Mr. Trumbull replied: "I desire simply to remark that the speech from which I quoted, made by the Senator from Maryland, was made upon this very bill. It was in reference to this bill that he was speaking when he laid down the proposition that every person born in the United States since the abolition of slavery was a citizen of the United States, and if there was any doubt about it, it was proper for us to declare them so, and not only proper, but our duty to do so; and to make the matter specific, the honorable Senator voted for this proposition, which I will now read, on the yeas and nays: "'All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign Power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States, without distinction of color.' "Upon the adoption of that proposition as an amendment, it not being in the bill as originally introduced, the Senator from Maryland, with thirty others, voted in the affirmative. So we have his high authority for saying that all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign Power, are citizens of the United States, exactly as it appears in this bill." "Mr. Yates, of Illinois, remarked: "I remember very well that the Senator from Maryland offered an amendment to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill to this effect: to strike out the words 'without distinction of color.' The Freedmen's Bureau Bill applied legislation by Congress to the freedmen in the States and to the condition of the freedmen in the States. It was legislation that affected the freedmen in the rebellious States. If I remember aright the Senator from Maryland moved to strike out the words 'without distinction of color' in one section of that bill, and for that motion he gave this reason: because, under the Constitution of the United States, as amended, abolishing slavery in all the States and Territories of the United States, the freedmen occupied precisely the same position with any other citizen of the United States in any State or Territory. I understood him as taking the broad position, which I have maintained, and which Republican Senators have maintained, and which I think the country maintains, that under the Constitution, as amended, the freedman occupies precisely the same position as any man born in any State or Territory of the United States; and that was the object, if I understood the Senator from Maryland, of his moving to amend the Freedmen's Bureau Bill by striking out the words 'without distinction of color.' "I recognize the authority of the decisions quoted by the Senator from Maryland before the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution. The States had the power over the question of slavery in the States before the amendment to the Constitution; but by the amendment to the Constitution, in which the States have concurred, the freedman becomes a free man, entitled to the same rights and privileges as any other citizen of the United States."