holidays.

Mr. Johnson said that the bill gave rise to grave questions on which
it was very desirable that the deliberation of the Senate should be
very calmly advised. He objected on the ground of its indefiniteness:
"There are no particular laws designated in the bill to be repealed.
All laws existing before these States got into a condition of
insurrection, by which any difference or inequality is created or
established, are to be repealed. What is to be the effect of that
repeal upon such laws as they exist? In some of those States, by the
constitution or by the laws, (and the constitution is equally a law,)
persons of the African race are excluded from certain political
privileges. Are they to be repealed, and at once, by force of that
repeal, are they to be placed exactly upon the same footing in regard
to all political privileges with that which belongs to the other class
of citizens? Very many of those laws are laws passed under the police
power, which has always been conceded as a power belonging to the
States--laws supposed to have been necessary in order to protect the
States themselves from insurrection. Are they to be repealed
absolutely?

"No man feels more anxious certainly than I do that the rights
incident to the condition of freedom, which is now as I personally am
glad to believe, the condition of the black race, should not be
violated; but I do not know that there is any more pressing need for
extraordinary legislation to prevent outrages upon that class, by any
thing which is occurring in the Southern States, than there is for
preventing outrages in the loyal States. Crimes are being perpetrated
every day in the very justly-esteemed State from which the honorable
member comes. Hardly a paper fails to give us an account of some most
atrocious and horrible crime. Murders shock the sense of that
community and the sense of the United States very often; and it is not
peculiar to Massachusetts. Moral by her education, and loving freedom
and hating injustice as much as the people of any other State, she yet
is unable to prevent a violation of every principle of human rights,
but we are not for that reason to legislate for her."

Mr. Wilson replied: "The Senator from Maryland says that cruelties and
great crimes are committed in all sections of the country. I know it;
but we have not cruel and inhuman laws to be enforced. Sir, armed men
are traversing portions of the rebel States to-day enforcing these