that the country is now, and especially the Southern States are now
in better condition than the Senate had reason to expect when the law
was enacted. Civil government has been restored in almost all the
Southern States; the courts are restored in many of them; in many
localities they are exercising their jurisdiction within their
particular localities without let or hinderance; and why, I ask
Senators, shall we make this bureau a perpetual and permanent
institution of the Government when we refused to do it at the last
session?

"I ask Senators, in the first place, if they are now, with the most
satisfactory information that is before the body, willing to do that
which they refused to do at the last session of Congress? We refused
to pass the law when it proposed to establish a permanent department.
Shall we now, when the war is over, when the States are returning to
their places in the Union, when the citizens are returning to their
allegiance, when peace and quiet, to a very large extent, prevail over
that country, when the courts are reestablished; is the Senate now,
with this information before it, willing to make this a permanent
bureau and department of the Government?

"The next proposition of the bill is, that it shall not be confined
any longer to the Southern States, but that it shall have a government
over the States of the North as well as of the South. The old law
allowed the President to appoint a commissioner for each of the States
that had been declared to be in rebellion--one for each of the eleven
seceding States, not to exceed ten in all. This bill provides that the
jurisdiction of the bureau shall extend wherever, within the limits of
the United States, refugees or freedmen have gone. Indiana has not
been a State in insurrection, and yet there are thousands of refugees
and freedmen who have gone into that State within the last three
years. This bureau is to become a governing power over the State of
Indiana according to the provisions of the bill. Indiana, that
provides for her own paupers, Indiana, that provides for the
government of her own people, may, under the provisions of this bill,
be placed under a government that our fathers never contemplated--a
government that must be most distasteful to freemen.

"I know it may be said that the bureau will not probably be extended
to the Northern States. If it is not intended to be extended to those
States, why amend the old law so as to give this po