Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President, if it is right for us, as it seems in the judgment of the Senate to be right, to declare in advance by a decree of the Senate that the commission of an of these acts which have been performed is fawful, and therefore in effect to declare that the U.S. adopts and justifies every one of these acts over which the bill reaches, then where is the middle ground upon which we can rightfully pause and say, that having adopted these acts as our own, having justified them by our enactment, we will still turn the poor soldier over to the tender mercies of his own ability to carry on his lawsuit and leave him to apeal to some future representatives of the cop e, whose opinions toward him may not so favorable us our own, for his final recom ense? It appears to me that we cannot rightly so it. It appears to me that in the case of a soldier or an officer who is brought to answer in a tribunal of a State or in a tribunal of the U.S., when wejisstify his act and make it our own, we ought to defend that act at our own expense, and if it turns out that the act was an invasion of private rights, so that the private citizen is lawfully entitled to redress therefor, it is we, and not the soldier or officer, who ought to make the compensation; and we ought logically and tightly, when we create the defense, to provide to means new and here of making that defense effectual. The officer or the soldier may succeed in his defense; but how does he succeed, and at what expense? At the expense of years of litiation, at the eXpense of a ruin to him which is almost as complete as would be the ruin of defeat. Now, can we not trust the war branch of the Government, charged with the Dept of military affairs, in whose recor s is to be found the authority for these very acts, and under whose supervision and control every one of them has been performed? I ask, can we not trust such a Dept with the supervision of this defense, and leave it to that Depttoexcrcise the duty, nsit ought to be the pleasure, of the Government and the people to see that the soldier and the officer go seot free from trouble and expense, as well as from litigation.