Page images
PDF
EPUB

these

pregnant words:

in time of war, I suppose I have a right to | President closed the conference with take any measure which may best subdue the enemy; nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South. I view this matter as a practical war measure, to be decided on according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the Rebellion."

[blocks in formation]

"I admit that Slavery is at the root of the

Rebellion, or at least its sine quá non. The ambition of politicians may have instigated them to act; but they would have been im potent without Slavery as their instrument. I will also concede that Emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition. I grant, further, that it would help somewhat at the North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent imagine. Still, some additional strength would be added in that way to the war; and then, unquestionably, it would weaken the Rebels by drawing off their laborers, which is of great importance; but I am not so sure we could do much with the Blacks. If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the

arms would be in the hands of the Rebels; and, indeed, thus far, we have not had arms enough to equip our White troops. I will mention another thing, though it meet only your scorn and contempt. There are 50,000 bayonets in the Union army from the Border Slave States. It would be a serious matter if, in consequence of a proclamation such as you desire, they should go over to the Rebels. I do not think they all would-not so many, indeed, as a year ago, or as six months ago-not so many to-day as yesterday. Every day increases their Union feeling. They are also getting their pride enlisted, and want to beat the Rebels. Let me say one thing more: 'I think you should admit that we already have an important principle to rally and unite the people, in the fact that constitutional government is at stake. This is a fundamental idea, going down about as deep as any thing."

The deputation again developed and enforced their views; and the

"Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I

can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and by night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will, I will do. I trust that, in the freedom with which I have canvassed your views, I have not in any respect injured your feelings."

The deputation had scarcely returned to Chicago and reported to their constituents, when the great body of the President's supporters were electrified, while his opponents in general were only still farther alienated, by the unheralded appearance of the following proclamation:

United States of America, and Commander"I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the in-chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, for the object of practically restoring the as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted constitutional relation between the United States and each of the States, and the people thereof, in which States that relation is or may be suspended or disturbed.

meeting of Congress, to again recommend "That it is my purpose, upon the next the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all Slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of Slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the governments existing there, will be continued.

"That, on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United forever free; and the Executive GovernStates, shall be then, thenceforward, and ment of the United States, including the

LINCOLN'S FIRST PROCLAMATION OF FREEDOM.

military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the Executive will, on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.

"That attention is hereby called to an act of Congress entitled 'An Act to make an additional Article of War,' approved March 13th, 1862; and which act is in the words and figures following:

[ocr errors]

253

Rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto; and no person engaged in the military or naval service of the United States shall, under any pretense whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service.'

"And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective spheres of service, the act and sections above recited.

"And the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States, who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the Rebellion, shall (upon the restoration of the constitutional relation between the United States and their respective States and people, if that relation shall have been suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.

"In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

"Done at the City of Washington, this twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixtytwo, and of the independence of the United States the eightyseventh.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Repre- [L. 8.] sentatives of the United States of America in Congress8 assembled, That hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war for the government of the Army of the United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such:

SECTION 1. All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped from any persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due; and any officer who shall be found guilty by a court-martial

of violating this article shall be dismissed from the

service.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That this act

shall take effect from and after its passage.'

"Also, to the ninth and tenth sections of an act entitled 'An Act to Suppress Insurrection, to Punish Treason and Rebellion, to Seize and Confiscate Property of Rebels, and for other Purposes,' approved July 16, 1862; and which sections are in the words and figures following:

"SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves

of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion

against the Government of the United States, or who

shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons, or deserted by them and coming under the control of the Government of the United States; and all slaves of such persons found on [or] being within any place occupied

by Rebel forces and afterward occupied by forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.

SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That no slave

escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any other State, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some offense against the laws, unless the

person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that

the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not

borne arms against the United States in the present

"ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

"By the President: "WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."

