m starvation and destruction is to educate
them. They will then soon become self-sustaining. The report of the
Freedmen's Bureau shows that to-day more than seventy thousand black
children are being taught in the schools which have been established
in the South. We shall not long have to support any of these blacks
out of the public Treasury if we educate and furnish them land upon
which they can make a living for themselves. This is a very different
thing from taking the land of A and giving it to B by an act of
Congress.

"But the Senator is most alarmed at those sections of this bill which
confer judicial authority upon the officers and agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau. He says if this authority can be exercised there is
an end to all the reserved rights of the States, and this Government
may do any thing. Not at all, sir. The authority, as I have already
shown, to be exercised under the seventh and eighth sections, is a
military authority, to be exerted only in regions of country where the
civil tribunals are overthrown, and not there after they are restored.
It is the same authority that we have been exercising all the time in
the rebellious States; it is the same authority by virtue of which
General Grant issued the order which I have just read. Here is a
perfect and complete answer to the objection that is made to the
seventh and eighth sections.

"But, says the Senator from Indiana, we have laws in Indiana
prohibiting black people from marrying whites, and are you going to
disregard these laws? Are our laws enacted for the purpose of
preventing amalgamation to be disregarded, and is a man to be punished
because he undertakes to enforce them? I beg the Senator from Indiana
to read the bill. One of its objects is to secure the same civil
rights and subject to the same punishments persons of all races and
colors. How does this interfere with the law of Indiana preventing
marriages between whites and blacks? Are not both races treated alike
by the law of Indiana? Does not the law make it just as much a crime
for a white man to marry a black woman as for a black woman to marry a
white man, and _vice versa_? I presume there is no discrimination in
this respect, and therefore your law forbidding marriages between
whites and blacks operates alike on both races. This bill does not
interfere with it. If the negro is denied the right to marry a white
person, the white person is equally denied the right to marry the
negro