Mr. CRESWELL. I do not desire to attempt any argument in reply to my colleague; I desire only to state the means of information which I have on the subject of the treatment of the freedmen and colored soldiers who have returned to marland. I regret that I have not with me the letters I received a week or 2 ago upon that subject. To make a clean breast of iIt, will state that I have placed them in the hands of General Hancock, and have requested from him a thorough investigation of the treatment to which these people have been subjected. I have been informed by gentlemen of the highest respectability, of the most undoubted veracity, and of the most enlarged opportunities for gathering information on the subject, that there are now in the southern parts of Maryland, and especially upon the southern parts of the Eastern Shore, 6; region with respect to which I profess myself to be pretty well in formed) there are combinations not only of rebels who have not been in the service of the confederate States socalled, but of those who have been in the service of those States, and who have returned to Maryland under the protection of the General Government; and that these combinations have been formed expressl for the purpose of driving these refugees and freedmen from the limits of the State of Maryland. Not only that, sir, but I can state from memory one case in which a colored soldier who recently returned from our Army on leave of absencea man who has conducted himself most meritoriously during the whole term of his service and who the other day returned to his home in Worcester county, before he had been in that county 24 hours was waylaid by these scoundrels and murdered in cold blood. That mans name is John Mills. I can state another case to my distinguished colleague where a colored citizen, who rendered most conspicuous service in his humble capacity as a private, and who returned in company with that same man John Mills, was waylaid and cruelly beaten, an left for dead. Not on] that, but the men who have formed these cominations publicl boast all through that reon of country that it 15their purpose to drive these people from the State. It is well known that in that section of the State our juries are summoned by rebel sher iffs, and that they are constituted almost exclusivel of the very worst kind of rebels, worse rebels than are to be found in SCarolina, for the simple reason that in SCarolina the have been severel and satisfactorily whippe while in Marylan, unfortunatel, that has no been the case, by reason of the clemencyof the Government. Ivam satisfied as well as can be of anything that unless the Government interposes by such a measure as this, these people who have done their best to sustain it in the hour of trial will be driven from our State, which I should conceive to be a lastin and a burning shame to the State in which I 1V8:“5 Well“ to the Government that has heretofore profited by their services. These are the facts.