In reference to the reenactment of the odious features of the Fugitive Slave Law in this bill, Mr. Hendricks said: "I recollect how the blood of the people was made to run cold within them when it was said that the white man was required to run after the fugitive slave; that the law of 1850 made you and me, my brother Senators, slave-catchers; that the _posse comitatus_ could be called to execute a writ of the law, for the recovery of a runaway slave, under the provisions of the Constitution of the United States; and the whole country was agitated because of it. Now slavery is gone; the negro is to be established upon a platform of civil equality with the white man. That is the proposition. But we do not stop there; we are to reenact a law that nearly all of you said was wicked and wrong; and for what purpose? Not to pursue the negro any longer; not for the purpose of catching him; not for the purpose of catching the great criminals of the land; but for the purpose of placing it in the power of any deputy marshal in any county of the country to call upon you and me, and all the body of the people, to pursue some white man who is running for his liberty, because some negro has charged him with denying to him equal civil rights with the white man. I thought, sir, that that frame-work was enough; I thought, when you placed under the command of the marshal, in every county of the land, all the body of the people, and put every one upon the track of the fleeing white man, that that was enough; but it is not. For the purpose of the enforcement of this law, the President is authorized to appoint somebody who is to have the command of the military and naval forces of the United States--for what purpose? To prevent a violation of this law, and to execute it. "You clothe the marshals under this bill with all the powers that were given to the marshals under the Fugitive Slave Law. That was regarded as too arbitrary in its provisions, and you repealed it. You said it should not stand upon the statute-book any longer; that no man, white or black, should be pursued under the provisions of that law. Now, you reenact it, and you claim it as a merit and an ornament to the legislation of the country; and you add an army of officers and clothe them with the power to call upon any body and every body to pursue the running white man. That is not enough, but you must have the military to be called in, at the pleasure of whom? Such a person as the President may authorize to call out the military forces. Where it shall be, and to whom this power shall be given, we do not know."