MR. PRESIDENT,--I hope the Senator from Indiana will pardon me, if I refer to him for one minute. He is so uniformly generous and just that I was the more surprised, when I listened to his remarks just now. I was surprised at his lack of generosity and his lack of justice--he will pardon me--toward these colored soldiers. I was surprised--he will pardon me--at his injustice to the State of Massachusetts. He spoke disparagingly of the colored soldiers. He thought they had been paid enough. He thought that the gallant blood shed on the parapets of Fort Wagner had been paid enough; and he failed to see that the men who died for us on that bloody night, and were buried in the same grave with the devoted colonel who led them, now stood alive in this presence to plead for the equality of their race. How can I help regret that the Senator was led into such remark? Also, in the ardor of his utterance,--he will pardon me still further,--the Senator undertook to say, that, if we entered on this payment, we should charge the Treasury with some one or two hundred millions in addition to its present burden. Why, Sir, that is an entire mistake. Even if we pay everything contemplated by the resolution, I am told that the whole will be little more than a million: much, I admit, to charge unnecessarily upon the Treasury, but not the very large sum which seemed to fill the patriotic vision of the Senator. MR. LANE, of Indiana. The Senator misunderstood my statement altogether. My statement was, that, if we were called upon now to go back and increase the pay of the colored troops three dollars a month more than the law provided, with the same propriety we might be called upon to go back and increase the pay of our white soldiers because they thought that their pay had not been enough; and that would add to the burdens of the Treasury to a very large amount. MR. SUMNER. I accept the correction gladly. Certainly I have no disposition to press anything beyond the meaning of the Senator. But he will allow me to say that I was hardly mistaken in his argument. It was, that we should charge the Treasury with a burden it could ill bear. Now, if this money is due, let us charge the Treasury with the burden; and that brings me again to the direct question, Is not the money due? The Senator denies it; but he will pardon me again, if I say he hardly went into an argument on that head. I repeat, then, is the money due? I dislike to trouble the Senate by going over topics already too much discussed; but I trust they will excuse me, if I state the case yet once more. On many accounts I confess a special interest in it; not the least is that I would have my country above doing injustice, least of all injustice to people of a race too long crushed by injustice.