Congressional summary.
In the
Senate, Wednesday, an advance report was made on the bills to create a Provisional Navy; for purchasing a site for a Naval Laboratory, and to repeal the 4th section of an act to organize the Department of State, approved February 21st, 1861. A committee of conference was agreed to on the part of the Senate relative to disagreements with the
House in respect to the bill defining who are exempt from military service.
The following bills were passed; To amend the act entitled an act to regulate imprecements.
The bill extends the provisions of said act so as to embrace the impressment of supplies for the Navy.
To provide for the transfer of persons serving in the Army to the Navy.
To provide for having the laws relating to military and navel affairs digested and published.
The Senate resumed the consideration of the Tax bill in secret session.
In the
House, the bill for the relief of the Brunswich and Albany Railroad, in the
State of Georgia, was taken up and passed.
The bill to grant bounty money as a reward to the officers and men serving on board the
Virginia, the
Jamestown, the
Patrick Henry, the
Raleigh, the
Beaufort, and the
Teazer, for their gallantry and courage in the engagement in
Hampton Roads on the 8th and 9th of March, 1862, was laid on the table and ordered to be printed.
A Senate bill reported from the
Committee on Pointing, to amend the several acts prescribing the mode of publishing the laws and resolutions of the
Confederate States, after being amended so as to allow any printer to publish an edition of the laws at his own expense and for his own benefit, was adopted.
The consideration of the bill to provide for holding elections for Representatives in the
Congress of the
Confederates States in States occupied by the enemy, was resumed, and was finally disposed of for the present by referring it to a special committee of five.
The
House then took up the bill to regulate the compensation for past impressments.
The bill provides that the
Secretary of War shall, without delay, detail and authorize persons to assess, adjust, and settle all claims justly arising from past impressments of privates property for the use of the army, upon the principles and rules of the impressment act passed during the present session — a fixed accoutre of prices to be assessed to all cases in which the property impressed was, at the time of its seizure, the property of any other than a person who had grown, raised, or produced the same for his own use and consumption and not for speculation.
Upon a motion to postpone the bill indefinitely the question was ordered, pending which the
House took a recess till 8 o'clock.
In the evening, the question came up on the motion to indefinitely postpone the bill, which motion was lost by the following vote: Ayes 27, noes 35.
The discussion of the bill was continued up to the hour of adjournment.