It has been alleged that the appearance of this document was hastened by confidential representations from our Embassadors at the Courts of Western Europe, that a recognition of the Confederacy was imminent, and could hardly be averted otherwise than by a policy of Emancipation. The then Attorney-General" has been quoted as authority for this statement; but it is still generally regarded as apocryphal. It has been likewise asserted that the President had fully decided on resorting to this policy some weeks before the Proclamation appeared, and that he only withheld it till the military situation should assume a brighter aspect. Remarks made long afterward in Congress render highly

"Edward Bates, of Missouri.

On the abstract question of the right of the Government to proclaim and enforce Emancipation, Edward Everett, in a speech in Faneuil Hall, Boston, October, 1864, forcibly said:

"It is very doubtful whether any act of the Government of the United States was necessary to liberate the slaves in a State which is in rebellion. There is much reason for the opinion that, by the simple act of levying war against the United States, the relation of Slavery was terminated; certainly, so far as concerns the duty of the United States to recognize it, or to refrain from interfering with it. Not being founded on the law of nature, and resting solely on positive local law-and that not of the United States as soon as it becomes either the motive or pretext of an unjust war against

the Union-an efficient instrument in the hands of the Rebels for carrying on the war -a source of military strength to the Rebellion, and of danger to the Government at home and abroad, with the additional certainty that, in any event but its abandonment, it will continue in all future time to work these mischiefs, who can suppose it is the duty of the United States to continue to recognize it? To maintain this would be a contradiction in terms. It would be to recognize a right in a Rebel master to employ his slave in acts of rebellion and treason, and the duty of the slave to aid and abet his master in the commission of the greatest crime known to the law. No such absurdity can be admitted; and any citizen of the United States, from the President down, who should, by any overt act, recognize the duty of a slave to obey a Rebel master in a hostile operation, would himself be giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

XII.

SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION IN CONGRESS.

growing in the legislative as well as the popular' mind-that Slavery had closed with the Union in mortal strife-a struggle which both could not survive.'

THE XXXVIIth Congress, as we | the extra session, evinced a steadihave seen-while endeavoring to ly growing consciousness steadily evade or to avert its eyes from the fact that it was Slavery which was waging deadly war on the Uniondid yet give fair notice, through the guarded but decisive language of some of the more conservative Republicans, that, if the Rebellion were persisted in, it must inevitably result in the overthrow of Slavery. And the action of that Congress, even at

1 Vol. I., pp. 564-8.

"On the day after the Bull Run rout, the writer first heard this conviction openly declared. The credit of the avowal belongs to Gen. John Cochrane.

'Hon. Elisha R. Potter, of Rhode Islandwho may be fairly styled the hereditary chief of the Democratic party of that State-made a speech on the War to the Senate thereof on the 10th of August, 1861. After distributing the blame of inciting the War between the Northern and the Southern 'ultras,' dilating on the resources of the South, and elucidating the nofighting, anaconda' mode of warfare proposed

Still, President Lincoln hesitated and held back; anxious that the Union should retain its hold on the Border Slave States, especially on Kentucky; and apparently hoping by Gen. Scott, and apparently acceded to by the Cabinet, he proceeds:

"I have said that the war may assume another aspect, and be a short and bloody one. And to such a war-an anti-Slavery war-it seems to me we are inevitably drifting. It seems to me hardly in the power of human wisdom to prevent it. We may commence the war without meaning to interfere with Slavery; but let us have one or two battles, and get our blood excited, and we shall not only not restore any more slaves, but shall proclaim freedom wherever we go. And it seems to me almost judicial blindness on the part of the South that they do not see that this must be the inevitable result, if the contest is prolonged."

LINCOLN'S SECOND PROCLAMATION OF FREEDOM.

255

ble that a still larger majority would | States in time of actual armed rebellion

have voted against Emancipation. From an early hour of the struggle, the public mind slowly and steadily gravitated toward the conclusion that the Rebellion was vulnerable only or mainly through Slavery; but that conclusion was scarcely reached by a majority before the occurrence of the New York Riots, in July, 1863. The President, though widely reproached with tardiness and reluctance in taking up the gage plainly thrown down by the Slave Power, was probably ahead of a majority of the people of the loyal States in definitively accepting the issue of Emancipation or Dis

union.

