region, peopled by emigrants from the South, was appropriately called Egypt, a petition was presented by Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, asking Congress not to abolish slavery in the District, and asking for the expul sion of any menber who should advocate such a measure.

For two generations, slavery, under the sanction of the Government, had polluted our National Capital. There were over three thousand men, women, and children, who held up their fettered hands beneath the Stars and Stripes which floated so proudly over our halls of legislation. On the 11th, the bill of emancipation passed the House by a large majority. John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, in an impassioned speech, entered his protest, in the name of his constituents, not only against the bill, but against any action whatever upon the subject of slavery; but the fetters had fallen from the hands of the weary slave forever. The enfranchised bondmen received their freedom with devout gratitude to God, and in the joy of prayers and thanksgiving buried in oblivion all the wrongs which they had received from their oppressors. A gratuity of $1,000,000 was voted to the loyal slave-masters of the District of Columbia, as compensation for the emancipation of their slaves.

There were fifteen thousand persons of African descent in the District. They had long been subjected to the most oppressive laws. Congress enacted that they should henceforth be under the same code of criminal law, and be subjected to the same punishment with white persons. The free colored people had been compelled to pay taxes for the support of schools from which their own children were excluded. Congress authorized them to establish schools of their own, and to appropriate their money for the education of their own children. Thus, step by step, freedom moved on, impelled by the energies of war.

Regardless of the commercial interests of the country, the pro-slavery spirit, which had so long dominated in Congress, refused to recognize the sister republics of Hayti and Liberia. On the 24th of April, a bill passed the Senate, opening diplomatic relationship with both of these Govern

ments.

On the 9th of May, 1862, Major-General David Hunter, struggling against the infuriate hordes of rebellion and slavery in South Carolina, issued a proclamation, in which he said:

"The three States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, comprising the Military Department of the South, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The persons in these three States, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free."

The clamor which this proclamation aroused from the lips of proslavery partisans filled the land. The President was again alarmed. To appease the cry, he responded on the 19th of May in a proclamation, in which he said :

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"I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, proclaim and declare that the Government of the United States had no knowledge or belief of an intention on the part of General Hunter to issue such a proclamation, nor has it yet any authentic information that the document is genuine; and further, that neither General Hunter nor any other commander or person has been authorized by the Government of the United States to make proclamations declaring the slaves of any State free; and that the supposed proclamation now in question, whether genuine or false, is altogether void, so far as respects such declaration."

These concessions on the part of the President to the arrogant spirit of slavery were very painful to a large portion of the Northern community, while there were many truly patriotic but cautious men, who deemed these conservative measures eminently wise, and essential to the preservation of harmony at the North, and calculated to keep alive whatever of latent Union feeling there still remained at the South.

Slavery demanded the right to establish itself in the Territories, and to build up its intrenchments there, unchecked by Congressional legislation or Territorial law. On the 7th of June a bill passed the Senate prohibiting forever slavery in the Territories. "The irrepealable decree," said Senator Wilson, from Massachusetts, "has gone forth, that evermore those prairies and forests and mines, with their illimitable resources to be developed for mankind, are consecrated to freedom and free institutions for all, chains and fetters for none."

For years the African slave-trader had carried on his inhuman traffic protected from search by the banner of republican America. One of the earliest acts of Congress, when by the departure of so many of the slaveholders the spirit of freedom became predominant in its councils, was to efface that foul stain from our escutcheon. A treaty was promptly negotiated with the British Government, for the effectual suppression of that infamous traffic, by the mutual recognition of the right of visitation and search on the coast of Africa. There had long been a law upon our statute-books declaring the slave-trade to be piracy, punishable with death. In defiance of that law, slave-ships were continually sent from our Northern ports, and slavery shielded from punishment those engaged in the traffic. Notwithstanding the most noisy and menacing clamors of the pro-slavery party, on the 21st of February, 1862, Captain Nathaniel P. Gordon, commander of the Erie, was executed at New York, for having been engaged in the slave-trade. This enforcement of the law was indeed the dawn of a new day upon our land.

At the commencement of the war, very many of the officers in the Union army were strong pro-slavery men. They did not wish to see the Union dissevered. They were unwilling to join the Southern traitors in their war upon the United States flag. They wished to conduct the war in such a way that the country might be induced to accept the demand of the slaveholders, and thus reconstitute the Union by the repudiation of the free Constitution which our fathers formed, and substituting for it the despotic constitution which the slaveholders had framed at Montgomery. These officers often disgraced themselves and the nation, by returning to

their traitorous masters slaves who had escaped from bondage, and who had sought protection under the National flag. These deeply wronged men were often surrendered back to their oppressors to suffer torture and death for attempting to escape. Men in arms against the Government were actually permitted, under a flag of truce, to enter our encampments, to search there for escaped slaves, to tie a rope around the neck of some poor boy or girl, and to gallop off the ground, lashing their victims to make them keep pace with the speed of the horse. These poor slaves were, without exception, patriots. They knew that the rebels were forging for them the chains of hopeless bondage-that beneath the Stars and Stripes alone could they hope for ultimate emancipation.

"Everywhere," wrote William H. Seward, Secretary of State, "the American general receives his most useful and reliable information from the negro, who hails his coming as the harbinger of freedom."

