iJA. Relief of the Suffering Poor of the South. SPEECHES \ OF HON. WILLIAM WILLIAMS, OF INDIANA, HON, BENJAMIN F. BUTLER, OF MASSACHUSETTS, HON. JOHN A. LOGAN, OF ILLINOIS, AND HON. JOHN COVODE, OF PENNSYLVANIA. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 13, 18G7. WASHINGTON: PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 186 V. SUFFERING POOR OF THE SOUTH. The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union — Mr. WILLIAMS, of Indiana, said: I regret to take up any of the time of the House in opposing this resolution ; but I would inquire if there is to be any limit to these appropriations asked for from this Congress ? Is it true that this Government is a mine of inexhaustible wealth, and that it has become a hospital for the desti- | tute of the entire country ? Is it true that mil- ! •lions and millions are to be voted out of the j public Treasury to be used to feed the wives j and children of those men who raised the arm | of rebellion against the flag of our country ? If j Congress shall adopt a policy to make appro- priations for the destitute of the land, let them j go into the large cities, into the towns and | hamlets, and provide for the widows and chil- dren of our soldiers, and lavish upon them the bounty they propose to give. I know when a measure comes with the sup- ; port of General Howard it is hard to oppose it. Sir, I love his patriotic devotion 1>o his | country, aud his devotion to the suffering every- ] where. I know that when he comes before j Congress asking an appropriation for the suf- i fering millions it is hard to resist it; but let me J say here that this bill calling for an appropria- tion of $1,000,000 is not all that we_ shall be called upon to vote. Is there any point where we can stop these vast calls upon our Treasury ? If there be not, I say the time will soon come when you will want another bankrupt law — one for the Government and not for the citizen. This appropriation is to be paid out by the Freedmen’s Bureau. I undertake to say that there have been sufficient appropriations made at the last session of the Thirty-Ninth Con- gress for that bureau. There was, I under- stand, a surplus of $280,000 remaining. During the last session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress we appropriated $5,136,000 more for the destitute of the South. Yet now we are asked to draw $1,000,000 more from the pock- ets of the toiling yeomen of our country to feed the rebels of the South. Mr. Chairman, I here enter my solemn pro- test in the Hall of this House against an appro- priation which shall tax the one-armed and limbless soldiers of the Republic who fought and suffered for the flag, to take this money out of their pocket and pay it to the women and children of rebels, women and children nvho with malignant hatred spat upon our sol- diers wounded and weary in their march to the sea. I protest against it in behalf of the widows and orphans of the men who were starved to death at Andersonville. Why should we appropriate $1,000,000 for feeding the poor of that region? Is there no law by which we could make the wealthy rebels support their own poor and destitute? I think if my friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Butler] had control of that department he would find some law by which the wealthy rebels should be taxed to feed their own poor. I am opposed to this measure ; I oppose it because this Congress must come to a stop some time in these appropriations of millions from i the pockets of our people, who are now op- | pressed with taxation. And I understand some j of these southern communities spurn the offer- j ing of help by Mr. Peabody. I say then let j them wait. If there is to be suffering in this country, if there is to be destitution, if any are to suffer, let it be the disloyal ; and if need be, let God Almighty populate that country with people who will love our flag and the free insti- tutions of which it is the emblem. Mr. BUTLER said : Mr. Chairman : I desire, with the leave of the committee, to offer a substitute for the res- jl olution. I move to strike out all after the en- || acting clause and insert in lieu thereof the j[ following: That the sum of SI, 000,000 be appropriated, to be l | expended under the direction of the Secretary of i War, in relieving the widows and children of Union ! soldiers starved to death in the rebel prisons ot An- [ dersonville, Salisbury, Libby, Millen, and Belle Isle. I I do not, sir, object to the resolution before I the committee, nor do I in offering this sub- stitute mean to foster in the slightest degree | the idea that the money proposed to be appro- priated by the original resolution will be im- properly expended. On the contrary, I have great confidence in the gentleman who is at the head of that institution commonly called the Freedmen’s Bureau. I beg leave to call the attention of the com- mittee to the fact that it is the Bureau of Abandoned Lands, ^Refugees, and Freedmen, so that it covers in its wise and beneficent provis- ions every loyal and true element in the south- ern States, and there is no occasion to go further except as a matter of charity, and I have been taught to be just before I am gen- erous. Sir, this resolution calls to mind the j starved and emaciated forms of my fellow- soldiers, as they passed through my hands while commissioner of exchange of prisoners as they returned from these deadly prisons, and I have thereby again been brought face to face with their widows and children, and until the country is able to make sufficient provision for them I j am not in favor of putting my hand into the pocket of the already overtaxed North to be generous to the untaxed South. Sir, I do not believe in the principle of this bill for another reason : while I listened to the very able report, which I wish the committee!