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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



judiciary, the Supreme Court of the United 

 States as the ultimate tribunal, no matter how il- 

 legal even if the orders of the President were 

 legal may have been the manner in which 

 those orders have been executed, the party 

 suffering, if the Constitution prohibited the 

 orders or the law prohibited the manner in 

 which the orders were executed, can in no 

 possible way bring his case for redress before 

 the courts of the United States. The Con- 

 gress of the United States by this law assumes 

 for itself to decide that these acts and procla- 

 mations are all legal, and that the manner in 

 which they have been performed is legal, and 

 proposes to deny to the courts jurisdiction over 

 any cases arising under this law in the exercise 

 of what it evidently, seems to suppose is its 

 paramount authority under the Constitution to 

 interfere with what would otherwise be the 

 jurisdiction of the courts of the United States. 

 It is in my view, therefore, neither more nor 

 less than an assumption on the part of Con- 

 gress, if the bill should pass, first to pass a law, 

 and secondly to say that that law shall never 

 be disputed, no matter how absolutely without 

 authority, under the Constitution, Congress may 

 bave been to pass it." 



Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, said : " Mr. 

 President, the English Parliament claims to 

 be omnipotent, and so it is. It may legalize 

 any act, however wrongfully committed, 

 and there is no remedy, because, according to 

 the theory of the British Constitution, there is 

 no power that can review the decision of that 

 body. This, however, is the first time in the 

 history of the Government of the United States 

 when a majority in Congress have solemnly 

 committed themselves in the form of a bill to 

 the doctrine that they possess omnipotence un- 

 der the Federal Constitution. I know that bills 

 like this have been passed in England when the 

 Crown has been guilty, in times of great public 

 danger, of doing that which was forbidden by 

 the Constitution of Great Britain ; but I never 

 expected to live to see the day when the Fed- 

 eral Congress, acting under a written consti- 

 tution, should claim for itself this omnipo- 

 tence of power. I have seen, it is true, during 

 the last few years step by step being taken in 

 this direction by Congress ; but now we have 

 it, in the form of a bill, boldly avowed to the 

 whole world, that this American Congress, 

 whose powers are defined and limited by a 

 written constitution, and which is only a coor- 

 dinate branch of the Government, possesses all 

 power under the Federal Constitution, that its 

 will is law, and that neither constitutions nor 

 any thing else can bind that will." 



Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, said : " This is an am- 

 nesty bill amnesty to the officers, and soldiers 

 who have preserved this Union by their valor 

 and by their devotion to the country. It simply 

 says that they shall not, for their good con- 

 duct, be annoyed by law-suits growing out of 

 the war ; that they shall have peace. I did 

 not suppose that those who are so very desir- 



ous that rebels should have immunity from 

 punishment, those who are so strenuously op- 

 posed to every measure adopted for security 

 lest in some way it might circumscribe the 

 claims of rebels, those who have been so fiercely 

 opposed to what has been deemed absolutely 

 necessary for the preservation of peace and 

 order, would be so violently opposed to giving 

 this small boon to the loyal soldier engaged in 

 this war, that, after they have risked their lives 

 for the preservation of the country and have 

 preserved its liberty, they shall not be'subjected 

 to law-suits growing out of their obedience to 

 the orders of the President." 



Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois, said: "I shall say 

 but a very few words in reply to what has been 

 said on this bill. Congress has been legislating 

 for several years to protect persons who were 

 engaged in the suppression of the rebellion from 

 prosecutions and suits for acts which were done 

 in the line of their duty and in obedience to 

 the orders of the President of the United 

 States and those acting under his authority. 

 Several statutes have been passed on that sub- 

 ject. The first, I think, was on the 3d of 

 March, 1863 ; and we passed an amendatory 

 act on the llth of May, 1866, protecting all 

 officers from having to pay damages in conse- 

 quence of such acts as are recited in this bill 

 and in the acts to which I have referred ; but 

 those statutes went no further than to author- 

 ize the party who was sued to transfer his case 

 from the State to the Federal court, and to 

 make the orders of the President, or the fact 

 that the party acted under a color of law in the 

 suppression of the rebellion, a defence to the 

 suit. This statute goes very little further. It 

 authorizes the party to make this defence in 

 the preliminary stages of the action, to plead 

 to the jurisdiction of the court. 



"The Senator from Maryland, by moving to 

 strike out the latter part of the bill as it stands, 

 recognizes, as I understand, the authority to 

 pass the first portion of this bill. Now, what 

 is it? It declares that these parties shall be 

 protected to the same extent that they would 

 have been protected by an existing law at the 

 time the acts were done. Is there any Senator 

 here who is not willing to go that far? 



" As I understand the bill, it intends to go 

 thus far and no farther : to protect the party 

 just as far as it would have been 'competent for 

 Congress to have protected him had a law 

 previously existed. Suppose Congress had 

 passed a law authorizing a military commission 

 if the existence of such a law, at the time, 

 would have warranted the commission then 

 the commission, having been held without 

 that law, and the parties having acted in obe- 

 dience to orders of those who sat upon that 

 commission, the effect 'of this bill is to pro- 

 tect them. I presume the Senator from Min- 

 nesota desires to protect them. It protects 

 them, although the act had no warrant of law 

 at that time. If Congress could have given 

 the warrant, then we want to give it now." 



