Congress - Second Session

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6.

SENATE. – Mr. Carlisle presented a petition numerously signed by citizens of Boston asking Congress to leave the negro question alone and to attend to the business of the country.

The bill to define the pay and emolument of the officers of the army was taken up.

Mr. Sherman said the bill did not meet the difficulty.  A year ago we were physically weak with no public debt, now we are physically strong, but financially weak.  The total amount of the expenses for next year will probably not be less than $500,000,000.  This is a greater expense than ever was borne by any nation.  The highest expenditure of Great Britain was never $500,000,000 a year, not even in the war with Napoleon.

Mr. Sherman here quoted from the London Post, the Government organ, which said that we (the U. S. Government,) were approaching national bankruptcy.  In his judgment these propositions were needed: first, the prompt levy of a tax of not less than $150,000,000.  Second, a careful revision of the laws regulating salaries and compensations.  Third, rigid scrutiny into the disbursement of all public funds, and prompt punishment of every officer taking money or allowing others to take it for property in the service of which the Government does not receive benefit.

Mr. King presented several petitions asking 300,000 copies of the Agricultural Report be printed in the German language.

HOUSE. – Mr. Conway, of Kansas, asked leave to offer the following, to which Mr. Maynard objected, and a unanimous consent was required to introduce it:

            Resolved, That the President be requested to furnish the House, if not incompatible with public interests, with the names of all persons arrested under order of any executive officer without legal process and confined in any of the forts or other prisons of this country as prisoners of war, the names of forts or other prisons in which said persons have been and are confined respectively, the date of the several arrests, together with a full statement of the charges and evidence upon which they were arrested, also the names of all such persons who have since been discharged, the date of their several discharges and the reasons for the same.

The House then took up the Treasury Note Bill.

Mr. Thomas, of Mass., gave the reasons which would induce him to vote against the bill as it now stands.

– Published in The Dubuque Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, Friday Morning, February 7, 1862, p. 1