. The war cloud had thinned enough to allow a clearer
conception of the work of Emancipation. The champions of the bill
argued that the strengthening of the Freedmen's Bureau was still a
military necessity; that it was needed for the proper carrying out of
the Thirteenth Amendment, and was a work of sheer justice to the
ex-slave, at a trifling cost to the government. The opponents of the
measure declared that the war was over, and the necessity for war
measures past; that the Bureau, by reason of its extraordinary powers,
was clearly unconstitutional in time of peace, and was destined to
irritate the South and pauperize the freedmen, at a final cost of
possibly hundreds of millions. These two arguments were unanswered,
and indeed unanswerable: the one that the extraordinary powers of the
Bureau threatened the civil rights of all citizens; and the other that
the government must have power to do what manifestly must be done, and
that present abandonment of the freedmen meant their practical
reenslavement. The bill which finally passed enlarged and made
permanent the Freedmen's Bureau. It was promptly vetoed by President
Johnson as "unconstitutional," "unnecessary," and "extrajudicial," and
failed of passage over the veto. Meantime, however, the breach between
Congress and the President began to broaden, and a modified form of the
lost bill was finally passed over the President's second veto, July 16.

The act of 1866 gave the Freedmen's Bureau its final form,--the form by
which it will be known to posterity and judged of men. It extended the
existence of the Bureau to July, 1868; it authorized additional
assistant commissioners, the retention of army officers mustered out of
regular service, the sale of certain forfeited lands to freedmen on
nominal terms, the sale of Confederate public property for Negro
schools, and a wider field of judicial interpretation and cognizance.
The government of the unreconstructed South was thus put very largely
in the hands of the Freedmen's Bureau, especially as in many cases the
departmental military commander was now made also assistant
commissioner. It was thus that the Freedmen's Bureau became a
full-fledged government of men. It made laws, executed them and
interpreted them; it laid and collected taxes, defined and punished
crime, maintained and used military force, and dictated such measures
as it thought necessary and proper for the accomplishment of its varied
ends. Natu