"But what harm is to result from it? Who is to be oppressed? What white man fleeing, in the language of my colleague, pursued by these harpies of the law, is in danger of having his rights stricken down? What does the bill provide? It places all men upon an equality, and unless the white man violates the law, he is in no danger. It takes no rights from any white man. It simply places others on the same platform upon which he stands; and if he would invoke the power of local prejudice to override the laws of the country, this is no Government unless the military may be called in to enforce the order of the civil courts and obedience to the laws of the country."
Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, said, in answer to some objections to the bill urged by Mr. Guthrie: "The Senator tells us that the emancipated men ought to have their civil rights, that the black codes fell with slavery; but the Senator forgets that at least six of the reörganized States in their new Legislatures have passed laws wholly incompatible with the freedom of these freedmen; and so atrocious are the provisions of these laws, and so persistently are they carried into effect by the local authorities, that General Thomas, in Mississippi, General Swayne, in Alabama, General Sickles, in South Carolina, and General Terry, in Virginia, have issued positive orders, forbidding the execution of the black laws that have just been passed.
"So unjust, so wicked, so incompatible are these new black laws of the rebel States, made in defiance of the expressed will of the nation, that Lieutenant-general Grant has been forced to issue that order, which sets aside the black laws of all these rebellious States against the freedmen, and allows no law to be enforced against them that is not enforced equally against white men. This order, issued by General Grant, will be respected, obeyed, and enforced in the rebel States with the military power of the nation. Southern legislators and people must learn, if they are compelled to learn by the bayonets of the Army of the United States, that the civil rights of the freedmen must be and shall be respected; that these freedmen are as free as their late masters; that they shall live under the same laws, be tried for their violation in the same manner, and if found guilty, punished in the same manner and degree.
"This measure is called for, because these reconstructed Legislatures, in defiance of the rights of the freedmen, and the will of the nation, embodied in the amendment to the Constitution, have enacted laws nearly as iniquitous as the old slave codes that darkened the legislation of other days. The needs of more than four million colored men imperatively call for its enactment. The Constitution authorizes and the national will demands it. By a series of legislative acts, by executive proclamations, by military orders, and by the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution by the people of the United States, the gigantic system of human slavery that darkened the land, controlled the policy, and swayed the destinies of the republic has forever perished. Step by step we have marched right on from one victory to another, with the music of broken fetters ringing in our ears. None of the series of acts in this beneficent legislation of Congress, none of the proclamations of the Executive, none of these military orders, protecting rights secured by law, will ever be revoked or amended by the voice of the American people. There is now
"'No slave beneath that starry flag,
The emblem of the free.'
"By the will of the nation freedom and free institutions for all, chains and fetters for none, are forever incorporated in the fundamental law of regenerated and united America. Slave codes and auction blocks, chains and fetters and blood-hounds, are things of the past, and the chattel stands forth a man, with the rights and the powers of the freemen. For the better security of these new-born civil rights we are now about to pass the greatest and the grandest act in this series of acts that have emancipated a race and disinthralled a nation. It will pass, it will go upon the statute-book of the republic by the voice of the American people, and there it will remain. From the verdict of Congress in favor of this great measure, no appeal will ever be entertained by the people of the United States."
Mr. Cowan spoke again, and denounced the section of the bill which provided for its enforcement by the military. He said: "There it is; words can not make it plainer; reason can not elucidate it; no language can strengthen it or weaken it, one way or the other. There is the question whether a military man, educated in a military school, accustomed to supreme command, unaccustomed to the administration of civil law among a free people, is to be intrusted with these appellate jurisdiction over the courts of the country; whether he can in any way, whether he ought in any way, to be intrusted with such a power. I, for my part, will never agree to it; and I should feel myself recreant to every duty that I owed to myself, to my country, to my country's history, and I may say to the race which has been for hundreds and thousands of years endeavoring to attain to something like constitutional liberty, if I did not resist this and all similar projects."
Mr. Trumbull answered some objections to the bill. "The Senator from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks] objects to the bill because he says that the same provisions which were enacted in the old Fugitive Slave Law are incorporated into this, and that it has been heralded to the country that it was a great achievement to do this; and he insists that if those provisions of law were odious and wicked and wrong which provided for punishing men for aiding the slave to escape, therefore they must be wicked and wrong now when they are employed for the punishing a man who undertakes to put a person into slavery. Sir, that does not follow at all. A law may be iniquitous and unjust and wrong which undertakes to punish another for doing an innocent act, which would be righteous and just and proper to punish a man for doing a wicked act. We have upon our statute-books a law punishing a man who commits murder, because the commission of murder is a high crime, and the party who does it forfeits his right to live; but would it be just to apply the law which punishes a person for committing murder to an innocent person who had killed another accidentally, without malice? That is the difference. It is the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil. True, the features of the Fugitive Slave Law were abominable when they were used for the purpose of punishing, not negroes, as the Senator from Indiana says, but white men. The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted for the purpose of punishing white men who aided to give the natural gift of liberty to those who were enslaved. Now, sir, we propose to use the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law for the purpose of punishing those who deny freedom, not those who seek to aid persons to escape to freedom. The difference was too clearly pointed out by the colleague of the Senator [Mr. Lane] to justify me in taking further time in alluding to it.
"But the Senator objects to this bill because it authorizes the calling in of the military; and he asserts that it is the only law in which the military is brought in to enforce it. The Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan] follows this up with a half hour's speech, denouncing this law as obnoxious to the objection that it is a military law, that it is taking the trial of persons for offenses out of the hands of the courts and placing them under the military—a monstrous proposition, he says. Is that so? What is the law?
"It is a court bill; it is to be executed through the courts, and in no other way. But does the Senator mean to say it is a military bill because the military may be called in, in aid of the execution of the law through the courts? Does the Senator from Pennsylvania—I should like his attention, and that of the Senator from Indiana, too—deny the authority to call in the military in aid of the execution of the law through the courts?