son who is in the State without authority. Other
provisions of the statute prohibit any negro or mulatto from having
firearms; and one provision of the statute declares that for
'exercising the functions of a minister of the Gospel, free negroes
and mulattoes, on conviction, may be punished by any number of lashes
not exceeding thirty-nine, on the bare back, and shall pay the costs."
Other provisions of the statute of Mississippi prohibit a free negro
or mulatto from keeping a house of entertainment, and subject him to
trial before two justices of the peace and five slaveholders for
violating the provisions of this law. The statutes of South Carolina
make it a highly penal offense for any person, white or colored, to
teach slaves; and similar provisions are to be found running through
all the statutes of the late slaveholding States.

"When the constitutional amendment was adopted and slavery abolished,
all these statutes became null and void, because they were all passed
in aid of slavery, for the purpose of maintaining and supporting it.
Since the abolition of slavery, the Legislatures which have assembled
in the insurrectionary States have passed laws relating to the
freedmen, and in nearly all the States they have discriminated against
them. They deny them certain rights, subject them to severe penalties,
and still impose upon them the very restrictions which were imposed
upon them in consequence of the existence of slavery, and before it
was abolished. The purpose of the bill under consideration is to
destroy all these discriminations, and to carry into effect the
constitutional amendment."

After having stated somewhat at length the grounds upon which he
placed this bill, Mr. Trumbull closed by saying: "Most of the
provisions of this bill are copied from the late Fugitive Slave Act,
adopted in 1850 for the purpose of returning fugitives from slavery
into slavery again. The act that was passed at that time for the
purpose of punishing persons who should aid negroes to escape to
freedom is now to be applied by the provisions of this bill to the
punishment of those who shall undertake to keep them in slavery.
Surely we have the authority to enact a law as efficient in the
interests of freedom, now that freedom prevails throughout the
country, as we had in the interest of slavery when it prevailed in a
portion of the country."

Mr. Saulsbury took an entirely different view of the subject under
consideration: "I re