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or whether it is his duty to take charge and have control of only such portions of the said lands as he may, under the direction of the President, set apart for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen.

There are few statutes that are disfigured by loose and indefinite phraseology to a greater extent than the act of 1865 establishing this Bureau, but close attention to the words of the more prominent provisions of the law will enable us, I think, to answer the question of the Commissioner without doing much violence to any part of the act. Where Congress, as in this case, has taken so little pains to express its intention, no man can, of course, be certain that any construction of the words employed  reaches the true meaning of the Legislature.

By the first section of the act there is established in the War Department a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. To this Bureau the section declares there "shall be committed, as hereinafter provided, the supervision and management of abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from rebel states" &c. It will be observed, in the first place, that the absolute supervision and management of abandoned lands— the

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