Here is the duty of arbitrator and peacemaker, but no power or control. And this duty is applicable to differences of all kinds, where the freedmen are parties. Nothing can be more humane or less tyrannical. This is not all.
“In case such differences are carried before any tribunal, civil or military, they shall appear as next friends of the freedmen, so far as to see that the case is fairly stated and heard. And in all such proceedings there shall be no disability or exclusion on account of color.”
If not “arbitrators,” then the officers are to be “next friends,” to aid the freedmen in any litigation into which they may be drawn. Very little tyranny here. And this service is to be rendered in any tribunal, “civil or military”; so that, where the civil courts are closed, the freedmen may obtain justice in any military tribunal. But whether in a civil or military tribunal, there is to be no disability or exclusion on account of color. 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. Very little tyranny here.
Mr. Grimes. But, Mr. President, the case that was put by me was not where there was a controversy between the colored man and some third party, but where the Commissioner attempted to enforce the obligation of duty upon the colored man.… Now I want to know of the Senator if a Commissioner who undertakes to carry out the provisions of this bill may not, under the third section, avail himself of the military authority that may be in the department to enforce obedience,—and if he thinks it would be doing justice to the colored men in the department to leave them to the military control of the Commissioner, of whom we know nothing, and about whom we do not know whether he sympathises with the colored man or not. Is it right to leave these colored men to the military control of this Commissioner in order to enforce the obligation to labor?
Mr. Sumner. The Senator calls attention to another section, where it is provided that “the military commander within any department shall, on the application of the Assistant Commissioner thereof, supply all needful military support in the discharge of the duties of such Assistant Commissioner”; and he inquires if this does not authorize the Assistant Commissioner to use military power in making freedmen work. Let me say at once that the criticism of the Senator is absolutely novel. If the clause to which he refers could be employed to any such purpose, I beg to assure him it was not anticipated by the Committee. It was intended for a very different purpose, and in the interest of the freedman. 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. The occasion for this power seemed obvious. It was supposed that in the Rebel States there might be exposed districts where the plantations would be subject to incursion or ravage from the enemy, by which labor would be obstructed or disturbed, unless military protection were at hand. To remedy evils of that character this provision was introduced. Such is the object sought to be accomplished. It is protection, in the spirit of the whole bill, and nothing else. 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 not be permitted to arrive.
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 supply. 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.
Let the Senator bear these things in mind, and give us the advantage of his counsels. I shall welcome from him any suggestion, any proposition, any criticism, calculated to promote the object of the bill. The more he makes, the better. Let him be no niggard. But I trust he will pardon me, if I complain of inconsiderate assault, which, as it seems to me, can have no other effect than to injure the cause.
I have not done with the criticism of the Senator. It was on the fifth section, concerning the labor on abandoned plantations, that he bent his chief force. In the provisions of that section he found a new system of Slavery: sometimes it was Slavery outright, and sometimes it was Peon Slavery. Senators who did me the honor of listening to my remarks at the beginning of this debate will remember how I dwelt upon the importance of guarding against any revival of Slavery under any other name, whether of apprenticeship or adscription to the soil; and they may remember, perhaps, how I explained the impossibility of any such occurrence under the present bill, and showed that the freedman was guarded at all points. 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. The Senator read this section at length, and then sounded again particular clauses and phrases, striving to interpret them for Slavery. I will not read it at length; nor will I dwell on the first part of the section. Suffice it to say, that, so far as it describes the lands to be taken for occupation, it follows substantially the text of the order from the War Department, by which “all houses, tenements, lands, and plantations, except such as may be required for military purposes, which have been or may be deserted and abandoned by insurgents within the lines of the military occupation,” are placed under the supervision and control of the supervising special agents of the Treasury Department. Under this order the Secretary of the Treasury has been acting for several months,—doing with these lands precisely what the Senator so vehemently condemns. The present bill, so far as concerns the power of the Commissioner over the lands, does little more than reduce the order of the War Department to the text of a statute, thus imparting to it a certain legality which it does not now possess.
Passing from the lands to be occupied under the bill, the Senator next pictures the terrible fate of the freedmen laboring on these lands in pursuance of careful contracts. There seems no limit to the Senator’s anxiety lest they should be bound in Slavery. I welcome his generous solicitude. But I pray that he will not allow it to mislead his judgment or prevent him from seeing the case in its true character. Surely he must be unduly excited, or he could not find danger in these words:—