Seventeen Reasons Why Johnson Feared The Legislated Power To The Freedmen and Freemen
# 10 – “give like protection and benefits to those for whom this bill provides special legislation”
# 12 – “discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy, and patriotic foreigners,
…and in favor of the negro”
# 14 – “to make and enforce contracts; to sue, be parties, and give evidence; to inherit, purchase,
…lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property,” and to have “full and equal benefit of
…all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.”
# 23 – “shall have the right to sit as a juror or as a judge, to hold any office, and, finally, to vote”
# 25 – “to afford discriminating protection to colored persons”
# 28 – “the Freedmen’s Bureau shall be empowered to make arrests, and also that other officers
…may be specially commissioned for that purpose by the President.”
# 29 – “authorizes circuit courts of the United States and the superior courts of the Territories to appoint,
…without limitation, commissioners, who are to be charged with the performance of quasi-judicial duties.”
# 30 – “empowers the commissioners to be selected by the courts to appoint in writing, under their hands,
…one or more suitable persons from time to time to execute warrants and other processes described by the bill.”
# 31 – “numerous official agents are made to constitute a sort of police, in addition to the military, and are
…authorized to summon a posse comitatus, and even to call to their aid such portion of the land and
…naval forces of the United States, or of the militia, “as may be necessary to the performance of |
…the duty with which they are charged.”
# 32 – “This extraordinary power is to be conferred upon agents irresponsible to the Governmen
…t and to the people, to whose number the discretion of the commissioners is the only limit,
…and in whose hands such authority might be made a terrible engine of wrong, oppression, and fraud.…”
# 33 – “authorizes the President or such person as he may empower for that purpose, “to employ such part
…of the land or naval forces of the United States, or of the militia, as shall be necessary to prevent the
…violation and enforce the due execution of this act.”
# 34 – “This language seems to imply a permanent military force, that is to be always at hand, and whose
…only business is to be the enforcement of this measure over the vast region on where it is intended to operate.”
# 35 – In all our history, in all our experience as people living under Federal and State law, no such system
…as that contemplated by the details of this bill has ever before been proposed or adopted
# 36 – “They establish for the security of the colored race safeguards that go infinitely beyond any that
…the General Government has ever provided for the white race.”
37 – “In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored
…and against the white race.”
# 38 – “They interfere with the municipal legislation of the States, with the relations existing exclusively
…between a State and its citizens, or between inhabitants of the same State—an absorption and assumption
…of power by the General Government which, if acquiesced in, must sap and destroy our federative system|
…of limited powers and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of the States.”
# 39 – “It is another step, or rather stride, toward centralization and the concentration of all legislative
…powers in the National Government.”
See: “Exhibit A” Mr. Johsons Identifies