* to understand was not volunteered by General Howard, but was drawn out by a resolution of the Senate, that there may be some sixty thousand whites and blacks in the whole South that need relief, yet I do not see how it is that we are called upon in this form of relief to step forward and from the Treasury of the United States make such an appropriation. j Let me call the attention of gentlemen upon j the other side of the House to this fact : if they ! vote for this bill, what becomes of their vaunted J doctrine of State rights? Suppose this war j had not occurred, do you believe that upon any case of starvation, either at the South ox in the North, it would have been believed by the strict constructionists of the Constitution that Congress had the constitutional power to make an appropriation for such purpose as this ? But, sir, I do not for myself take this ground. I am not one of those who now believe that this Government would be powerless if it were expedient and just to aid these men ; but I object to the mode in which the money is pro- posed to be raised for this object. If you will pardon me a single personal allusion, in refer- ence to what fell from the lips of my friend from Indiana, before me, [Mr. Williams,] in my absence from the House, and what I would not have dared to have obtruded on the com- mittee but for that allusion, I will say that I have had some experience in a like case, for from the loth June to the 15th December, 1862, 1 fed in the department of the Gulf thirty- four thousand and odd white women and chil- dren, who would otherwise have starved, and whose husbands and fathers, many of them, were in the confederate army; but I did not tax the loyal North to obtain that relief. Under the war power I taxed the rich of the South J to support the poor of the South. And I will II go as far as he who goes farthest in that direc- tion now to aid the same poor by any constitu- tional legislation. The destitution of the South, as a whole, is much exaggerated. Let us remember that in the palmiest days of the South their cotton crop of two million bales sold for but ten cents a pound, and that there were in the South at the collapse of the rebellion two mil- lion bales of cotton that sold for from fifty to seventy-five cents a pound ; perhaps sixty cents would be an average, equivalent to six crops of the olden time, or nearly five hun- dred million dollars. If that were fairly dis- tributed in the South, there would be no need to call upon us of the North to aid in the sup- port of the southern people. It is because such firms as Frazier, Trenholm & Co. accu- mulated the resources of the South during the war ; because the whole property of the South is aggregated in a few hands; because the President of the United States, acting as he believed rightly we must conclude, until it is judicially examined at another bar, gives back the property captured by the forces of the Uni- ted States, to whom? To the poor men of the South? Oh, no ; but to the men of wealth, the owners of the land, so that the text has almost been verified which says, “To him who hath shall be given ; and to him who hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Now, after we have been told by the Execu- tive that Congress is making appropriations so extravagant that he believes it will lead> to repudiation of our national obligations, I trust we will pause before we make further appro- priations for such purposes, and say at least we will first make those which will do justice to the widows and orphans of those who fought our battles ; and then we will take such property as comes to us from the war to repair the rav- ages of the war, both North and South. I for one ask no confiscation of any property that shall go into the pockets of the North. Thank God, our industry, our enterprise, our means of recuperation are such that we need none of it. But I do ask that there shall be legislation which will distribute the property, whether real or personal property, among those of the South whose labor has earned it, and who are now starving because they are deprived of the results of their labors. For such legislation, for the benefit of the masses of the South, I shall ever be ready to give my voice and my vote. The property in the South, which belongs to us by the right of capture, every dollar of it, and which is ours and at our disposal by every principle ever yet enunciated from any judicial tribunal competent to cope with the subject — concerning that property I desire to see legislation which shall equalize the bur- dens of the war, now so grevious to be borne by the southern people. Besides, before I am called upon to be generous to the southern 4 such legislation as in Mississippi, appropriating $20,000 — and for what. To feed her starving poor? No, but to defend Jefferson Davis, who is luxuriating in Fortress Monroe, on a trial which will never take place. Mr. BOYER. Will the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Butler] allow me to ask a question? Mr. BUTLER. Certainly. Mr. BOYER. I would ask the gentleman whether, if such an appropriation was made by the legislative body to which he refers, that is any reason why the children of those who had nothing to do with that legislation should be left to starve? Ought those who had noth- ing to do with that legislation to be held ac- countable for it? Mr. BUTLER. I can answer that question, I think, as it should be answered, in the light of the proprieties of governmental action. Governments must always deal with commu- nities, not with individuals; Governments must always deal with the organized action of com- munities, not with the acts of individuals. The individual must partake of the character and suffer the fate of the community in which he resides. And if the men of the South • make such legislation as I have specified through their organized government, it must be taken as the index by which our action toward them is to be guided. Mr. BOYER. Let me ask one other ques- tion in this connection. Ought the people, of Georgia to be left to starve because of objec- tionable legislation by the people of Mississippi ? Mr. BUTLER. By no means. And if the acts to which I refer had been singular as com- mitted by the people of Mississippi alone, perhaps I might be content with striking the State of Mississippi from the benefits of this appropriation and stop there. Bui did not the gentleman see the statement but the other day that the ladies of Texas had sold a large quantity of confederate uniforms which they had made up for confederate soldiers while the rebel armies were yet in the field? And what did they do with the proceeds of that sale? Did they appropriate them for the ben- efit of the starving poor in Texas, of whom the Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau re- ports to us there are thousands? Not at all. They sent the moneys arising from that sale as an endowment to the college in Virginia over which the rebel General Robert E. Lee presides, in order, I suppose, that the youth of the South might be taught in the same man- ner as heretofore their duties of loyalty to their country, their obligations to their fellow- men, and the binding effects of their sworn oaths, which their teacher for himself had violated. “Straws show which way the wind blows.” Let me ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Boyer] to notice another straw which shows the current of southern feeling. But a day or two since we saw an account of two gamecocks being sent as a present to Robert E. Lee from the soldiers of the army of north* ern Virginia. Would it hot have been better to have boiled them to feed some of those starv- ing children of their comrades that the gentle- man is so anxious about ? [Laughter. ] I insist that we must take these things as indicice of the temper of the people of the South, and so govern ourselves in our legislation. Let them learn that so long as there is such action on the part of their public bodies, so long as they follow the lead of the men who have led them to destruction, destruction can be the only result. Let them learn that in the recon- struction which I trust is soon to be accom- plished in a loyal manner they must repudiate their old leaders, and by a course of legisla- tion which shall tend to make a division of the lands among all the people, give to every man the means of at least fulfilling the primeval curse 11 by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread,” thus affording the needed relief to a suffering people. I regret as much as the gentleman from Pennsylvania or any other, the state of desti- tution which is represented as existing in the South ; and I feel that I have a right to say Irthat when I had the power I did all that in me lay to relieve such destitution, for which 1 have received thus far no other reward than a de- lightful shower of obloquy. When the ques- tion is. presented to me, sir, how much I will give as a private citizen toward relieving dis- tress in the South, I trust that my subscription will not fall behind that which my friend from Pennsylvania, in the goodness of his heart, may contribute in accordance with our respect- ive means. But, sir, I am now speaking as a legislator. I say that in these Halls of legislation we have no right to pass over the starving widows and children of our soldiers, for whom we have yet made no sufficient provision as a nation, and for the care of whom every State in the Union, and the State I have the honor in part to rep- resent more than or as much as any other, is burdened with taxation ; we have no right as legislators to put our hands into the Treasury, supplied by taxation, to meet the claims of generosity before the claims of justice are satisfied. Will any gentleman in the House, in voting upon this substitute, say that gen- erosity prompts him to vote $1,000,000 to the starving women and children of the South, while justice to the overtaxed North prevents him from relieving the starving widows and children of the