Mr. JOHNSON. The honorable member from Vermont I have no doubt is right, and I endeavored to maintain that opinion in the Senate when it was proposed to enlist in the Army the slaves, that in their character of persons they owed allegiance to the U.S and could he enlisted in the armies of the U.S.; but that was not what was done. congress not only authorized their enlistment into the military service of the U.S., but very properly declared that they should be free. They were not to return to their masters as slaves at the termination of their military service, but the moment they became soldiers of the U.S. that fact of itself gave them the right of freedom; and in thatI concurred. I thought it would have been most unjust to summon those people into the field and submit ‘them to the perils of war, reserving the right to retum them afterward to a state of slavery. But another course was pursued. The language of the act of 1864is, “ and thereupon such slave shall be free.” Free when? Free when he is a slave of a loyal master and shall be drafted and mustered into the service of the U.S., and his master shall have a certificate thereof. Then he is to be free, and then the master is to be entitled to whatever may be ailowed him under the provisions of this not. Now, although I do not propose to discuss the question (because, as I understand, the amount in the Treasury renders it wholly unnecessary) of the commutation fund, and that this, act contains a contract between the U.S and the master which compels the U.S. to pay the amount which it premises, the mode of payment, the provision that it was to be paid out of the commutation fund in the hands of the Treasury, was adopted by the U.S. for its own benefit. It was a specification of the fund out of which the payment was to be made, buthad nothing to dowith the obligation which the U.S. assumed by the law to pay the master whose slave, with his consent, went, into the service of the U.S. But the commutation fund is some 7 or eir'ht million dollars, as I understand.