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
