ngress the strongest desire to secure to the freedmen
the full enjoyment of their freedom and property and their entire
independence and equality in making contracts for their labor, but the
bill before me contains provisions which in my opinion are not warranted
by the Constitution and are not well suited to accomplish the end in
view.

The bill proposes to establish by authority of Congress military
jurisdiction over all parts of the United States containing refugees and
freedmen. It would by its very nature apply with most force to those
parts of the United States in which the freedmen most abound, and it
expressly extends the existing temporary jurisdiction of the Freedmen's
Bureau, with greatly enlarged powers, over those States "in which the
ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the
rebellion." The source from which this military jurisdiction is to
emanate is none other than the President of the United States, acting
through the War Department and the Commissioner of the Freedmen's
Bureau. The agents to carry out this military jurisdiction are to be
selected either from the Army or from civil life; the country is to be
divided into districts and subdistricts, and the number of salaried
agents to be employed may be equal to the number of counties or parishes
in all the United States where freedmen and refugees are to be found.

The subjects over which this military jurisdiction is to extend in every
part of the United States include protection to "all employees, agents,
and officers of this bureau in the exercise of the duties imposed" upon
them by the bill. In eleven States it is further to extend over all
cases affecting freedmen and refugees discriminated against "by local
law, custom, or prejudice." In those eleven States the bill subjects any
white person who may be charged with depriving a freedman of "any civil
rights or immunities belonging to white persons" to imprisonment or
fine, or both, without, however, defining the "civil rights and
immunities" which are thus to be secured to the freedmen by military
law. This military jurisdiction also extends to all questions that may
arise respecting contracts. The agent who is thus to exercise the office
of a military judge may be a stranger, entirely ignorant of the laws of
the place, and exposed to the errors of judgment to which all men are
liable. The exercise of power over which there is no legal supervision
by so vast a number of