government. Yet nobody claims even the 



