er to be
intrusted to any one man.

If it be asked whether the creation of such a tribunal within a State is
warranted as a measure of war, the question immediately presents itself
whether we are still engaged in war. Let us not unnecessarily disturb
the commerce and credit and industry of the country by declaring to the
American people and to the world that the United States are still in a
condition of civil war. At present there is no part of our country in
which the authority of the United States is disputed. Offenses that may
be committed by individuals should not work a forfeiture of the rights
of whole communities. The country has returned, or is returning, to a
state of peace and industry, and the rebellion is in fact at an end.
The measure, therefore, seems to be as inconsistent with the actual
condition of the country as it is at variance with the Constitution of
the United States.

If, passing from general considerations, we examine the bill in detail,
it is open to weighty objections.

In time of war it was eminently proper that we should provide for
those who were passing suddenly from a condition of bondage to a state
of freedom. But this bill proposes to make the Freedmen's Bureau,
established by the act of 1865 as one of many great and extraordinary
military measures to suppress a formidable rebellion, a permanent branch
of the public administration, with its powers greatly enlarged. I have
no reason to suppose, and I do not understand it to be alleged, that
the act of March, 1865, has proved deficient for the purpose for which
it was passed, although at that time and for a considerable period
thereafter the Government of the United States remained unacknowledged
in most of the States whose inhabitants had been involved in the
rebellion. The institution of slavery, for the military destruction of
which the Freedmen's Bureau was called into existence as an auxiliary,
has been already effectually and finally abrogated throughout the whole
country by an amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and
practically its eradication has received the assent and concurrence of
most of those States in which it at any time had an existence. I am not,
therefore, able to discern in the condition of the country anything to
justify an apprehension that the powers and agencies of the Freedmen's
Bureau, which were effective for the protection of freedmen and refugees
during the actual continuance of hostilities