First Session -- 37th Congress

WASHINGTON, March 25. – SENATE. – Considerable debate followed without action.

Adjourned.

HOUSE. – The following amendments were adopted to the tax bill:  Cattle brokers to pay a license of ten dollars; itinerant venders of newspapers, bibles and religious tracts, are exempted from the peddlers; lawyers and physicians are to pay a license of ten dollars.

Mr. BLAIR offered an amendment taxing slaves which was defeated.

An amendment was adopted providing that this bill shall not interfere with States in taxing the same articles.

Adjourned.

WASHINGTON, March 27. – SENATE. – Mr. SUMNER presented several petitions in favor of the emancipation of slaves.

Mr. HALE offered a resolution asking of the Secretary of the Interior to transmit to the Senate an estimate in relation to the banks. – Adopted.

Mr. HALE also offered a resolution that the Committee on Naval Affairs be instructed to inquire whether there was any laxity on the part of the officers of the blockading squadron on the coast of the Southern States, especially at Charleston, whether there was any foundation for the estimates in the British Consulate, that armed troops and ships of the Confederate States have been allowed to go in and out of the port of Charestown [sic], and no attempt made to stop them.  Adopted.

The Joint Resolution, the giving pecuniary aid to the States in case they should emancipate their slaves, was taken up.

Mr. HENDERSON said he was disposed to vote for the resolution.  There was a strong objection in the border States, and they believed that this was an attempt to abolish slavery in those States, and then in the other States.  He was sure there was no such intention on the part of the President, and the thought was such intention in part of the members of the Senate. – Although the subject of slavery was the cause of the rebellion, yet there were other interests in the State of Missouri.  The people in that State were interested in having the Mississippi river kept open to its mouth.  He had opposed all agitation of the slavery question.  He had also opposed the bill for the abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia; not that he considered it unconstitutional, but because it tended to bring the subject up for discussion.  The South had been usually frightened by some story of an abolition monster; yet if Congress should abolish the petty amount of slavery in the District of Columbia, he did not believe that his State would secede, but hoped that if Senators desired to do this thing they would be quick, for the great State of Delaware, getting a peep behind the curtain and discovering the plot that the few slaves she has already made free, might go South for her Constitutional rights, where certainly her Constitutional rights will be preserved in full force.  The Senators from Kentucky are getting excited, and the Senators from Virginia and Maryland are getting superstitious of some terrible thing to happen.  He had been opposed to the bill from the commencement, though he supposed it harmless, for the reason that it might have a bad effect upon the Border States.  Yet if the statement is true that slavery should be the cornerstone of the temple, he was willing to fight to the last with the North against such a Government.  Nothing would tempt him to raise his hand against the Government.  All the revolution he wanted was the ballot-box.  He did not think there were fifty thousand slaves left in Missouri.

As large numbers of them had been taken South, the people in that State had lost property equal in value to the whole amount of her slaves, at the commencement of this war.  He regarded the President’s message not a threat, but as a prophesy, which he felt would be fulfilled.  He was perfectly willing that the proposition should go the people of his State and the matter be left entirely to the States.  Ninety-six days of the war expenses would have paid for all the slaves Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and the expenses of the war two years will pay for all slaves in the country.

Mr. PIERCE, from the Committee on Finance reported a bill to allow the arms ordered by the States to aid in the suppression of the rebellion, come free of duty.

On motion of Mr. FESSENDEN, the naval appropriation bill was then taken up.  A long debate ensued on the explanation of Stevens’s battery.  [Motion] was taken on it and the Senate went into executive session.  Adjourned.

HOUSE. – The House in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union resumed the consideration of the tax bill.

Mr. Sheffield offered an amendment that upon all sales of goods, wares, merchandise, and other property which shall be used for consumption or for investment including all kinds of property, excluding jobbers and middle men, are to be taxed on per cent of such sales.

After discussion the amendment was temporarily withdrawn.

Further debate followed and an amendment was adopted taxing candles of any material valued at not over fifteen cents per pound, half per cent per pound; over fifteen and twenty cents, once cent per pound, and over twenty-five cents, one and a half per cent per pound.

An amendment was adopted taxing anthracite fifteen cents per ton and bituminous coal ½ cent per bushel.  It was adopted with the proviso not to go into effect until the termination of the reciprocity treaty.

The amendment proposing to tax cotton one cent per pound after the 1st of May was rejected.  An amendment was adopted exempting from duty red oil, also paraffin, whale and fish oils.  The tax on burning fluid was stricken out.  Adjourned.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 29, 1862, p. 3