The Congress of 1862, the ever-to-be-remembered Thirty-seventh Congress, passed the decree "that persons claimed as fugitive slaves shall not be surrendered by persons engaged in military or naval service, on pain of being dismissed from that service." They also decreed "that no slave escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, should be delivered up, or deprived of his liberty in any way, except for some offence against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive shall make oath that he has not been in arms against the United States, nor given aid or comfort to the rebellion in any way; that no person in the military or naval service shall assume to decide upon the validity of any claim to fugitive slaves, nor surrender any such person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service; and that all slaves of persons in rebellion against the Government, captured by the army or taking refuge within its lines, should be forever free." By these noble resolves, freedom followed closely in the footsteps of the advancing flag of the republic.

Bitter was the hostility and strenuous the remonstrances of slavery in view of all these measures. But God, by resistless providences, was compelling the nation to loosen the bands of oppression, and to let the oppressed go free. Though there were thousands in our land whose hearts were right, and whose prayers were unceasing that our nation might be delivered from the sin and shame of slavery, and that the brotherhood of man might be recognized as the corner-stone of our republic, still, impartial history must admit that, as a nation, we only went just so fast and so far as God compelled us. These measures of justice were carried, not because they were right, but because they were necessary. Few even of the purest men in Congress ventured to advocate these measures upon the plea that they were in accordance with the principles of eternal justice, but because they were necessary for the salvation of the nation.

For a long time a perfect howl of indignation was raised by the proslavery party against employing black men in any other capacity in the army than that of body-servants. Many Union officers threatened to throw up their commissions if colored men were permitted to shoulder a musket or to dig in a trench. The rebels dared not place arms in the hands of their slaves. But, surrounded by glittering bayonets, the poor

bondsmen were compelled, by tens of thousands, to throw up the ramparts, and to drag the guns before which our brothers and sons were to be swept into bloody graves. The Thirty-seventh Congress passed a resolve to receive into the service of the United States free colored men and the slaves of rebel masters; and then the mothers, wives, and children of such slaves were made free forever.

There is no man in the nation to whom the country owes a higher debt of gratitude than to the Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, during nearly the whole of this desperate struggle. From first to last, he has stood firm to the principles of liberty, with a lion-like steadfastness which soars even to the sublime. His indomitable integrity and invincible moral courage have never been surpassed. In the darkest and most perilous hours of the storm, he held the helm with a hand which never trembled. To him, far more than to any one else, we are indebted for the organization of colored men into regiments of soldiers. Among the first names hereafter to be inscribed upon the American roll of honor, that of Edwin M. Stanton must stand preeminent.

army was one of the most In less than six months a

The introduction of colored men into the momentous events in the history of the war. hundred thousand stalwart men, of Ethiopic descent, were clothed in the uniform of American soldiers. They soon commanded universal respect, by proving themselves second to no other men in heroism. Some of the most chivalric acts of the war were performed by colored men. The rebels were roused by this act to such savage rage, that they forgot all the dictates of humanity. They declared such soldiers and their white officers to be outlaws. They shot them in cold blood, when taken prisoners. They burned them alive at the stake. They mutilated their dead bodies. In the impotence of their wrath, they stripped the dead body of a distinguished white officer, cast him into a pit, and then threw in upon him a vast mass of naked bodies of negroes. They sought to dishonor him. They gave him a burial which angels might covet. When the trump of the archangel shall sound, and the dead shall rise, Colonel Robert G. Shaw shall come forth from the grave and say, "Here am I, O Lord! and my humble brothers, Thy children, whose cause I espoused, and for whom I sacrificed my life." The angels, on that morning, may take no special interest in those who come forth from the vaults of Westminster Abbey or St. Denis; but they will gaze with loving hearts upon the opening grave at Fort Wagner.

And now came the crowning act in these series of measures, which were purifying our land from that great crime which, in God's retributive justice, had imperilled our National life, and filled hundreds of thousands of homes with mourning. On the 22d of September, 1862, the nation was electrified by a proclamation from President Lincoln, announcing that on the 1st day of January, 1863, he should, as an act of military necessity, declare all slaves free in every State then in rebellion against the United States. The 1st of January came. The decree went forth :

"I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power invested in me as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of

the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and Government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day of the first above-mentioned order, and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

"Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans; Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, except the forty-eight counties designated as Western Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth, and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

"And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States are and henceforth shall be free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

"And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence, and I recommend to them that, in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States, to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God."

By the Constitution, which the President had taken a solemn oath to respect, he had no right to emancipate the slaves save as a military necessity. He could not claim that necessity in reference to those portions of the slaveholding country which continued loyal. Therefore the exceptions he made, he was in honor bound to make.

Many and anxious discussions were held in the Cabinet upon this subject before the proclamation was issued. President Lincoln, speaking of a Cabinet meeting in 1862, in which the question was agitated, said:—

"Various suggestions were offered. Secretary Chase wished the language stronger in reference to arming the blacks. Mr. Blair, after he came in, deprecated the policy, on the ground that it would cost the Administration the fall election. Nothing, however, was offered that I had not already fully anticipated and settled in my own mind, until Secretary Seward spoke. Said he: 'Mr. President, I approve of the proclamation, but I question the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The