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This bill frustrates this adjustment.

It intervenes between capital and labor and attempts to settle questions of political economy through the agency of numerous officials, whose interest it will be to foment discord between the two races, for as the breach widens their employment will continue and when the breach is closed their occupation will terminate." "The details of this bill," continued the President, "establish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race; in fact, the distinction between white and colored is by the provisions of this bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race." "The provisions of the bill," he maintained, "are an absorption and assumption of power by the General Government, which, being acquiesced in, must eventually destroy our federative system of limited power and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of States.

It is another step, or rather stride, towards centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the General Government.

The tendency of the bill must be to resuscitate rebellion and to arrest the progress of those influences which are more closely thrown around the States--the bond of union and peace." The debate upon the President's veto was not very prolonged but was marked by excitement approaching to anger.