Mr. Wilson gives in his book a condensed summary of the debates in the House relative to each step of the reform. For the most part it is a record of noble, Christian, unworldly patriotic sentiment--a sort of ideal statesmanship becoming real in tangible good deeds. Every day some new den in the Augean stable was exposed and opened up to daylight, and the cleansing baptism of liberty applied. There was some fluttering and screaming of owls and bats, and now and then the poor old dilapidated dragon of slavery gave a bootless hiss, but nobody minded it. It was a whole-hearted, clean, pure, noble time in Congress, when those walls, so long defiled with the brawls, the mingled profanity and obscenity of slaveholders and slavebreeders, now rang only to manly sentiments and cleanly, noble, Christian resolves, such as make the heart strong to hear. We quote from the close of Mr. Wilson's book the summary of what was done by these Congresses in the way of reform legislation. "As the Union armies advanced into the rebel States, slaves, inspired by the hope of personal freedom, flocked to their encampments, claiming protection against rebel masters, and offering to work and fight for the flag whose stars for the first time gleamed upon their vision with the radiance of liberty. Rebel masters and rebel-sympathizing masters sought the encampments of the loyal forces, demanding the surrender of the escaped fugitives; and they were often delivered up by officers of the armies. To weaken the power of the insurgents, to strengthen the loyal forces, and assert the claims of humanity, the 37th Congress enacted an article of war, dismissing from the service officers guilty of surrendering these fugitives. Three thousand persons were held as slaves in the District of Columbia, over which the nation exercised exclusive jurisdiction; the 37th Congress made these three thousand bondmen freemen, and made slaveholding in the capital of the nation for evermore impossible. "Laws and ordinances existed in the national capital that pressed with merciless rigor upon the colored people: the 37th Congress enacted that colored persons should be tried for the same offences, in the same manner, and be subject to the same punishments, as white persons; thus abrogating the 'black code.' "Colored persons in the capital of this Christian nation were denied the right to testify in the judicial tribunals; thus placing their property, their liberties, and their lives, in the power of unjust and wicked men; the 37th Congress enacted that persons should not be excluded as witnesses in the courts of the District on account of color.