“I have demonstrated to you that everything is ordered, every previous step taken, all safe, by experience shown to be safe, for the long desired consummation. The time has come, the trial has been made, the hour is striking; you have no longer a pretext for hesitation or faltering or delay. The slave has shown, by four years’ blameless behavior and devotion to the pursuits of peaceful industry, that he is as fit for his freedom as any English peasant, ay, or any lord whom I now address. I demand his rights,--_I demand his liberty without stint_,--in the name of justice and of law, in the name of reason, in the name of God, who has given you no right to work injustice.”[353] But surely there is no need of eloquence or persuasion to induce you to set your faces like flint against any such half-way system. Freedom already declared must be secured completely, so that it may not fail through any pretension or fraud of wicked men. The least that can be done is what is proposed by your Committee. Much more might be said on the whole subject; but I forbear. I have opened to consideration the two principal questions. If the Senate agree with the Committee, first, on the importance of keeping the superintendence of the freedmen and of lands in the same hands, so as to avoid local conflict and discord, and, secondly, in the importance of providing surely against any system of serfdom or adscription to the soil, the bill of the Committee must be adopted. For the sake of plainness, I ask attention to the general character of the bill in its main features. 1. It provides exclusively for freedmen, meaning thereby “such persons as have once been slaves,” without undertaking to embrace persons generally of African descent. 2. It seeks to secure for such freedmen the opportunity of labor on those lands which are natural and congenial to them, and on this account it places superintendence of the freedmen in a department having superintendence of the lands. 3. It provides positively against any system of enforced labor or apprenticeship, by requiring contracts between the freedmen and their employers to be carefully attested before local officers. 4. It establishes careful machinery for the purposes of the bill, both as regards freedmen and as regards lands. But the bill is seen not only in what it does, but also in what it avoids doing. It does not undertake too much. It does not assume to provide ways and means for the support of the freedmen; but it does look to securing them the opportunities of labor according to well-guarded contracts and under the friendly advice of agents of the Government, who will take care that they are protected from abuse of all kinds.