This authorizes, if the
President thinks proper to do it--it is in his discretion--the
purchase or renting of lands on which to place these indigent people;
but before any land can be purchased or rented, before any contract
can be made on the subject, there must be an appropriation made by
Congress. This bill contains no appropriation. If the President is
opposed to the rent or purchase of land, and Congress passes a bill
appropriating money for that purpose, let him veto it if he thinks it
unconstitutional; but there is nothing unconstitutional in this bill.
This bill does not purchase any land; but it prevents even a contract
on the subject until another law shall be passed appropriating the
money for that purpose.

"But, sir, what is the objection to it if it did appropriate the
money? I have already undertaken to show, and I think I have shown,
that it was the duty of the United States, as an independent nation,
as one of the powers of the earth, whenever there came into its
possession an unprotected class of people, who must suffer and perish
but for its care, to provide for and take care of them. When an army
is marching through an enemy's country, and poor and destitute persons
are found within its lines who must die by starvation if they are not
fed from the supplies of the army, will any body show me the
constitutional provision or the act of Congress that authorizes the
general commanding to open his commissariat and feed the starving
multitude? And has it not been done by every one of your commanders
all through the South? Whenever a starving human being, man, woman, or
child, no matter whether black or white, rebel or loyal, came within
the lines of the army, to perish and die unless fed from our supplies,
there has never been an officer in our service, and, thank God! there
has not been, who did not relieve the sufferer. If you want to know
where the constitutional power to do this is, and where the law is, I
answer, it is in that common humanity that belongs to every man fit to
bear the name, and it is in that power that belongs to us as a
Christian nation, carrying on war upon civilized principles.

"If we had the right then to feed those people as we did, have we not
the right to take care of them in the cheapest way we can? If, when
General Sherman was passing through Georgia, he found the lands
abandoned; if their able-bodied owners had entered the rebel army to
fight against us; if the women and ch