of the subject of slaves and Savery into this chamber;" though no one but himself had mentioned either in connection with this measure. He drew a ludicrous picture of "a big negro fellow," fantastically arrayed, being presented as Minister from Ilayti. Mr. Sumner rejoined; and Mr. Davis's substitute, providing for consular relations only with the republics aforesaid, was voted downYeas 8; Nays 31-and then the bill passed: Yeas 32; Nays 7. On reaching the House, it was referred to its Committee on Foreign Affairs; which Committee was discharged" from its further consideration, on motion of Mr. Gooch, of Mass., who ably and temperately advocated its passage. Mr. Cox, of Ohio, replied, à la Davis; and, after further debate by Messrs. Fessenden, of Maine, Eliot, of Mass., McKnight and Kelley, of Pa., and Maynard, of Tenn., in favor, and Messrs. Biddle, of Pa., and Crittenden, of Ky., in opposition, it was passed-Yeas 83; Nays 37-and, being signed by the President, became the law of the land. 67 Previous to the triumph of Emancipation in the Federal District, there was no public provision for the education of the Blacks, whether bond or free; and very few, even of the latter, received any schooling whatever. The great obstacle to improvement having been swept away, Mr. Grimes, of Iowa, submitted" to the Senate a bill providing for the education of colored children in the city of Washington; prefacing it by a statement that, whereas the number of those children was in 1860 no less than 3,172, and while the Free Blacks April 29. Go June 2. 67 June 5. EB of the District were taxed $36,000 per annum, whereof a tenth was appropriated to the support of schools, not one of their children was permitted to enter those schools or to receive any benefit whatever from the money thus wrested from them by law for the education of the children of the Whites, many of whom paid no tax whatever. Ilis bill proposed simply that the city revenue raised. for schools by the taxation of Blacks should be devoted to the education. of their own children, and not those of the Whites. This bill having been referred to and reported" from the District Committee, it was taken up," on motion of Mr. Grimes; and certain nonessential amendments of the Committee agreed to. Mr. Wilson, of Mass., then moved to add a new seetion, as follows: "That all persons of color in the District of Columbia, or within the corporate limits of the cities of Washington and Georgetown, shall be subject and amenable to the same laws and ordinances to which free amenable; that they shall be tried for any White persons are or may be subject or offenses against the laws in the same manner as free White persons are or may be tried for the same offenses; and that, upon being legally convicted of any crime or offense against any law or ordinance, such persons of color shall be liable to such penalty or punishment, and only such, as would be imposed or inflicted upon free White persons for the same crime or offense: with the provisions of this act, are hereby and all acts, or parts of acts, inconsistent repealed." This important amendment prevailed; and the bill, thus improved, passed:" Yeas 29; Nays 7. Reaching the House, it was there referred to its District Committee; reported" therefrom without amendment, by Mr. Rollins, of N. H., and, on his motion, passed, under the Previous TO May 8. May 9. * May 15. "April 30. 70 71 RENDITION OF FUGITIVE SLAVES. 267 Question, without a call of the Yeas | Jersey. That report killed it. But and Nays. It received the President's Mr. Wilmot, of Pa., soon revived" signature on the 21st. Bills making further and better provision for the education of colored children were matured and enacted in the course of that and the two following sessions. the proposition, by a bill which required every person, who should apply for the legal process required for the arrest of a fugitive slave, to take a stringent oath of loyalty. The bill further provided that each al process against witnesses deemed cssential to his defense, and that such witnesses should be sworn and heard, irrespective of their color. Mr. Wade promptly reported" this bill; but it shared the fate of its predecessor. Mr. Wilson, of Mass., proposed " to amend the bill of 1850 aforesaid, so as to secure to every one claimed as a fugitive slave a trial by jury; which, though once taken up"— Yeas 25; Nays 10-failed to command the attention of the Senate. 