noble heroes who gave up their lives for their country at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and Libby? It is stated in the able report of the Com- missioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau that sixty thousand starving women and children have been reported to him. Why, sir, the thirty thousand and more of Union soldiers starved in those prisons have left on an average more than two dear ones who were dependent upon them. Therefore I insist again, leaving off where I began, that we should be just before we are 5 generous, and take from the disloyal property- holders of the South the means of repairing the great wrong they have done by misleading their humbler fellow-citizens into a great war and into this subsidiary rebellion after the war is over. Mr. LOGAN said: Mr. Chairman: I do not intend to detain the committee any great length of time in discussing the proposition before us. I have entire confidence, sir, in the integrity, as well as the good intentions, in all things, of the noble officer in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau. His generosity and philanthropy is coextensive with all suffering humanity. Any appeal addressed to him on behalf of any class of people who may be represented as suffering is sure to find in his bosom a sympathetic re- sponse, and, owing to the generosity of his na- ture, may sometimes surpass that which would by others not seem just and proper under the circumstances. Now, sir, I ask who is this that demands this unprecedented charity at the hands of Congress? What class of people is it? Is it the poor downtrodden freedmen ? Is it the poor white people? or is it the fami- lies of the leaders of the rebellion that have caused so much weeping and wailing in our land ? We hare no information further than that there are some sixty thousand people who are suffering, or who soon will be in a suffering condition, in the rebel States. I would be as willing as any one to put ray hand in my pocket and so far as I am able relieve the sufferings of any unfortunate class of people. But look- ing at this resolution as I do, I cannot put my hand in the pockets of the tax-payers, many of whom are as poor as those who pretend to ask this Government to be made an alms-house, and assist in appropriating $1,000,000 as a pension to one-armed and one-legged rebel soldiers or the families of that class. This resolution, sir, is nothing more than a dodge to make pensioners of rebels that cannot be provided for in the usual way. You do not put them on the United States pension -rolls, by the side of the wounded soldiers and widows and orphans of those who died in defense of their country ; but by another mode you put them on the bounty of the Government. This House but yesterday refused to pass a bill equalizing the bounties of the soldiers that fought on the side of their country in the great struggle for the existence of the Union. Yet without accomplishing that, without amply pro- viding for our own widows and crying orphans that prattle about the return of those they will see no more, we are asked to give $1,000,000 for the purpose of supplying the wants of somebody, without knowing who. When you talk about dealing out $1,000,000 of commissary stores to these poor people of the South, we but have to reflect for one moment to see that labor is at a high price in the New England factories ; and when we look at the vast domain of the Northwest, and find in many instances the plow has been permitted to stand in the furrow because labor has been so high, and if any portion of the poor people anywhere or laboring classes toward whom gentlemen desire to be so generous are suffering the road is broad and open to the Northwest, where the poor and laboring classes of all climes and all complexions are invited by our smiling prairies. We need their labor and are ready to pay them for it, we will help them to live until harvest season, we will alleviate their wants and allay their sufferings ; but they must apply in the proper manner. They must show a willingness to work and earn their livelihood by the sweat of their face as our own people have always done. Sir, this is not the first time we have been asked to show our generosity to this same people. During the war against traitors and rebels, and while we were fighting the men who sought the life of this nation and the lives of its defenders, we were feeding and supporting their wives and children left behind, who were by the fortunes of war cast within our lines. I have seen many times long lines of them at the doors of the commissary depart- ment at different posts receiving food, while we were fighting their husbands and friends at the front. They were not then above asking us to feed them, while they despised us and our cause, and I have no doubt the same class are now to be fed under this appropriation. I hear no complaint on the part of the freedmen or from any class who have tried to preserve and protect themselves. There is a class of people in the South that never did make bread, and never will, who will always be starving, and on the bounty of the Government if we will allow them to become pensioners. If they had -used ordinary indus- try and had energy they would not to-day be in want of assistance to save