208 



CONGBESS, UNITED STATES. 



these freedmen; and, mark yon, the negro is 

 a great favorite in the legislation of Congress, 

 and the bill provides that it shall be ' good 

 land.' No land is to be provided for the poor 

 white men of this country, not even poor land ; 

 but when it comes to the negro race three mil- 

 lion acres must be set apai-t, and it must be 

 ' good land ' at that. I know that the bill pro- 

 vides that this land shall be rented to the negro : 

 but those of you who have observed the thrifti- 

 ness and skill with which the negro population 

 manage their agricultural operations, will find 

 that when Sambo comes to pay his rent his rent 

 will be pretty much like the rent of the indi- 

 vidual who, when his landlord called upon him 

 for his one-third of the produce of the farm, 

 said, 'sir, I did not produce a third.' He will 

 raise nothing to pay the rent. I estimate the 

 rental value of those three million acres of your 

 land at. five dollars per acre, and the free ne- 

 groes of the country are to be entitled to 

 $15,000,000 more in the way of rental of lands; 

 for no one can suppose that their benevolent 

 and faithful friends of the Republican party will 

 ever collect any rents from them, least of all 

 that any such rents will ever be received into 

 the Treasury of the United States. 



" The bill provides that these three million 

 acres shall be in allotments of forty acres each, 

 and each freedman is to have a farm of good 

 land of forty acres ; and you do not propose 

 to put the negro upon his little farm of forty 

 acres without a house to live in, because your 

 bill provides in another section that they shall 

 be provided with shelter. Then, after having 

 given him forty acres of good land to live upon, 

 what will it cost to build a very moderate 

 dwelling-house, with necessary out-houses, for 

 this favorite of the legislation of Congress? 

 Not less than $300, because the negro race now 

 think, at least, that they are equal to the white 

 race, and they have a right to believe, consid- 

 ering the legislation of Congress and the lauda- 

 tion which we hear every day of them, that 

 they are a little better. The erection of these 

 buildings will require an additional expenditure 

 of $22,500,000. Sir, the time was when it was 

 said that a white man, provided he behaved 

 himself, was as good as a negro ; but, looking 

 at the legislation of Congress and the tone of 

 the public press of the Northern States, I think 

 we shall have to come to the conclusion that 

 even if the white man does behave himself, he 

 is not quite as good as the negro, for you find 

 no bills introduced in Congress to furnish homes 

 and houses to the white men of this country, 

 whether poor or rich. 



" But, sir, this is not the only expense. You 

 say in this bill that these negroes shah 1 be fur- 

 nished with provisions, medicines, etc. When 

 you look around upon your own galleries and 

 see the free negroes who are living out of the 

 bounty of the Freedmen's Bureau sitting here 

 every day witnessing your deliberations, do 

 you suppose that the freedmen contemplated 

 by this bill are going to work when others who 



are living out of the Freedmen's Bureau are 

 witnessing every day the proceedings of Con- 

 gress ? Certainly not. I estimate, then, that 

 to these four million freedmen you would have 

 to give the small sum of fifty dollars each ; and 

 that would be a very small sum. This would 

 require a further expenditure of $200,000,000. 



" Your bill does not stop there ; but this en- 

 franchised race must be schooled ; and youi 

 bill provides that there shall be school -houses, 

 ay, and asylums too, erected for them. I sup- 

 pose that of the freedmen of the United States 

 there will bo nearly a million, including the 

 children and those who are grown, who need 

 schooling, and whom it will be necessary to 

 educate ; and mark you, the extent of the sup- 

 plies is left discretionary with the commis- 

 sioner; he may expend this money at his dis- 

 cretion. Well, sir, how many pupils will there 

 be, and how many school-houses will be re- 

 quired ? I suppose, first, there will be a million 

 pupils, young and old, of this whole race ; and 

 I suppose it would cost twenty dollars each to 

 school them. That would take $20,000,000. I 

 suppose it would take thirty thousand school- 

 houses, and your bill authorizes the building 

 of these houses, and that each school will cost 

 $300. Here is an additional item of expense 

 amounting in the aggregate to the sum of 

 $9,000,000. 



" Then, after the negro has his house built for 

 him and his forty acres of land allotted to him, 

 he has not the means, you tell us, of providing 

 for himself; his farm must be stocked, and 

 your bill, under the clause for ' furnishing the 

 necessary provisions,' gives the power to stock 

 it. What will that cost? I suppose it will 

 cost $300 to each of the seventy-five thousand 

 farms, which will amount to the further trifling 

 sum of $22,500,000. 



" Thus, sir, we see that the amount of ex- 

 penditure authorized under the provisions of 

 this bill, or the loss to the Government under 

 it, may be no less than $295,000,000, and can- 

 not reasonably be supposed to be less than 

 $250,000,000." 



Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, followed in support 

 of the bill, saying : " Mr. President, I was 

 about to say that this bill, as it stands, is in- 

 tended to meet a necessary or an inevitable re- 

 sult of the war a war initiated by the South, 

 carried on by them a contest long, bitter, and 

 exhausting. In the course of that war it be- 

 came necessary to take measures to emancipate 

 the slaves. Those measures were taken ; they 

 had their effect; and, as a consequence, the 

 Constitution has now been changed so that 

 slavery no longer exists in this country. A 

 large body of men, women, and_ children, mil- 

 lions in number, who had received no educa- 

 tion, who had been laboring from generation 

 to generation for their white owners and mas- 

 ters, able to own nothing, to accomplish noth- 

 ing, are thrown, without protection, without 

 aid, upon the charities of the world, in com- 

 munities hostile to them, in communities which 



