Mr. JOHNSON. There are questions that I think this bill will give rise to, on which it is very desirable that the deliberation of the Senate should be very calmly advised. The bill may have been ver carefully prepared, and may have received the sanction of some very intelligent and able men; but I am not alone of the members of the Senate who have only for the 1st time seen the bill this morning, and I confess that on glancing at. the bill now, I do not exactly understand what would be, if it became a law, the extent of its operation; nor do I see how it would accomplish the purpoee the honorable member from Iassachusetts has in view. There are no particular laws designated in the bill to be repealed. All laws exnsting before these States got into a condition of insurrection, by which any difference or such quality is created or established, are to be reea ed. What is to be the effect of that repea upon such laws as they exist? In some of those States by the constitution or by the laws, (and the constitution is equally a law) persons of the African race are excluded from certain political privileges. Are they to be repealed, and at once by force of that repeal, are they to be place exactly upon the same footing in regard to all political privileges with that which clon to the other class of citizens? Very many oft rose laws are laws passed under the olice power, which has always been conceded as a power belonging to the States laws supposed to have been necessaryin order to protect the States themselves from insurrection. Are they to be repealed absolutely? As I said, too the bill will not accomplishthe purpose of the honorable member if I compreiicnd it. It only repeals the laws which have heretofore been passed. If these States are in the Union, (about which at the proper time I shall have a word to say) or when they come into the Union, they will have the same right to pass olice laws that has been recognized as their rightfrom the beginning of the Government to the pfesent day. No member of this Senate, I am sure, will differ with the honor able Senfrom Massachusetts in the wish that there should be no injustice perpetrated which the authorities of the U.S. can prevent. No man feels more anxious certainly than I do that the rights incident to the Undrtion of freedom, which is now, as I, rsonally, am glad to believe, the condition ot the black race, should not be violated; but. I do not know that there is any more pressing need for extraordinary legislation to prevent outrages upon that class, by anything which is occurring in the southern States, than there is for preventing outrages in the loyal States. Crimes are bemg perpetrated every day in the very manyjustly esteemed State from whichdthe houorable member comes. Hardly a paperfails to give us an account of some most atrocious an horrible crime. Murders shock the sense of that community and the sense of the U.S. very often; and it is not peculiar to Massachusetts. Moral by her education, and loving freedom and hating injustice as much as the people of any other State, she yet is unable to prevent a violation of every principle of human rights, gut we are not. for that reason to legislate for cr. AsI have said, Mr. President, it is not my purpose to inquire into the question (about which there are honest differences of opinion) whether the States which were in insurrection are now States of the Union. I have now, and I have had from the 1st, a ver decided opinion that they are States in the nion, and that they never could have been placed out of the Union without the consent. of their sister States. The insurrection terminated, the authority of the Government thereby reinstated, co instanti they were invested with all the rights belonging to them originally;I mean as States. Whether the individual citizens of those States have forfeited their own rights by committing tggason or by the commission of an or r can is our sole l authority for the acts which we have doneduring the last 4 years, the measures which we have adopted in raising armies, was the authority communieated to Coneress by thatclause in the constitution of the U.S. whi gives to Congress the power to suppress insurection. If the power can only be referred that clause, in my opinion speaking I reit, with cat deference to the judgment of other st c moment the insurrection waster minated, there was no power whatever left in the Congress of the U.S. over those States; and I am glad to see, if I understand his messagea message, by the by, which, in common with almost the entire country, I admire as one of the ablest, if not the ablest, message that has ever emanated from the executive Dept of the Government; ames sage calcuted to do immense benefit in the country itself by calming and settling the feelings and the controversies which existed; and a message which is still more calculated, if possible, to place as high in the estimation of the nations of the WOXllI am glad, I was about to say, to find that in the view I have just expressed I have the concurrence of the POTUS Now, as to these outrages that are said to be perpetrated, (and no don t. to a certain extent it is true) in the southern States, permit me to say as my own impression, from my knowl edge of the pee aleof those States as they now areI mean he educated portion of those States; the men who have heretofore been in the councils of the countr; men who have been the ornaments of civil ife in the past, but who have gone astray; they have done so without abandoning at all any of the high moral principles by which their lives were antecedently characterized, and I believe as solemnly as I believe any truth that there is not more humanity now to be found in the humanest (if there be any difference of the loyal States than is to be found in the States recently in insurrection. The areand I speak from knowledge derived from conversation with man of the leaders who were engaged in the wart ey are now as anxious to return as in their insanity they were anxious to leave us. They have seen the error of their course; they have seen that there was no safety except under the Union of the U.S. they have seen that there is to be safety under the protection of the Government of the U.S.; and they are longing, passionately longing, for an opportunity to return among us and fbe again with as brothers. I have referred to this Mr. President, merely for the purpose of gunring against an impression which the wellknown authority of the honorable member from Massachusetts and his supposed means of information might carry with it, that these States and the men of these States are almost semibarbarous. It is a mistake. That there are exceptions, I admit. There ever are exceptions. They are to be found in this District, which is cspeciall under your protection by the constitution of the U.S., and they are to be found everywhere else. Crimes are being committed which startle with their enormity, even here. That constitutes no reason, in my judgment, why we should resort to legislation of this description; that is to say, legislation which repeals at once every law to be tound upon the statutebooks of these States, by which supposed inequahty has been produced between o different races that may be the inhabitants of those States,