them from star- vation. There is no spot on earth more invit- ing than those southern fields. They are car- peted in green and decorated by the hand of the Almighty with the rarest and most beauti- ful flowers. It wants but the well-directed energy and industry of its inhabitants to make it as prosperous and abundant as any land the sun shines upon. Yet it is in this land of beauty and richness we are asked to feed the mouths of sixty thousand people; and while we are in hot haste to tax our people to feed them what do we see? In the State of Arkan- sas a short time ago an appropriation was made providing for the pensioning of soldiers not provided for by Congress, meaning the rebel soldiers, not for the weeping widow and crying orphan of the Union soldier. No, sir; but money they could appropriate for the rebel soldiers, their widows and orphans. So in other rebel States they have appropriated money for colleges and schools of a military character, where treason again can be taught and made respectable. If these States can provide money for such purposes, I ask could they not dole out a few mouthsful of bread to 6 the starving people so eloquently appealed for here to-day ? I could cite many other instances where money has been provided by their rebel Legis- latures to promote treason and benefit those who had cursed the land by steeping their souls in perjury and their hands in the blood of Union men ; but no instance can I find where they have shown a willingness to feed the poor freedman or the poor white man. Sir, let this Congress, as done heretofore, en- courage industry, invite these people to come to the great West, where liberty is known and loyalty loved, where energy, industry, and labor is rewarded. If Congress, however, is to be turned into a charitable institution, to support all classes of people who do not try to support themselves, you may then appro- priate $1,000,000 every month, and the more you appropriate the more people will be starv- ing at the end of every month so long as there is a dollar or a man to pay taxes. Tell me, sir, that this money is not to go into the hand and mouths of these people that attempted to destroy this Government. Buy your $1,000,000 worth of rations, send them to the different posts, to the commanders in the different parts of the South, distribute your commissary stores to the various officers throughout that country, how will they be issued? They will be issued upon the state- ments of parties that they have need of them. Who will make these statements? They will be more likely to be made by the men and women who have attempted to destroy you and me than by those who have revered the flag and loved their country. I have- seen the families of the men with their ten thousand broad acres come and ask for provisions, and I have seen the provisions given. These men have all manner of devices to attain their ends. A very common dodge used to be like this : a lady living on a planta- tion, with her fifty or seventy-five slaves, whose husband was in the rebel army, would send one of her colored servants to make application at the commissary’s department for provisions for the whole of the slaves. She controlled their labor and would send them on this errand. The provisions would be ordered to be given, and when they were received they would be divided among the whole family. So it was, and so it will be again. Appropriate this money and the man who owns his broad acres with his hired laborers will resort to the same trick and receive the rations. Mr. ELDRIDGE. May I make an inquiry of the gentleman ? Mr. LOGAN. Yes, sir. Mr. ELDRIDGE. I understand him to say that the southern people were in the habit of using their negroes for the purpose of procur- ing provisions from the officers of the Army by a dodge. I wish to know if that was a very common practice among these negroes, and if so, w’hether those negroes who practiced this deceit were considered as loyal men at the time. Mr. LOGAN. They were considered loyal ; and I never knew a disloyal negro during the war. [Laughter.] But I will tell the gentle- man this, that they have been subject to the will of their masters for such a length of time that they know no better than to obey them. Mr. ELDRIDGE. I understand the gentle- man to say that fifty negroes would obey one woman and cheat the officers of the Army ; and do it without knowing what they did, and still be loyal. Mr. LOGAN. It was cheating the officers of the Army or Government ; it was a cheat on the part of the person who directed them to do it. We issued the rations because we believed the statement of the negroes, but afterward we learned the manner in which the provisions were disposed of. Mr. BOYER. One question. If it had been known that these negroes who thus applied for rations did so for the purpose of saving their mistress and her family from starvation, would the gentleman have considered it proper for the officers to have given the rations? Mr. LOGAN. So far as I am concerned I should have obeyed orders, no matter what I •thought. But the gentleman certainly ought not to be astonished at a dodge of/ this kind. Those people did that upon the same principle that the northern copperheads dodged the draft. [Laughter and applause in the gal- leries.] , Mr. BOYER. Mr. Chairman, the gentle- man has dodged my question. [Laughter.] He has failed to answer it, but replies eva- sively that he should have obeyed orders. I j would not have supposed a gentleman so op- posed to dodging would have set us such an example at this time. [Laughter.] Mr. LOGAN. Well, so far as my qualifica- tions for dodging are concerned, the gentleman will probably learn more about them at some future time when he gets better acquainted, with me. [Laughter.] 