82 A treaty between the Great Pow-leged fugitive shall have compulsory ers of Western Europe, intended to provide for the more effectual suppression of the African Slave-Trade, was matured and signed at Paris in 1841. It necessarily accorded a qualified reciprocal right to search suspected cruisers to the National veзsels of the subscribing parties. Gen. Cass, then our Envoy at Paris, and a prospective candidate for President, resisted and defeated the accession of our Government to this most righteous and necessary increase of power to the international police of the ocean, and carned thereby the qualified approbation of the Slave Power; as was evinced in the Presidential election of 1843. A similar treaty was now negotiated between the United States and Great Britain; and a bill designed to give effect to its provisions was reported" to the Senate by Mr. Sumner, considered, and passed:" Yeas 34; Nays 4. The House concurred;" and the bill became a law." Soon after the meeting of the next Congress, Mr. Stevens, of Pa., submitted" to the House a bill contemplating an absolute repeal, not only of the act of 1850, but also of the Fugitive Slave act of 1793. Messrs. Ashley, of Ohio, and Julian, of Ind., introduced bills of like tenor. Mr. Julian further proposed that the Judiciary Committee be instructed to report a bill to repeal the most obnoxious provisions of the acts in question; but this was, on motion of Mr. Holman, of Ind., laid on the table: Yeas 82; Nays 73. In the Senate, Mr. Sumner next introduced" a bill sweeping away all slave-catching by statute; which was referred to a Select Committee of seven, whereof he was Chairman, which had been raised to consider all propositions affecting Slavery. * May 24. Feb. S, 1861. voting with the Opposition. The President's signature, five days thereafter, made it a law of the land, abolishing for ever the least creditable and most disagreeable function of the marshals of our Federal Courts. soon reported" his bill, with ample | Winkle and Willey, of West Va., reasons for its passage-Mr. Buckalew, of Pa., making a minority report in opposition. Mr. Sumner persistently and successfully pressed the consideration of his bill, offering not to debate it; and, after some discussion, the Senate adopted" an amendment proposed by Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, excepting the act of 1793 from the contemplated repeal: Yeas 24; Nays 17. The debate was still further continued; but no final action was had on the bill. Mr. Morris, of N. Y., reported" from the Judiciary Committee a bill repealing all acts and parts of acts contemplating the rendition of fugitive slaves; which was debated with great spirit by a score of membersMessrs. Mallory, of Ky., Cox, of Ohio, and others, opposing it as equivalent to annulling the Constitution. Mr. Mallory observed that the majority had already crushed out the Unionism of the revolted States, and were now extending the process to that of the Border Slave States, and impressively warned the House to forbear. Finally, after having once moved and withdrawn the Previous Question, Mr. Morris moved it again; when it prevailed, and the bill passed under it: Yeas 83; Nays 57. Mr. Sumner demanded" the consideration of this bill in Senate; and it was, after a fiery debate, ordered: Yeas 25; Nays 17. Mr. Johnson, of Md., endeavored to save the act of 1793; but the Senate refused: Yeas 17; Nays 22. The bill, after being laid over one day to enable Mr. Davis, of Ky., to make a speech against it, was passed:" Yeas 27; Nays 12 -Messrs. Cowan, of Pa., and Van 85 Feb. 29. 6 Mar. 19. 87 June 6. June 13. The District of Columbia had been governed mainly by the laws of the States which ceded it; and those laws were framed in the interest of slave-holding. They presumed every colored person a slave who could not produce White evidence of his freedom; and there had grown up in Washington a practice, highly lucrative to her Federal Marshal, but most disgraceful to the city and Nation, of seizing Blacks on the streets, immuring them in the jail, advertising them, and waiting for masters to appear, prove property, pay charges, and take the human chattels away. Mr. Lincoln's Marshal, Col. Ward H. Lamon, came with him from Illinois, but was a Virginian by birth, and did not revolt at the abundant and profitable custom brought to his shop by the practice just depicted. Gen. Wilson, of Mass., early" called the attention of the Senate to this painful subject; saying that he had “visited the jail; and such a scene of degradation and inhumanity he had never witnessed. There were persons almost entirely naked; some of them without a shirt. Some of those persons were free; most of them had run away from disloyal masters, or had been sent there by disloyal persons, for safe keeping until the war is over." He thereupon proposed a discharge by joint resolve of all persons confined in the District jail 91 * June 23, 1864. 1 Dec. 4, 1861. June 21. NO SLAVE-TRADE-LAW OF EVIDENCE. 