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sistant Inspector General in New Mexico to aid in the rendition of fugitive peons to their masters, and then remarked:

The special Indian agent who reports this correspondence very aptly adds:

"The aid of Congress is invoked to stop the practice."

I hope the Department of War will communicate directly with General Carleton, under whose sanction this order has been made, and I hope that our Committee on the Judiciary will consider carefully if further legislation is not needed to meet this case. A Presidential proclamation has failed; orders of the War Department have failed; the abuse continues, and we have a very learned officer in the army of the United States undertaking to vindicate it.

The reference was changed to the Committee on Military Affairs, and the resolution was adopted. Subsequently, Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, reported a bill to abolish and forever prohibit the system of peonage in the Territory of New Mexico and other parts of the United States, which became a law.1

1 Statutes at Large, Vol. XIV. p. 546.

PRECAUTION AGAINST THE REVIVAL OF

SLAVERY.

REMARKS IN THE SENATE, ON A RESOLUTION AND THE REPORT OF THE JUDICIARY COMmittee, January 3 AND FEBRUAry 20, 1867.

JANUARY 3, 1867, in the Senate, Mr. Sumner introduced the following resolution :

"Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be directed to consider if any action of Congress be needed, either in the way of legislation or of a supplementary Amendment to the Constitution, to prevent the sale of persons into slavery for a specified term by virtue of a decree of court."

In its consideration, he called attention to cases like the following:

:

"PUBLIC SALE. The undersigned will sell at the court-house door, in the city of Annapolis, at twelve o'clock, M., on Saturday, 8th December, 1866, a negro man named Richard Harris, for six months, convicted at the October term, 1866, of the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, for larceny, and sentenced by the Court to be sold as a slave.

"Terms of sale, cash.

"December 3, 1866."

"WM. BRYAN,

"Sheriff Anne Arundel County.

He then remarked:

T seems to me, Sir, that these cases throw

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gress the duty at least of inquiry; and I wish the Committee on the Judiciary, from which proceeded the Constitutional Amendment abolishing Slavery, would enlighten us on the validity of these proceedings, and the necessity or expediency of further action to prevent

their repetition. I do not know that the Civil Rights Bill, which was afterward passed, may not be adequate to meet these cases; but I am not clear on that point.

When the Constitutional Amendment was under consideration, I objected positively to the phraseology. I thought it an unhappy deference to an original legislative precedent at an earlier period of our history. I regretted infinitely that Congress was willing, even indirectly, to sanction any form of slavery. But the Senate supposed that the phrase "involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," was simply applicable to ordinary imprisonment. At the time I feared that it might be extended so as to cover some form of slavery. It seems now that it is so extended, and I wish the Committee to consider whether the remedy can be applied by Act of Congress, or whether we must not go further and expurgate that phraseology from the text of the Constitution itself.

After remarks by Mr. Reverdy Johnson and Mr. Creswell, of Maryland, Mr. Sumner said :

The remarks of the Senator from Maryland [Mr. JOHNSON] seem to justify entirely the resolution I have brought forward. I have simply called attention to what was already notorious, but with a view to action. I am not sure, that, under the Constitutional Amendment, this abuse may not be justified, and I desire to have the opinion of the Committee after ample consideration.

This, Sir, is not the first time in which incidents like this have occurred. I remember, that, many years ago, when I first came into this Chamber, the good

people whom I represent were shocked at reading that four colored sailors of Massachusetts had been sold into slavery in the State of Texas. I did what I could to obtain their liberation, but without success. I applied directly to the Senator from Texas at that time, who will be remembered by many as the able General Rusk, beside whom I sat on the other side of the Chamber. He openly vindicated the power of the court to make such a sale, and I have never heard anything of those poor victims from that time to this. Under the operation of the Constitutional Amendment I trust they are now emancipated; but I am not sure of that, since they are in Texas.

The resolution was adopted. Subsequently Mr. Creswell moved the printing of a bill, introduced by him at the preceding session, to protect children of African descent from being enslaved in violation of the Constitution of the United States.

February 20th, Mr. Poland, from the Committee on the Judiciary, to whom this bill had been referred, reported that its object was accomplished by the Civil Rights and the Habeas Corpus Acts, and that no further legislation was needed. In a conversation that ensued, Mr. Sumner said:

IT strikes me the practical question is, whether recent incidents have not admonished us that there is a disposition to evade the statute, and under the protection of State laws

MR. TRUMBULL [of Illinois]. That is the very thing the statute guards against.

MR. SUMNER. But the statute was not effective to prevent those incidents.

MR. TRUMBULL. Will any statute, if it is not executed? MR. SUMNER. But when apprised of an evasion, I ask whether it is not expedient to counteract that eva

sion specifically and precisely, so that there shall be no possible excuse? Liberty is won by these anxious trials. Those who represent her are accustomed to take case by case and difficulty by difficulty, overcoming

them, if they can. Secure first the general principle, as in the Constitutional Amendment, then legislation as extensive or minute as the occasion requires. Let it be "precept upon precept, line upon line," so long as any such outrage can be shown.

I would not seem pertinacious, though I do not know that I can err by any pertinacity on a question of Human Liberty. I feel that we are painfully admonished, by incidents occurring under our very eyes, that we ought to do something to tighten that great Constitutional Amendment. It contains in its text words which I regret. I regretted them at the time; I proposed to strike them out; and now they return to plague the inventor. There should have been no recognition in the Constitutional Amendment of any possibility of Slavery. The reply is, that the Amendment, if properly interpreted, does not recognize the possibility of Slavery being legal in any just sense. But it is misinterpreted, —has been so in an adjoining State; and who can tell that it will not be so now in every one of the Southern States? I am sorry that the Committee has not reported the bill.

The Senate last night passed a bill, on the report of my colleague, to prohibit slavery and peonage in New Mexico. Under the Constitutional Amendment, I take it, that bill was unnecessary, it was superfluous. But we have found a difficulty in that Territory. There has been outrage; slavery in some form exists there; and consequently my colleague was right, when he

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