the South and pauperize the freedmen, at a final cost of
possibly hundreds of millions. These two arguments were
unanswered, and indeed unanswerable: the one that the ex-
traordinary powers of the Bureau threatened the civil rights of
all citizens; and the other that the government must have
power to do what manifestly must be done, and that present
abandonment of the freedmen meant their practical re-
enslavement. The bill which finally passed enlarged and made
permanent the Freedmen's Bureau. It was promptly vetoed by
President Johnson as "unconstitutional," "unnecessary," and
"extrajudicial," and failed of passage over the veto. Mean-
time, however, the breach between Congress and the Presi-
dent began to broaden, and a modified form of the lost bill
was finally passed over the President's second veto, July 16.

The act of 1866 gave the Freedmen's Bureau its final
form,--the form by which it will be known to posterity and
judged of men. It extended the existence of the Bureau to
July, 1868; it authorized additional assistant commissioners,
the retention of army officers mustered out of regular service,
the sale of certain forfeited lands to freedmen on nominal
terms, the sale of Confederate public property for Negro
schools, and a wider field of judicial interpretation and cogni-
zance. The government of the unreconstructed South was thus
put very largely in the hands of the Freedmen's Bureau,
especially as in many cases the departmental military com-
mander was now made also assistant commissioner. It was
thus that the Freedmen's Bureau became a full-fledged gov-
ernment of men. It made laws, executed them and interpreted
them; it laid and collected taxes, defined and punished crime,