to Congress by the Constitution, as recently amended, to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the article declaring that--

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

It can not, however, be justly claimed that, with a view to the
enforcement of this article of the Constitution, there is at present any
necessity for the exercise of all the powers which this bill confers.
Slavery has been abolished, and at present nowhere exists within the
jurisdiction of the United States; nor has there been, nor is it likely
there will be, any attempt to revive it by the people or the States.
If, however, any such attempt shall be made, it will then become the
duty of the General Government to exercise any and all incidental powers
necessary and proper to maintain inviolate this great constitutional law
of freedom.

The fourth section of the bill provides that officers and agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau shall be empowered to make arrests, and also that
other officers may be specially commissioned for that purpose by the
President of the United States. It also authorizes circuit courts of the
United States and the superior courts of the Territories to appoint,
without limitation, commissioners, who are to be charged with the
performance of _quasi_ judicial duties. The fifth section empowers the
commissioners so to be selected by the courts to appoint in writing,
under their hands, one or more suitable persons from time to time to
execute warrants and other processes described by the bill. These
numerous official agents are made to constitute a sort of police,
in addition to the military, and are authorized to summon a _posse
comitatus_, and even to call to their aid such portion of the land
and naval forces of the United States, or of the militia, "as may be
necessary to the performance of the duty with which they are charged."
This extraordinary power is to be conferred upon agents irresponsible to
the Government and to the people, to whose number the discretion of the
commissioners is the only limit, and in whose hands such authority might
be made a terrible engine of wrong, oppression, and fraud. The general
statutes regulating the land and naval forces of the United States, the
militia, and the execution of the laws are believed to be adequate for
every emerg