269 as fugitive slaves. In the debate | after, all such persons now in his jail. which ensued, Mr. Wilson stated This put a stop to one of the most that the French legation had recent- flagrant and glaring iniquities habitly taken to that jail gentlemen who ually perpetrated in a Christian and had traversed the world inspecting civilized community. prisons, with a view to their improvement; and that, after examining this, they observed to the jailer that they had never before seen but one so bad; and that was in Austria. Mr. Grimes, of Iowa, remarked that he believed there was never a jail so bad as this, save the French Bastile, and some of the dungeons of Venice. When he visited it, a few days before, he found among the prisoners a boy who claimed to be free-born, yet who had been confined there thirteen months and four days on suspicion of being a runaway slave. He further stated that Marshal Lamon had forbidden Members of Congress access to the prison without his written permission. Messrs. Powell, of Kentucky, Pearce, of Maryland, and Carlile, of Virginia, opposed the resolve; but it was warmly supported and passed:" Yeas 31; Nays 4. A bill reported" by Mr. Sumner, from the Select Committee on Slavery and Freedom, to prohibit the holding of slaves on National vessels, and also the coastwise Slave-Trade, was lost "Yeas 13; Nays 20—but he again moved a prohibition of the coastwise Slave-Trade, and of all laws sanctioning and regulating the same, as an amendment to the Civil Appropriation bill; and it was adopted: Yeas 23; Nays 14. Thus fastened to a necessary measure, the proposition was duly enacted, and received the President's signature on the 24 of July, 1864. Mr. Sumner proposed" another Amendment to this bill, providing that "in the Courts of the United States, there shall be no exclusion of any witness on account of color." Mr. Buckalew moved to add, "or because he is a party to or interested in the issue tried." This was agreed to; and Mr. Sumner's amendment, thus amended, was adopted: Yeas 22; Nays 16; and the bill passed, as already stated; making it the law of the land that no person shall henceforth be precluded from giving testimony either because of his color or because he is interested in the pending issue. A similar resolve had already" been submitted to the House. No action was taken, however, upon this, nor upon the Senate's kindred measure; because the President, through Secretary Seward, addressed" an order to Marshal Lamon, directing him not to receive into custody any persons caught up as fugitives from Slavery, but to discharge, ten days there"Jan. 14, 1862. "Dec. 9, 1861. Jan. 25, 1862. 95 March 23, 1864. 96 June 24. *7 June 25. XIII. ROSECRANS'S WINTER CAMPAIGN. GEN. ROSECRANS, on assuming' | Tennessee-our army was clustered command of Buell's Army of the around Bowling Green, whence it Ohio, found it seriously depleted could advance only so fast as the reand demoralized by the exhaustive pair of its sole line of supply should marches and indecisive conflicts of be perfected. Its designation had the last six months. With a strength been changed to "Fourteenth Army fully adequate to the rout and de- Corps ;" the Department having been struction of all the forces led into curtailed, and rechristened that of Kentucky by Bragg and Kirby the Cumberland. It was now orSmith, it had seen that State ravaged ganized into three grand divisions: throughout by that locust horde, the Right, under Maj.-Gen. McCook, which had in due time rëcrossed the with Brig.-Gens. J. W. Sill, Phil. H. Cumberland Mountains unassailed, Sheridan, and Col. W. E. Woodruff returning to East Tennessee as if in at the head of its subordinate divitriumph. Of the 100,000 men for- sions respectively; the Center, under merly borne on its muster-rolls, he Maj.-Gen. Geo. II. Thomas, with its found, on examination, no less than subordinate divisions led by Maj.26,482 "absent by authority"—most, Gen. L. II. Rousseau, Brig.-Gens. but not nearly all of them, doubtless, Negley, Palmer, Dumont, and Fry; in hospitals-sick or wounded; while whereof Dumont and Fry were soon 6,484 more were "absent without relieved, and Palmer transferred to authority"-in other words, had de- the Left Wing, of which Maj.-Gen. serted. Ilis effective force was thus T. L. Crittenden had command, and reduced to about 65,000 men; while which consisted of the sub-divisions his cavalry was so inferior in num- of Brig.-Gens. T. J. Wood, II. P. bers and efficiency that the troopers Van Cleve, and W. S. Smith. Roseof Forrest and John Morgan rode crans assigned the chief command of around uз at will, striking at posts his dilapidated cavalry to Maj.-Gen. and supply trains, and compelling D. S. Stanley; while Lt.-Col. Julius enormous and constantly increasing, P. Garesché-an officer of rare capaexhausting details to keep open our city and merit-was placed at the communications and preserve our head of his staff, with Capt. J. St. army from starvation. Clair Morton as Chief Engineer, and Col. Wm. Truesdail as Chief of Army Police. The railroad from Louisville to Nashville had been reopened to and across Green river; so that, though there was no considerable force of the enemy in its front-Bragg's army being still on its tedious, toilsome, circuitous retreat through East 1 Oct. 30, 1862. |