FREEDMEN'S BUREAU.-DISPOSITION TO BE

MADE OF FREE NEGROES.

On the 25th of January, the House having resumed the consideration of the Bill to establish a Bureau of Freedmen's Affairs, Mr. Davis said :

MR. SPEAKER AND GENTLEMEN,—The bill which is now under consideration involves a subject forced on us by the events of the war, and which must be determined one way or the other-the disposition of the freed negroes in the rebel States. The range of debate has naturally been very wide upon a bill of this character, and topics not perhaps at first sight very directly related to it have been dragged into the discussion.

The votes of the gentlemen from the loyal slave States cast a new light on the mind of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Brooks] respecting the fate of the negro race on this continent. But, while he justly appreciated the great and decisive weight of that vote upon the speakership of this House, he took occasion to discredit the moral power of that vote by impeaching the election of the representatives who cast it. He thinks they speak words not authorized by the people. He said:

"I know that the people of Maryland and of Delaware, if they had been allowed to vote, intended no such decree"

That is, of emancipation.

"And I know that it is said those two States are better represented by the honorable gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Schenck] than by their representatives here."

If this were merely meant as a compliment to my distinguished friend from Ohio, I would be among the first to admit that any district of Maryland, as well as any in New York, would be better represented by him than by any gentleman representing either State-even the gentleman from New York. But when it comes in the shape of an imputation upon the validity and moral force of the election, it questions the legitimacy of the administration majority in this House, and must not pass unanswered. When the gentleman from New York says "it is said those two States are better represented by the honorable gentleman from Ohio than by

those who represent them here," no person who cares to have any respect for his knowledge of the public affairs of the day has so said. And when the honorable gentleman says that "he knows that the people of Maryland and Delaware, had they been allowed to vote, intended no such decree," I desire to say that the honorable gentleman from New York does not know any such thing, and knows no fact that makes the error excusable.

"Had they been allowed to vote!" Who hindered them from voting? Where were they stopped from voting? "The people of Maryland!" If the gentleman means to say that because the people of Maryland determined that the traitors of Maryland, who disavowed their allegiance to the government, should not tarnish the ballot-box by their votes, we differ about the terms, but not about the facts. We did mean they should not vote, and we so meant because by the laws of Maryland such men are not entitled to vote. They who disavow, deny, and disown their allegiance to the United States, and declare and avow they are not citizens of the United States, have no right to vote; and so the judges of election held, almost from one end of Maryland to the other. If that is not good election law, this House can say so; the General Assembly of Maryland can say so; and if both be silent, the law is confessed.

If the gentleman referred to the complaints which are made of the interference of the military in the election, I desire to say that that complaint comes from nobody but heated partisans who howl because they are beaten. Even they confined the complaint to one single Congressional district out of five, and to four out of eight counties in that Congressional district; and therefore, conceding every thing that is complained of, and every thing that is inferred from the complaint, we have an undisputed election in four fifths of the State, which the gentlemen who make the complaint do not dispute. No one questions the election of the honorable member from the Fifth Congressional District [Mr. Harris], where the divided Union vote was overborne by the united secession vote, and where the aggregate vote of the district fell only a little below the normal vote of the district before the rebellion attracted many of its young men to the rebel ranks. My honorable friend in my eye from the Second Congressional District [Mr. Webster] could find no competitor to meet him before the people. The distinguished gentleman, the senior of the delegation [Mr.

Thomas], from the Fourth Congressional District, is here for the second time an unopposed candidate. And I am here because my political opponents did not care to take the responsibilities of a canvass, although aided and urged to oppose me by a distinguished adviser of the President up to within a week of the election. So that of all the State of Maryland, whose election is here impeached, in three fifths of it there was no contest whatever; in one fifth there was a contest in which our opponents had so free an election that they have their representative on this floor; and in the other fifth the contest is only impeached in four of the eight counties; and if the whole vote which was not cast in that district be added to the aggregate vote of our opponents, the emancipationists will still have a majority of thirteen or fourteen. thousand in the State. And yet, in the face of such facts, a gentleman, who is entitled to be regarded as an intelligent observer of public affairs, rises here and says that he knows that if the people of Maryland had been permitted to vote they would not have allowed the emancipation candidate for Comptroller to carry the State by twenty thousand majority!

In Delaware the case is still more absurd; for, after an animated canvass, the opponent of the representative from that State withdrew on the eve of the election; and yet the vote for the gentleman from Delaware was the largest ever cast in that State for any candidate, and a majority of the whole vote of the State.

