Page:Report of the minority of the Select Committee on Emancipation, relative to the bill to establish a Bureau of Freedmen's Affairs.djvu/3

Rh important interests of the country would suffer by leaving the bill with its originators until they shall have matured an intelligent and well-defined system. With the return of peace, the subject for which the bill is introduced loses, in the opinion of your committee, all affinity to the War Department, and should he turned over to the Department of the Interior, or some other co-ordinate branch of the government. Unless, therefore, the framers of the bill look to this war as the permanent and normal condition of the country, the powers intended to be granted should be attached to some other department. The system of government for freedmen proposed in the bill embraces the essential features of the administration of justice over a large portion of the resident population, and affects directly the rights and interests of all in subjects now protected by judicial action, the administration of which is secured by constitutional enactments. Yet it is destitute of the machinery necessary to secure the regular administration of justice, while the system is most likely to fall under the control of political retainers and partisans. If these freedmen of African descent are still slaves, and the government have inherited or taken by conquest the position of their masters, they are of course liable to be separated from the free population, have their tasks assigned them, and their wages controlled and established by the representatives of their masters; but if the Presidential proclamation has had any effect, and if they are freedmen in anything else but in name, in the opinion of your committee, the Constitutions of the United States and of the several States prescribes that jurisdiction over most of the subjects mentioned in the bill shall be vested in the judiciary. The only well-defined portion of the bill is that which limits the appointment to one principal commissioner, his immediate assistant, and a single assistant for each of the several Slates. Besides these, clerks are to be appointed at the head of the bureau in the city of Washington, without any limitation as to number, except that they are restricted to two in a class, but without any limitation as to the number of classes. In the several States there is to be one commissioner to each State, but as many superintendents and clerks as are necessary, which necessity, of course, depends entirely upon the opinion of the head of the department, and their compensation is to be fixed by the same authority. It appears also depending entirely upon the necessity existing in his mind whether the number of such local clerks or superintendents shall equal or exceed the number of overseers formerly in use upon slave plantations, and whether the power of disposing and directing these freedmen, organizing and controlling their labor, assigning them lands, adjusting their wages, and receiving the proceeds therefrom, and of arbitrating and settling their difficulties, as provided by the bill, may not revive most of the odious features of slavery without its name. Under the provisions of the bill, the freedman may he as effectually stripped of the proceeds of his labor to build up the fortunes of an avaricious superintendent, as though he were under the control of a master, without enjoying the benefits of the protection and support the system of slavery affords. Large sections of rebel slave territory have been brought within the military power of our government, and it is highly probable that still larger portions of such territory will be added thereto. Your committee cannot conceive of any reason why this vast domain, paid for by the blood of white men, should be set apart for the sole benefit of the freedmen of African descent, to the exclusion of all others, and leased for an unlimited time, thereby preventing its occupation, except by them, at least for a long time to come. It seems to your committee incomprehensible, nay extremely unjust. The bill proposes to give to each petty superintendent the determination of all questions relating to the disposition and direction of all persons of African descent becoming free under any proclamation, military rule or order, or by tiny act of the State governments, with power to establish and enforce regulations