Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-03-26
SOUTHERN WAR CLANS.
The Increasing Pressure Upon Con-
gress and the Alarm Revived I'm the
Senate.

senate.
From the New York Herald.
WASHINGTON, March 20, ISI4.-Upon a
section in the Army Appropriation bill as it
came from the House, providing for the
transfer of all pending war claims before
the COmmissary General and the Quarter
master General TO the Commissioner of
Claims, and that they shall have exclusive
jurisdiction Of all such claims hereafter,
and upon the amendment proposed by the
Senate Committee reporting the bill, pro-
viding for the continuance ofthe authority of
the CoInmissary General, etc, over these
claims, and upon All amendment to this
amendment, proposing the adjudication of
a large mass of Southern war claims by the
Court of Claims, there was on Tuesday a
discussion in the Senate, from which it is
commended that if the door is opened to this
mass of Southern war claims there will he
no end to the catalogue short of the bank
ruptcy of the National Treasury. Such
were the opinions of Senators Frelinghuy-
sen, Carpenter and Sargent particularly,
against the proposition to open the door to
the recognition of the mass of Southern
war claims arising from the appropriation,
OCCUPATION, or destruction or loss Of property
from the operations of the armies of the
Union in the Southern States during the
war of the late Southern rebellion. Ac-
cOrding to Senator Sargent, unless We draw
a line which will cut off all these Southern
war claims, We may establish a precedent
which will open the door to them all.
and to the restitution of the cotton tax. IN
constitutionally levied and for several wears
collected from the Southern cotton crops,
and finally to an indemnity of two or three
thousand millions for the general loss of
slave property, resulting from the emanci-
patton of the slaves of the Southern States.
Excluding, however, this item of slave
property, it is roughly estimated that the
property destroyed or that appropriated by
the Union armies in the South during the
four wears of the late civil war would
amount to an aggregate of not less than
S3,000,0O0,OO0. A general indemnificatiOn
for this enormous aggregate loss is simply
impossible. The best that Congress can do
is to provide for few exceptional cases of
extreme hardship andapprOyed loyalty TO the
government. There is no danger that during
this session of retrenchment the liberality
of Congress toward Southern claimants will
be carried TO dangerous excuses. There is
nodanger that eyen the unconstitutional cot
ton tax collected from the South will be re-
funded this session, for the act would drain
the Treasury of S70,000,000.
But when the severe spasm of Congress
sional retrenchment shall have subsidized.
when a new Congress, free from the bad
Odor of the last Congress, and when the
dominant party shall begin to cast about
for the Southern balance of ,pOwer in the
Presidential contest of 1876, we shall prob
ably have Southern relief measures taSSed
by the two houses, and a general reaction
in favor Of liberal appropriations and an
expansion of the currency which will carry
us on tidal wave Of prosperity through
the Presidential campaign only to be
wrecked, as We were in the time of Van
Buren,, in the year Immediately succeeding
it. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof" but it is apparent to an observer
here, with only half an eye, that the fit of
retrenchment that has seized upon this
Congress will pass off with the elections of
the coming fall for the next Congress,
whatever the results may be.