Mr. Speaker, the Legislature of Maryland is overwhelmingly Union, but not overwhelmingly for emancipation. There is a majority in the Senate opposed to it, and there is a majority in the House who were not in favor of it when they came to Annapolis; because, though elected by emancipation constituencies, they were nominated before their constituents had developed their views upon the subject. But this election which the gentleman from New York wishes to impeach carried with it such moral power that its enemies in the Senate and its lukewarm and doubtful friends in the House of Delegates are dragged backward over their prejudices and compelled to pass just such a bill as we dictated to them, and it stands now the law of the State of Maryland by the votes of a majority of both houses of the Legislature. They confessed that moral power which the honorable gentleman ignorantly denies.

"Slavery is dead," says the honorable gentleman. "Slavery

is dead" is echoed by some on this side of the House. "Slavery is dead" is echoed from the too sanguine people of the country. He may be a very sick man, Mr. Speaker, but I assure gentlemen of this House and the country that he is not dead; and if he is not done to death he will be your master again. That is my opinion, and I think my friend from Kentucky in my eye [Mr. Mallory] agrees with me.

Slavery is not dead in Maryland. We have to carry a majority of the Convention on the old slavery apportionment, where one fourth of the population ties the body; and whether the hostile influence that presides near the President's ear will allow Maryland to become a free State, or will fail her in her hour of need, remains yet to be seen. Up to this day Maryland is under no obligations to the President of the United States for the great strides that the cause of emancipation has made there. A Convention of the loyal men, the emancipationists of Maryland, on the 22d of this month, while declaring themselves in favor of immediate and unconditional emancipation, and while expressing their confidence in the President and their appreciation of his services, added this significant admonition, worthy of the State and of the people that uttered it:

'Resolved, That this Convention is in favor of the entire and immediate abolition of slavery in this State and in the States in rebellion, and is opposed to any reorganization of State governments in those States which do not recognize the immediate and final abolishment of slavery as a condition precedent. That this Convention express their sympathy with the radical emancipationists in Missouri, and in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana, and regret that influences in the cabinet have, in Maryland and those States, depressed the efforts of the radical friends of the administration and of emancipation, and given prominence to those who are the unwilling advocates of emancipation."

I trust that that admonition will have its weight, and that these sinister influences will cease to be the controlling element near the presidential ear in this grave crisis of emancipation in Maryland; and I desire that the country shall understand that, being under small obligations to the President for what has been done in Maryland up to this time, the people of Maryland thought it wise, while expressing their confidence in the President, to put that significant resolution before him for his serious consideration, so as to show that their devotion is not personal, but to principle; that their interest is in the cause and not in a man; and that while they will support the man as long as the man supports the

cause, if the cause fail by any failure elsewhere, there may be a revision of their judgment respecting the person.

But "slavery is dead in the rebel States." No, sir. No, sir. Far from it. If our honorable friends on the other side elect their President in the coming fall, slavery is as alive as it was the day that the first gun blazed against Sumter. If we lose the majority in the next Congress, slavery is as powerful as it ever was. We are, it is true, in the condition in which we can not stand still. We must go backward or we must go forward. My face, sir, is to the future. I wish so to look at it, and so to say, to the men of my day and generation, what I think about the great measures which now touch the salvation of the country, that, whether I be on the winning or on the losing side, whether the nation triumph or fail, whenever any body shall by accident hereafter rake about among the ashes of the past and find my name, he will find at least that I did not fear to say to friend and foe what the times demand; and it may be that it will be well if it were heeded.

Slavery is not dead by the proclamation. What lawyer attributes to it the least legal effect in breaking the bonds of the slave? Executed by the bayonet, legally valid to the extent of the duration of the war, under the law of 1862, which authorizes the President to use the people of African descent as he may see fit for the suppression of the rebellion, it is undoubtedly valid to the extent of turning them loose from their masters during the rebellion. So long as the military power is engaged in suppressing resistance, they are free from their masters. Re-establish the old governments, allow the dominant aristocracy to repossess the State power in its original plenitude, how long will they be free? What courts will give them their rights? What provision is there to protect them? Where is the writ of habeas corpus ? How are the courts of the United States to be open to them? Who shall close the courts of the States against the master? Does the master resort to the court against the slave? No; he seizes him by the neck. The law of last Congress freeing a few slaves provides that that act may be pleaded in defense. But when is the slave sued by his master? When is the time to plead in any such process? Gentlemen legislate without a knowledge of the country or of the people they are legislating for. Their laws are on the statute-book, and the opinions of the dominant