The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-03-13
COLUMBIA.
Tuesday Morning, March 13, 1855
,.por,a mt Letter from Mr.. Bates.

raj under President Lincoln. Mr..
Bates gives his opinion very freely on
the Freedmen's Bureau bill vetoed by
President johnson. We have not |
room for the letter entire, bnt give
below its main points.
Mr.. Bates says he understands the
bill well, also the motive with which
it was originated. He says:
''I can see it's glaring and defiant
breaches of the Constitution-and /
think 1 can see also the hidden mo-
tive, the secret design, OF the conspi-
rators who planned the scheme to
overtrrn our government of law, and
set up in its stead frightful military
oligarchy. And this wicked purpose
betrays itself in several provisions of
the bill, which are SO arranged in the
context as to seem, to o hasty OBJ
server, to be secondary and subordi-
nate to the ostensible object, the pro-
lection of the freedmen.
Abiding to the first section, which
spreads the institution everywhere
and over all freedmen and refugees,
and also to the division of the Union
into t,celre districts, with an assistant
commissioner for each, he exclaims:
s'Tweive districts: That is the exact
number into which Cromwell divided
the Commonwealth of England, and
governed each district, despotically,
by one of his own major-generals;;"
and to make the resemblance COM
plete, the section further provides
that the Bureau, Sin the discretion of
the President may s'be placed under
commissioner and assistant commits
sioner, to be detailed from the army"
and, Mr.. Bates says, without refer
ence to rank or color.
Mr.. Bates alludes to the enormous
number of officers and clerks under
the bill, and the authority which one
and all of them have over all cases in
which freedmen are concerned, and
over oil offences against the provi-
sions of the bill; and further, over all
cases of discrimination against freed
men and others, under, not the
Constitution and laws, but under
such rules rs the President of the
United States, through the War De-
partment, shall prescribe"
"These," says Mr. Bates, care
some Of the enormities of the vetoed
bill, framed in the wantonness of par
tS5Afq tS5f aNnu f"ahd ahd In OPEN 81 IN viola
ton of the historical opinions and
traditionary faith of the people of the
United States"
Recurring to the thousands of Of
ficers, under the bill, to be detailed
from tho army, with despotic head
at Washington,} exhibiting it's power
IN every county and parish, against
every effort to restrain, by legal and
civil means, the wantonncss of their
arbitrary will, Mr. Bates remarks:
''Think you that the people of the
United Statos are already so far de-
graded into passive obedience as to
submit tamely to such an atrocious
outrage, even if sanctioned by tho
unanimous voice of factious Con-
grcss and approved by a subservicnt
President? No, verify They are not
yet ready to abandon their Constitu-
ton and renounce all hope of legal
liberty by giving over their lives,
Liberties and properties to be disposed
OF ut the caprice Of petty officers and
agents of petty sub-d division of the
War department called Bureau"
MIR. Bates expresses his qualification
that the ''radical faction is so de-
mented rs to pick quarrel with Pre-
sldent Johnson" who refuses to be
their instrument to overturn the
Government, j." and to stake their for
tunes upon the monstrous vices and
follies of the Trurlbull bill, ''for, he
says, Sin doing SO they do but insure
their own defeat, and, consequently,
the restoration Of law, order and
peace, and revival of national respect
Tor legal government and Il national
love for liberty by law
He concludes by saying that even
the emancipatcd negro "wiIl not long
fail to see the hypocrisy and fraud of
the transaction" While they are
caJolod with the pretence of liberty
tle bill subjected them to miIi+,r,