Mr. WILSON and they prophesied, as the Senfrom Iowa suggests, that there would be an insurrection here. Every prediction made on that occasion has been falsdied by 4 years of history. When we proposed, in 1862, to make free the slaves of rebels we were told that it would. strengthen the confederacy and weaken the cause of the country. We passed that bill, and it weakened the enemies of the country and strengthened the friends of the country. When we put the rifle into the hand of the black soldierto fight for the country, we were told that he would not fight; that white men would not fight with him; that the policy would strengthen the enemies of the country and weaken the cause of the count. We put mus kets into the hands of 178,000 black soldiers, and on many bat tlefields they fought and bled for the country with a heroism unsurpassed, and the white soldiers of the Republic fought with them, bled, with them and died with them for n. common country. The enemy were driven, in the last hours of the rebellion, to offer liberty to their own slaves if they would fight for the confed cracy; but the slaves smrned the offered libert, though ready to die for the old flag, now, m iantwifii the beauties and glories of freedom. When the proclamation of emancipation was issuedbyAbrahamLincoln, we wereto dbytiinid friends that the country would be ruined, that our cause was lost, and that the friends of the country and of impartial freedom would be over whelmed by the indignation of the people. That act that gave freedom to 3 and a half million men, and made Abraham Lincolns name the mostprecious name of this century, strength, ened immensely the cause of the country, and broke the back one of the rebellion. When the constitutional amendment, the great crowning act, was proposed, we had the same timid friends, doubting and halting and prophesying; and joining with opponents the fought it inch by inch; at it passed both house. of Congress, has been sustained by the country, and is stronger today than any party or set of o men in the and We all remember that when the bill for the establishment of this Freedmens Bureau was before us the same prophecies were made, the same apprehensions expressed, and the same kind of opposition made that has been made to all the long series of glorious measures thathave tended to the emancipation of a race and to the strengthening of our country; and these proh ecies and apprehensions, too, have all been fa sified by the action of that bureau during the last 6 months. I say, sir, that the man does not live with powers great enough to express the positive good that bureau has done, and none but Almighty God knows the evil it. has prevented. say here today that millions upon millions have been produced by the establishment of that bureau that would not have been produced had it never been established. Last spring when the rebellion went down therewere in the rebel States 3 and a half million freedmen without work or propert. They felt they were free; they may have had Wlld notions of what freedom brought to them; they J iflcoivti? 7 i, shoes: Januarm certainly were disposed to show in the 1st place that they were free by leaving the employment of their old masters. By so doing they were proving that they were free the most natural thing in the world. Their masters did not recognize practically their freedom. The agents of the bureau went into that country, told the old master that his former slave was a free man, as free as himself, that he must recognize that freedom, and that he must deal with his former slave as a man having equal rights with himself before the laws of the country. The agents of the bureau taught the freedmen, also the duties that freedom rought to them and the obligations it imposed upon them. By this intervention, by this carrying of justice, equity, and humanity into these rebel States, it armonized the old masters and the new freedmen. parties look to practical results, and thus tons and tens of 1,000s of freedmen went to work for wages, and the crop of last autumn was immeasurably increased by the action of this bureau. I undertake to say that all the money, toil, and labor cXpended by the bureau is not the one 10th part of 1%. of the increase of product added to the countr, to say nothing of the peace, the harmony, an the enforcement of justice in that country. Now, sir, all over these States, whereverthe Freedmens Bureau has a good foothold, the rights of the freedmen are generally respected and enforced, and the old slavemasters themselves are coming to the realization of the new condition ofthings, and some of them accept it; but wherever the Freedmens Bureau does not reach, where itsagents are not to be found, there you will find injustice and cruelty, and whippings and scourings and murders that darken the continent. o man can deny this. Go ask Colonel Brown, who has the superintendence of Virginia, and who has been complimented by GenlHoward as one of the most efficient officers in the service; go to Professor Whittlese of nCarolina; go to General Saxton, who 1215been one of the truest and most devoted friends of the black men of our country, and who has been called away and is not compelled to see with his own eyes the bitter tears that are being shed over the violated promises that this nation made to the freedmen on the coast of the Carolinas; go to General Tillson, one of our ablest Army officers, and the head of the bureau in Georgia; to General Swaync, the son of one of the judges of our Supreme Court, who has the control in Alabama, and who has written, as I understand, within a few days, that atleast 5,000 persons have come into that State to engage in business, who, ifthe bureau is taken herethey cannot stay; go. "4O to m Qoneof the most active men of “d voted, patriotic, and able offeer, go to General Baird, in Louisiana; glorious Phil Sheridan; go to the men in that count who have studied and who understand these eedmens affairs, and they all hear one uniform and unbroken testimony to the inestimable benefits to the country of this humane and Christian organizationan organization that is carring liberty and justice and humanity into the ark corners of a land blighted and cursed by human bondage for 2 centuries. Mr. President, we have now before us a ropposiiion to enlarge the powers of this tread mens Bureau. The heart of this nation is for it. The Christian men and women of the country, who made this Administration of ours, who put us in these seats, and who hold us responsible before God and the conntr for our action, are for this organization. lhcyarein fa; yor of enlargingit and keeping it in the South Just as long as it may be necessary to keep it. the ct accustom these people to do justice and to, j these men who are our wards. Iam, therefore, in favor of the bill as it came from the ComJudiciary, substantially jut!t as it stands, and I am opposed cspecially to the amendment of the Senfrom on yi vauia., I do not see with Whatjustice we canl31ut the b reau out of liIa laud, where it is needed at much as in irginia, or out of Ken It made both. tricky, where it is needed quite imuch, I think, as it is in Tennessee. It will cost something. but I have no doubtif it does pass, its cost will not be one%. upon the increased prod uct it will bring to the country during the coming ear. e proclaimed liberty to 3 and a half million peois in order to break down this rebellion. 6 did it as a military necessity. We did not do it because it was right to do it, but we did it in defense of the Government of the U.S. These people exposed their lives for our country; the discharged their whole duty to the country; i ey are now thrown upon their own resources, into a hostile community; into a communitv exhausted by war; into a community where the people are admitted by everybody to be poor; into States which, as the Senfrom Kentucky [Mr. Gurnuin] says, have lost$10,000,000,000 by the war. Who is to take care of them? Who isto irotect them against the hostile legislation of those States? Igiic Senfrom Kentucky told us, and told us truly, that the old slave codes and laws went down with slavery, but not so think these Gentlemen in several of the States. In 4 or 5 of the States they have passed codes of laws that practically make the freedman a peon or a serf.