When we consider how this disability and exclusion have been the badge of Slavery and its pretensions, we may find in their positive prohibition a new token of the spirit in which this bill is conceived.

Is it right to leave these colored men to the military control of this Commissioner in order to enforce the obligation to labor?

Here, again, I remind the Senator that nothing can be done by any officer, military or civil, toward a freedman, which cannot be done toward any other citizen.

If this military power can be used against one, it can be equally used against the other.

If by any possibility there can be the chance of an abuse of this power, beyond what is incident to every trust, I shall be glad to take advantage of the criticism of the Senator, and amend the bill so that the evil he snuffs afar shall…

The Senator cannot bear the thought of freedmen exposed to the tyranny of military power.

But does he not forget that at this moment they are subject to this tyranny?

It is to remove them from all this arbitrary control and uncertain protection that we establish a bureau, which shall be an agency of the civil power, charged to surround the freedmen with every safeguard the Constitution and laws can…

Show me any provision in one or the other for the protection of human rights, and I claim it at once for the freedman against any oppressor, whatever his office or name.

In the provisions of that section he found a new system of Slavery: sometimes it was Slavery outright, and sometimes it was Peon Slavery.

And yet, in the face of this exposition, and of the positive text,--better than any exposition,--the cry is sounded, that the liberty of the freedman is in danger.

There seems no limit to the Senator’s anxiety lest they should be bound in Slavery.

In each case the laborer must be treated as a freeman.

The contract is not to be for a term beyond twelve months; so that, by no excuse, and by no exercise of power, can the freedman be put even under a shadow of control beyond this brief term.

He is in all respects a freeman, laboring on lands according to careful contract for a limited period.

But I cannot forbear saying, that, to my mind, the Senator throws himself in the way of a humane undertaking, and practically abandons the claims of the oppressed race to which he and I both owe service.

And every such freedman shall be treated in every respect as a freeman, with all proper remedies in courts of justice; and no power or control shall be exercised with regard to him, except in conformity with law.

For such reasons, Sir, and yielding to such influences, the Committee, after careful and conscientious deliberation, determined to recommend a new department, not unlike that of Agriculture, which should not be subject either to the…

It was felt that in doing this they were doing the best for the cause, and they were not insensible also to the consideration that in this way they might secure a higher order of talent and of character for the service.

Men fitted for Treasury agents or fitted for War might not always be the best for the care of freedmen.

The man for this humane service should be humane by nature, and should sympathize especially with the race so long neglected and outraged.

Already the President, by irrepealable proclamation, has declared all slaves free.

An Amendment to the Constitution will, in the course of a few weeks, place their freedom under the sanction of Constitutional Law.

The debt of justice will not be paid, if we do not take them by the hand in their passage from the house of bondage to the house of freedom: and this is what is proposed by the present measure.

The temporary care of the freedman is the complement of Emancipation; but the general welfare is involved in the performance of this duty.