I have not done with the criticism of the Senator. It was on the fifth section, concerning the labor on abandoned plantations, that he bent his chief force. In the provisions of that section he found a new system of Slavery: sometimes it was Slavery outright, and sometimes it was Peon Slavery. Senators who did me the honor of listening to my remarks at the beginning of this debate will remember how I dwelt upon the importance of guarding against any revival of Slavery under any other name, whether of apprenticeship or adscription to the soil; and they may remember, perhaps, how I explained the impossibility of any such occurrence under the present bill, and showed that the freedman was guarded at all points. And yet, in the face of this exposition, and of the positive text,--better than any exposition,--the cry is sounded, that the liberty of the freedman is in danger. The Senator read this section at length, and then sounded again particular clauses and phrases, striving to interpret them for Slavery. I will not read it at length; nor will I dwell on the first part of the section. Suffice it to say, that, so far as it describes the lands to be taken for occupation, it follows substantially the text of the order from the War Department, by which “all houses, tenements, lands, and plantations, except such as may be required for military purposes, which have been or may be deserted and abandoned by insurgents within the lines of the military occupation,” are placed under the supervision and control of the supervising special agents of the Treasury Department. Under this order the Secretary of the Treasury has been acting for several months,--doing with these lands precisely what the Senator so vehemently condemns. The present bill, so far as concerns the power of the Commissioner over the lands, does little more than reduce the order of the War Department to the text of a statute, thus imparting to it a certain legality which it does not now possess. Passing from the lands to be occupied under the bill, the Senator next pictures the terrible fate of the freedmen laboring on these lands in pursuance of careful contracts. There seems no limit to the Senator’s anxiety lest they should be bound in Slavery. I welcome his generous solicitude. But I pray that he will not allow it to mislead his judgment or prevent him from seeing the case in its true character. Surely he must be unduly excited, or he could not find danger in these words:-- “In case no proper lessees can be found, then to cause the same to be cultivated or occupied by the freedmen, on such terms, in either case, and under such regulations, as the Commissioner may determine.”