1 have no disposition to dodge anything. I only assert facts ; the gen- tleman can draw his own inferences from them. And I assert that the same thing will occur again; not with the colored people any more than with any other class. But I tell the gen- tleman now that I hear no appeal coming from the starving people of Missouri, although that State suffered almost as much as any other on account of war. But because it is a loyal State, because the loyal portion of the people got control and held it firmly in the Union, we are not called upon to appropiate money to feed them. Mr. BOYER. I ask the gentleman whether Missouri is not included in the provisions of this resolution, whether it is not an appropria- tion for the South and Southwest? Mr. LOGAN. I do not understand it as applying to Missouri. I do not understand that there is any report embracing any portion of Missouri in this condition ; or claiming that any States are except those which have been 1 in insurrection against the Government. 7 Mr. BLAINE. Missouri is not embraced within the scope of this resolution at all. Mr. LOGAN. I say to the gentleman that we do not come here from Missouri or Illinois, or from any of the northern or northwestern States asking alms from this Congress. Although there are many poor people in the Northwest, we do not understand that we have a right to come to Congress to be fed. We have all suffered during the war and have many people left penniless. There was suffer- ing before the war, and starving people all over the country, and who ever thought of asking Congress to be the dispenser of charities to a class of people who would not help themselves. But an age of treason has taught us strange things ; punish nobody, compromise with trai- tors, and then feed them whenever some one suggests it. All this is done for States that re- belled, but in the loyal States the voice appeal- ing in weeds for help must be provided for in some other way, and our anxiety, our charity, our sympathy turned in a southerly direction. Oh, ye poor of the North, how unfortunate you were, if you ask alms of the Congress of the United States, that you had not lived in the land of treason 1 Now, sir, although I enter- tain so much respect for the Superintendent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, yet if you appro- priate all the money for all the charitable pur- poses for which he may be inclined to ask, you may appropriate millions on millions for all classes of poor people South ; and may also feed the peopje of Washington city so long as it remains the capital of the nation. And all this will be done with the best intentions on his and your part. I have no doubt much money is being used to-day by this Govern- ment for the support, unwittingly, of families who fostered and nourished the late rebellion. Ay, sir, and families, too, who before this re- bellion never wore a garment except at Gov- ernment expense ; who never had a spear of grass to grow in their yards or a flower to spring up in their gardens that was not watered by the drippings of the Treasury of the United States of America. Sir, you will see by this resolution that those who should be considered the favored children of this land will not be included among the starv- ing people now to be relieved at the hands of Congress; and I appeal to honorable members to say if charities are to be dispensed by Con- gress, it shall not be dispensed to one portion of the country more than another. Put not your hands into the Treasury of the United States for the purpose of fattening and fostering treason again in the land that gave it birth and where it grew into manhood. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Boyer] said he was willing to open his great heart to these suffer- ing people. So am I willing to do so in a proper manner when much deserving. But, sir, whence comes this suffering? It was not by our act, not bytheact of the people North; it was not in accordance with our wishes or our desires, but by their own act, their own indiscretion, their own wrong, their own crime against their country. The gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Donnelly] says we should do this act to encourage the people and show them our affection for them, or words to that effect . It seems to me that .we have shown our for- bearance toward these people. We have offered them everything that they could ask. Proposition after proposition has been ten- dered them only to be spurned with scorn and contempt. And if you were tendering this money to them to-day through their rebel Legislatures, it would be spurned by them ; but in this manner, when all can say I never had any of your charities, I have no doubt it will be very acceptable. Mr. WASHBURN, of Indiana. