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[282] current year, and likely under the bill to be double that amount-“greater than the entire yearly administration of John Quincy Adams.”

The Senate did not get a two-thirds vote to overcome the veto, several senators having changed their attitude regarding it, so that Trumbull's bill failed to become a law. But in the House the persistent chairman of the Freedmen's committee, Mr. Eliot, very soon introduced a new Bureau bill, from which he had removed several objections made by those senators who refused to vote for the first bill over the veto. The duration he fixed at two years; he left out the sea island clause, and he reduced the acres of public lands to 1,000,000. This measure went through both Houses and was vetoed like the others for similar reasons. But this time both Houses passed the measure over the President's veto, and it became a law July 16, 1866. The attitude of President Johnson and of the leading Southern whites, together with the apparent inability of Congress to enact a law to which he and his new friends objected, created, during those six months of trial, prior to the passage of this measure, great anxiety and apprehension. Still, all officers and agents, cooperating with the small military garrisons in their vicinity, had worked on energetically and hopefully to meet and overcome the increasing difficulties of the situation.

By November it was evident that the new law had had a salutary effect. Aside from its relation to the business interests of the Bureau, which were difficult to manage under the uncertain tenure of the previous law, it served to cheer the freed people throughout the entire South, to increase their confidence in the general Government, to give new stimulus and a firmer tone

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