To effect this object, recourse was had to the bribery of certain chiefs. Money was now offered certain influential men of the Seminoles and Exiles to induce them to exert their influence with their friends to emigrate. It was reported that slaves who had but a few years since left their masters, and intermarried with the Seminoles, dare not surrender, knowing that slavery awaited such act. Without them, their relatives and connexions would not remove. It was therefore proposed that Congress should make an appropriation for the purpose of purchasing such Exiles; yet the bill making it was general in its provisions, granting a hundred thousand dollars to be expended by the Secretary of War for the subsistence and _benefit_ of certain chiefs and warriors of the Seminole Indians who wished to emigrate. The subsistence of such emigrants was provided for in other bills; but the _benefits_ for which this money was to be expended was to purchase the pretended interest of certain white men to individual Exiles whom they claimed as property. By thus disguising the real intention and object of the bill, it was evidently expected it would pass without scrutiny, under the rules which prohibited the discussion of all questions involving the subject of slavery. The better to carry out this design, Hon. Waddy Thompson of South Carolina, a Whig member of the House of Representatives, but fully sympathizing with the Executive in his policy of conducting the war in the manner "_required by the interests and feelings of the people of Florida_," was regarded as the proper agent to introduce the bill and superintend its passage. [Sidenote: 1841.] The information found in the public documents had awakened previous investigation; and when this bill came up for action (Feb. 9), the policy of this war, with the causes which led to its commencement, were exposed. Every effort was made by slaveholding members to prevent the public discussion of this subject. They insisted that the gag-rules, as they were called, prohibiting the discussion of slavery, forbid this exposure; but the presiding officer (Mr. Clifford of Maine) adhering to the parliamentary law, decided that an examination of the causes which led to the war was legitimate, and the discussion proceeded. This discussion was published and widely circulated among the people; and is supposed to have given to the public the first information touching the real causes of the war.[129] The bill passed by a large majority; and the report of the Secretary of War the next year, showing the expenditures of his department, exhibited the manner in which the money appropriated and entrusted to his care was expended. Another bill, however, making an appropriation of more than a million of dollars for suppressing Indian hostilities in Florida was passed, giving to the War Department all the powers desired for bribery, and tempting Indian chiefs to emigrate to the Western Country.