such as may be deemed proper for the judicious treatment and disposition of such freedmen, and with power to assign lands, &c. An institution like this, which assumes the functions of the judiciary over a large portion of the population, and combines with it the domestic management of the master over the personal and household matters of the freedman, cannot be carried out without spreading a net-work of officials over all the conquered States, as numerous as the slave masters whom this system supersedes.
Could this at once be made a self-sustaining system, to be supported by the labor which it controls and directs, and for whose benefit it is intended to act, there might be a semblance of propriety and justice in its proposed inauguration. But if it is to be converted into a grand almshouse department, whereby the labor and property of the white population of the country is to be taxed to support the pauper labor of the freedmen and mendicant officials of the country, its operations cannot be too closely scrutinized.
The government have as yet been rather unfortunate in their efforts in behalf of the freed slaves, and it seems to your committee to be very desirable that legislation upon this subject, if it can be done legally, should be confined to the absolute existing wants of the country. After the transition state through which we are now passing shall have ended, and the character and position of this class of our population shall have become better defined, the rights of the government to the title of the confiscated property determined by competent authority, it will be time enough to initiate a system adapted to their wants and capacities, and calculated for their protection and humane treatment.
Respectfully submitted,
ANTHONY L. KNAPP,
Washington, January 18, 1864.
