[81] Vol. iii, p. 202.
[82] "It gives me some satisfaction now to say that none of those statements of fact have ever been effectually controverted. I cannot speak with the same assurance of my conclusions and recommendations, for they were matters not of knowledge but of judgment. And we stood at that time face to face with a situation bristling with problems so complicated and puzzling that every proposed solution based upon assumptions ever so just, and supported by reasoning apparently ever so logical, was liable to turn out in practice apparently more mischievous than any other. In a great measure this has actually come to pass.... I am far from saying that somebody else might not have performed the task much better than I did. But I do think that this report is the best paper I have ever written on a public matter. The weakest part of it is that referring to negro suffrage—not as if the argument, as far as it goes, were wrong, but as it leaves out of consideration several aspects of the matter, the great importance of which has since become apparent." (Reminiscences, iii, 204, 209.)
[83] Cong. Globe, 1865-66, p. 1808.
[84] See Biography of J. L. M. Curry, by Alderman and Gordon, New York, 1911.
CHAPTER XVII
THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU AND CIVIL RIGHTS BILLS
On January 5, 1866, Trumbull introduced two measures which engrossed public attention during the next three months and enlarged the parting of the ways between Congress and the President. These were the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill. The former was a measure to continue in force and amend an act of Congress already in operation, but which would expire by limitation one year after the end of the war, and which had been passed to provide for needy and homeless whites, as well as blacks. It embraced also the temporary disposition of abandoned lands. Under its operation General Sherman had assigned some thousands of acres of abandoned land to freedmen for the purpose of giving them employment and enabling them to earn their own living, and they were in actual possession. Of course, the title to such lands would revert to the former owners, whenever military rule should come to an end. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill provided that in places where the ordinary course of judicial proceedings had been interrupted by the rebellion, and where any of the civil rights enjoyed by white persons were denied to other persons by reason of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, the latter should be under military protection and jurisdiction, which should be exercised by the Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau under orders of the President of the United States, and that any person, who, under color of any state or local law or custom, should infringe such rights, should be punished by fine or imprisonment or both. The courts authorized to hear and decide such cases were to consist of the officers and agents of the Bureau, without jury trial and without appeal; but this jurisdiction should not exist in any state after it should have been restored to its constitutional relations to the Union.
The last-mentioned feature of the bill brought up the question whether Congress had power under the Constitution in time of peace to pass laws for the ordinary administration of justice in the states. Senator Hendricks, of Indiana, had doubts on that point. In a debate on the 19th of January, 1866, he said:
My judgment is that under the second section of the [thirteenth] constitutional amendment we may pass such a law as will secure the freedom declared in the first section, but that we cannot go beyond that limitation.[85]