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question ? Mr. LOGAN. Certainly. Mr. WASHBURN, of Indiana. I would ask the gentleman if he is in favor of allowing to starve the twenty-four thousand two hun- dred and thirty-eight colored people, who General Howard says will starve to death unless they are assisted in some way. Mr. LOGAN* I am not in favor of allow- ing anybody to starve if I can help it. I do not want any man, or any Avoman, or any child to starve. But I will say to the gentle- man this : that it has not been brought to my knowledge that they are starving more than are other people ; nor has it been yet brought to my knowledge that these people are in such a condition that they could not relieve them- selves by proper industry and exertion on their part. Nor has it been brought to my knowledge that the wealthy people in these States are not able to put thfeir hands into their own pockets and give this charity for the purpose of saving the lives of these people, just as well as the wealthy people of the North can do it. In my own State, when we have destitute people, we put our hands in our own pockets and provide for them; we do not ask Congress to do it. When the gentleman says that this is for the benefit of colored persons, that statement is not correct. The present appropriation, if con- fined to the classes who come under the Freed- men’s Bureau, is sufficient. General Howard tells us in his report that sufficient appropria- tion has already been made to be expended under his direction to supply the class em- braced, and if that be true, it is his duty to provide for these twenty or thirty odd thousand starving colored people at the South ; and he says that he has money enough to do this, $1,500,000 having been appropriated for the purpose. What is the propriety of appropri- ating another million when General Howard says that he has abundant means if it be con- fined to his Department? I am told by a gentleman from Massachu- setts [Mr. Baldwin] that General Howard stated to him this morning that this appropri- ation, while it might be useful, had not been asked by him ; but that he had reported it as he was directed to do. Now, I am opposed to this 8 House being directed by anybody to do any- thing in reference to any of the people of this country that is not appropriate to be done. §ir, in this free land there should' be no pau- pers of this kind, and the million of dollars of property given up to rebels by assent of this Government was a charity improperly bestowed, and we should be sure of what we do in this instance. There is no State, either loyal or disloyal, that is not able by a light tax on themselves to support their own poor ; and so long as this is the case 1 for one am not will- ing to bow our people down with such burdens, when reason and justice are against it, although such appeals can be made in favor of suffer- ing, many times upon a supposed state of facts that does not exist. Sir, this is all I desire to say. Mr. COYODE said: Mr. Chairman : I approve of the substitute of the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. But- ler,] and in making the few remarks that I in- tend to make on this subject I may possibly be betrayed into saying something that may be con- sidered as personal. I approve of it because I know that there are thousands of suffering wid- ows and orphan children in the N orth whose hus- bands and parents have died by starvation in the rebel prisons of the South. Mr. Chairman, I think that I myself have suffered as much from the starvation of our soldiers as any member of this House or any man in the country. At the beginning of the war a company was raised in my immediate neighborhood called the u Co- vode cavalry;” they were commanded by one of my sons. Of that company ,alone twenty-' four were starved to death at Andersonville. Sir, I cannot look out of my house to-day with- out seeing the widows and orphans of those who thus suffered in rebel prisons at the South. Of a regiment commanded by my son one hundred and sixty-six were captured when our Army fell back, under General Meade, to Centreville, one hundred and forty- two of whom were starved to death at Andersonville. My youngest son was among the number there captured. Have we no sympathy for the wid- ows and orphans of these men? My youngest son suffered,, as it were, the torments of the damned for twenty months in Andersonville, and my eldest fell at the head of his regi- ment near Richmond, leaving a family. I do not ask the Government to come to my re- lief, but I do protest against being taxed to feed the families of those in the South who were engaged in carrying on this rebel- lion. More th£n this, sir, I know that it is not the poor who will get this bounty, but the impu- dent. I have had some experience in the South, not only during the war, but after its close, and I have seen poor Union men, who came up for relief, have to stand back and allow impudent rebels to come up and demand of the commissary their rations. I have seen that over and over again. It is not the poor, but the impudent who avail themselves of the bounty of the Government. I am therefore opposed to this appropriation, unless an equal amount shall be appropriated to relieve the sufferings of those whose husbands and fathers and brothers were starved to death in rebel prisons.