loor of the
Senate since 1861. I sincerely hope, for the good of the country, that
the distinguished Senator may see fit to take back what he said a few
moments ago.

"Sir, we have had enough of disunion. I hope that no Senator in the
future will rise upon this floor and talk, under any circumstances
whatever, of another war of rebellion against the constituted
authorities of this country. My God! are we again to pass through the
scenes of blood through which we have passed for the last four years?
Are we to have this war repeated? No Freedmen's Bureau Bill, no bill
for the protection of the rights of any body, shall ever drive me to
dream of such a thing."

Mr. Henderson thought a better protection for the negro than the
Freedmen's Bureau would be the ballot. He said: "I live in a State
that was a slaveholding State until last January a year ago. I have
been a slaveholder all my life until the day when the ordinance of
emancipation was passed in my State. I advocated it, and have
advocated emancipation for the last four years, at least since this
war commenced. Do you want to know how to protect the freedmen of the
Southern States? This bill is useless for that purpose. It is not the
intention of the honorable Senators on this floor from Northern
States, who favor this bill, to send military men to plunder the good
people of Kentucky. It is an attempt to enforce this moral and
religious sentiment of the people of the Northern States. Sir, these
freedmen will be protected. The decree of Almighty God has gone forth,
as it went forth in favor of their freedom originally, that they shall
be endowed with all the rights that belong to other men. Will you
protect them? Give them the ballot, Mr. President, and then they are
protected."

In reference to the remarks by Mr. Henderson, Mr. Trumbull said: "The
zeal of my friend from Missouri seems to have run away with him.
Having come from being a slaveholder to the position of advocating
universal negro suffrage as the sovereign remedy for every thing, he
manifests a degree of zeal which I have only seen equaled, I confess,
by some of the discoverers of patent medicines who have found a grand
specific to cure all diseases! Why, he says this bureau is of no
account; give the negro the ballot, and that will stop him from
starving; that will feed him; that will educate him! You have got on
your hands to-day one hundred thousand feeble indigent, infirm colored
population that wo