ndition of slavery or involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall have the same right in every
State and Territory of the United States, to make and
enforce contracts, to sue, to be parties, and give evidence,
to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and
personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws
and proceedings for the security of person and property, as
is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like
punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any
law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the
contrary notwithstanding.'

"By the provisions of the act full protection is afforded,
through the district courts of the United States, to all
persons injured, and whose privileges, as they are declared,
are in any way impaired, and heavy penalties are denounced
against the person who willfully violates the law. I need
not state that that law did not receive my approval, yet its
remedies are far preferable to those proposed in the present
bill--the one being civil and the other military.

"By the sixth section of the bill herewith returned, certain
proceedings by which the lands in the 'parishes of St.
Helena and St. Luke, South Carolina,' were sold and bid in,
and afterward disposed of by the tax commissioners, are
ratified and confirmed. By the seventh, eighth, ninth,
tenth, and eleventh sections, provisions by law are made for
the disposal of the lands thus acquired to a particular
class of citizens. While the quieting of titles is deemed
very important and desirable, the discrimination made in the
bill seems objectionable, as does also the attempt to confer
upon the commissioners judicial powers, by which citizens of
the United States are to be deprived of their property in a
mode contrary to that provision of the Constitution which
declares that no person 'shall be deprived of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law.' As a general
principle, such legislation is unsafe, unwise, partial, and
unconstitutional. It may deprive persons of their property
who are equally deserving objects of the nation's bounty, as
those whom, by this legislation, Congress seeks to benefit.
The title to the la