the United States, and as a fit and necessary against the authority and Government of war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year sixty-three, and in accordance with my purof our Lord one thousand eight hundred and pose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day 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:

66

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemine, Jeffersion, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, son, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, AscenSt. 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 West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities cepted parts are, for the present, left preciseof Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which ex

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

Having taken a long step in the right direction, he never retracted nor seemed to regret it; though he some-ly as if this proclamation were not issued. times observed that the beneficial results of the Emancipation policy were neither so signal nor so promptly realized as its sanguine promoters had anticipated. Nevertheless, on the day appointed, he issued his absolute Proclamation of Freedom, as follows: "Whereas, on the 22d day of September, in the year of our Lord 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"That on the 1st day of January, in the year of our Lord 1563, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.'

That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.'

"Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-inchief of the Army and Navy of the United

"And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; 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 act, 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.

"In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

"Done at the city of Washington, this

1st day of January, in the year of our [L. 8.] Lord 1863, and of the independence of the United States the 87th. "By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN. "WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."

On the abstract question of the | the Union-an efficient instrument in the

right of the Government to proclaim and enforce Emancipation, Edward Everett, in a speech in Faneuil Hall, Boston, October, 1864, forcibly said:

"It is very doubtful whether any act of the Government of the United States was necessary to liberate the slaves in a State which is in rebellion. There is much reason for the opinion that, by the simple act of levying war against the United States, the relation of Slavery was terminated; certainly, so far as concerns the duty of the United States to recognize it, or to refrain from interfering with it. Not being founded on the law of nature, and resting solely on positive local law-and that not of the United States as soon as it becomes either the motive or pretext of an unjust war against

hands of the Rebels for carrying on the war -a source of military strength to the Rebellion, and of danger to the Government at home and abroad, with the additional certainty that, in any event but its abandonment, it will continue in all future time to work these mischiefs, who can suppose it is the duty of the United States to continue to recognize it? To maintain this would be a contradiction in terms. It would be to recognize a right in a Rebel master to employ his slave in acts of rebellion and treason, and the duty of the slave to aid and abet his master in the commission of the greatest crime known to the law. No such absurdity can be admitted; and any citizen of the United States, from the President down, who should, by any overt act, recognize the duty of a slave to obey a Rebel master in a hostile operation, would himself be giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

XII.

SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION IN CONGRESS.

growing in the legislative as well as the popular' mind—that Slavery had closed with the Union in mortal strife-a struggle which both could not survive.'

THE XXXVIIth Congress, as we | the extra session, evinced a steadihave seen-while endeavoring to ly growing consciousness steadily evade or to avert its eyes from the fact that it was Slavery which was waging deadly war on the Uniondid yet give fair notice, through the guarded but decisive language of some of the more conservative Republicans, that, if the Rebellion. were persisted in, it must inevitably result in the overthrow of Slavery. And the action of that Congress, even at

2

1 Vol. I., pp. 564-8.

On the day after the Bull Run rout, the writer first heard this conviction openly declared. The credit of the avowal belongs to Gen. John Cochrane.

'Hon. Elisha R. Potter, of Rhode Islandwho may be fairly styled the hereditary chief of the Democratic party of that State-made a speech on the War to the Senate thereof on the 10th of August, 1861. After distributing the blame of inciting the War between the Northern and the Southern 'ultras,' dilating on the resources of the South, and elucidating the nofighting, anaconda' mode of warfare proposed

Still, President Lincoln hesitated and held back; anxious that the Union should retain its hold on the Border Slave States, especially on Kentucky; and apparently hoping by Gen. Scott, and apparently acceded to by the Cabinet, he proceeds:

"I have said that the war may assume another aspect, and be a short and bloody one. And to such a war-an anti-Slavery war-it seems to me we are inevitably drifting. It seems to me hardly in the power of human wisdom to prevent it. We may commence the war without meaning to interfere with Slavery; but let us have one or two battles, and get our blood excited, and we shall not only not restore any more slaves, but shall proclaim freedom wherever we go. And it seems to me almost judicial blindness on the part of the South that they do not see that this must be the inevitable result, if the contest is prolonged."

« PreviousContinue »