The hostility to the President's policy by senators from the Border slave States was so fixed as to prevent even a free discussion of the measure, and it was therefore remanded to a future day for consideration.
CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY.
A still more aggressive movement against slavery was made by Congress before the close of this eventful session.

On the day that Congress convened, in the preceding December, Mr.Trumbull gave notice of his intention to introduce a bill "for the confiscation of the property of rebels, and giving freedom to the persons they hold in slavery." Three days later he formally introduced the bill, and made a lucid explanation of its provisions and its objects.

He "disdained to press it upon the ground of a mere military power superior to the civil in time of war." "Necessity," said he, "is the plea of tyrants; and if our Constitution ceases to operate, the moment a person charged with its observance thinks there is a necessity to violate it, is of little value." So far from admitting that the superiority of the military over the civil power in time of war, Mr.Trumbull held that "under the Constitution the military is as much the subject of control by the civil power in war as in peace." He was for suppressing the rebellion "according to law, and in no other way;" and he warned his countrymen who stood "ready to tolerate almost any act done in good faith for the suppression of the rebellion, not to sanction usurpations of power which may hereafter become precedents for the destruction of constitutional liberty." Though the bill was introduced on the second day of December, 1861, it did not become a law until the 17th of July in the next year.
In the months intervening, it was elaborately debated, almost every senator taking part in the discussion.

Garrett Davis of Kentucky, who had succeeded Mr.Breckinridge in the Senate, made a long speech against the bill, contending that Congress had no power to free any slaves.

He wanted a bill of great severity against the rebel leaders: "to those that would repent" he would give "immunity, peace, and protection; to the impenitent and incorrigible he would give the gallows, or exile and the forfeiture of their whole estate." Such a law as that, he said, his "own State of Kentucky desired.
As Hamilcar brought his infant son Hannibal to the family altar, and made him swear eternal enmity to the Roman power, so I have sworn and will ever maintain eternal enmity to the principle of secession and all its adherents." It was seen throughout the debate that the bill under consideration was in large part provoked by the confiscation measures of the Confederate Congress, and Mr.
Davis declared that "the debts due to the North, estimated at $200,000,000, seized, confiscated, and appropriated by the rebel government, shall be remunerated fully." Mr.John B.Henderson of Missouri who, as a Union man of prominence and ability, had succeeded Trusten Polk in the Senate, opposed the bill because it would "cement the Southern mind against us and drive new armies of excited and deluded men from the Border States to espouse the cause of rebellion." He urged that "the Union sentiment of the South should be cultivated, and radical measures tending to destroy that sentiment should be dropped." Mr.Fessenden was conservative on this as on other questions, and insisted upon the reference of Mr.Trumbull's bill to a committee; which was the occasion of some little passage between himself and Mr.Trumbull, not without temper.