PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION.

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that he was issuing more rations to the slaves who have rushed to him than to all the white troops under his command. They eat, and that is all.”

Such were the views entertained by Mr. Lincoln on the 15th day of September, 1862, on the subject of emancipation. The time of this conference was significant. The progress of the war was inauspicious; the Confederates had penetrated the North, and were actually threatening Washington; and at all such periods of wavering confidence in the war, the Northern Government was singularly prompt to incline towards the moderate party, and to hold up in its progress to radicalism. It was certainly no time to decide domestic institutions in the Confederacy when that belligerent was actually threatening the existence of the Government at Washington. But at this precise conjuncture of politics the battle of Sharpsburg was fought; the mask was dropped; and on the 22d September, 1862, President Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation of emancipation, of which the following is the important portion :

"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 States 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."

This was followed by the proclamation of 1st January, 1863, designating the States in which emancipation should take immediate effect; the notice of one hundred days, counting from the preliminary proclamation, having expired.

Thus was consummated the triumph of the Abolition party of the North. Thus was, at last, avowed the war upon slavery, and thus deliberately planned the robbery of the Southern people to the extent of two thousand millions of dollars. It is true that this proclamation was for the time of no effect, and that when it was issued it was worth no more than the paper on which its bold iniquity was traced; nevertheless, it was the avowal of a principle, the declaration of a wish, the deliberate attempt of the Chief Magistrate of a nation to do that which was repugnant to civiliz

ation and all morals. The misrepresentation of the emancipation procla mation, as a deed of philanthropy, was absurd enough. A candid world found no difficulty in interpreting it as an act of malice towards the master rather than one of mercy to the slave. A crime was attempted in the name of liberty and humanity; and various hypocritical pretences were used to cover up what was an unholy infatuation, a ruthless persecution, a cruel and shameful device, adding severity and bitterness to a wicked and reckless war.

The new measure was adopted in the name of a "military necessity.” Aside from its falsehood, the plea was one that dishonoured the North, and placed it in shameful inconsistency. Again and again it had been proclaimed to the world, that "the rebellion was weak, and would be crushed out in sixty days;" at other times, it was declared that "Union men abounded in the South, and would welcome Federal troops as deliverers; and yet now the invader was so hopeless of his task, that it was a “military necessity" that he obtain help of slaves! If the proclamation had been designed as a "military necessity," it was very clear that it should end with the war, and be confined to the special mission for which it had been invoked. The fact was that the real design was political, not military; that emancipation was not the exigency of the war, but the permanent triumph of fanaticism under a false pretence. We shall see at a future time how beyond the point of this proclamation the Anti-Slavery legislation at Washington was enlarged by the establishment of a Bureau of Freedmen's Affairs, to determine all questions relating to persons of African descent, and finally, by an amendment of the Constitution, the effect of which was to entomb slavery forever, to erect emancipation into a constitutional reform, and thus exhibit and confirm what was its original design.

The effect of the emancipation proclamation on the Confederates was decided. It secured a new lease of war, and animated the people of the South to desperate exertion. In a message, communicated on the 12th January, 1863, to the Congress at Richmond, President Davis said: "The proclamation will have a salutary effect in calming the fears of those who have constantly evinced the apprehension that this war might end by some reconstruction of the old Union, or some renewal of close political relations with the United States. These fears have never been shared by me, nor have I been able to perceive on what basis they could rest. But the proclamation affords the fullest guaranty of the impossibility of such a result. It has established a state of things which can lead to but one of three consequences-the extermination of the slaves, the exile of the whole white population of the Confederacy, or absolute and total separation of these States from the United States." The entire newspaper press of the Confederacy echoed the sentiment of the President. It was declared that he outrage of forcible emancipation would awaken a deeper resentment

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THE NORTH.

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than ever inflamed the people of the South before; that it had quenched the last sentiment of respect that lingered in their breasts for the United States Government; that it would unite them more resolutely than ever, and make it to the individual interest of every person in the bounds of the Confederacy to sustain and strengthen it with every dollar and every arm, and every prayer, and every energy of manly virtue and Christian encouragement.

The effect of the proclamation in the North was to strengthen the Opposition; and the preliminary announcement of emancipation in September, 1862, was undoubtedly a main element of success in the Democratic triumphs in the fall elections of that year. The gains of the Democratic party at this time were the subject of great concern to those in power at Washington. In the face of a majority of 107,000 against them in 1860, the Democrats had carried the State of New York. The metropolis of New York was carried by a Democratic majority of 31,000-a change of 48,000 votes in twelve months. Within the great States of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the results of the popular elections were a more or less emphatic avowal of opposition to the schemes of those who were using the power of the Government for narrow and sectional and despotic purposes. The significance of these elections was not only confined to the issue of emancipation. A large portion of the Northern people pronounced against the entire policy of Mr. Lincoln's Administration. They condemned that relic of the worst times of French tyranny, the lettres de cachet; they raised their voices against irresponsible arrests; they complained of the small measure of success in the war, and the disappointment of the hopes of the people in this regard; and while protesting against the edict of emancipation, they reminded Mr. Seward of his declaration, made on the 10th March, 1862, in a letter to Mr. Adams in London, that such a measure "would re-invigorate the declining insurrection in every part of the South.”

On the 15th December, 1862, Mr. Cox, Democratic member from Ohio, in a speech in the House of Representatives, described the condition of the North, and exhibited a bill of particulars against Mr. Lincoln's Administration, which may be taken as a declaration of the principles and views of his party. He stated that the present cost of the war to the North was $1,000,000 per day, which was not being replaced; for all that was spent in war was, by the laws of economy, a loss to those who spend it, as a mere pecuniary transaction, and not counting ultimate and moral results. He declared that since Mr. Lincoln's Administration came into power there had been lost to the country, merely as a matter of business, not counting debt and taxes of a national or State character, at least three hundred millions in the destruction of property, interference with established business, increase in wages, spoliation of railroads, depots, produce, corn, wheat,

flour, cotton, hay, crops, &c. He pointed out the fact that the Government had devised a system of taxation by tariff which imposed a burden on the West, to benefit manufacturing in New England, and paid indirectly sixty millions into the treasury and hundreds of millions into the pockets of capitalists, from the consumers, who were mostly farmers in the West. He complained of a system of internal taxation, costing for collection some four millions extra, which might have been saved, and levying in one year $150,000,000 as interest only on a great national debt, and with an army of newly-made office-holders, with exorbitant salaries. He stated that within six hundred and fifty-one days, a party had succeeded which proposed, by legislation and proclamation, to break down a labour system in eleven States, of four millions of negroes, whose industry had been productive hitherto, worth, on or before the 4th of March, 1861, an average of $500 apiece, being in all two thousand millions of dollars. He prophesied that when this capital was destroyed the objects of this pseudophilanthropy would remain on hand, North and South, as a mass of dependent and improvident black beings, for whose care the tax would be almost equal to the war-tax, before their condition would again be fixed safely and prosperously. He concluded with the summary and startling statement that within these six hundred and fifty-one days the rights of personal liberty, freedom from arrest without process, freedom for press and speech, and the right of habeas corpus had been suspended and limited, and, at times, destroyed; and in the place of resurrected and promised liberty to four million blacks, the North had the destruction of that liberty which the past eight hundred years had awarded to the AngloSaxon race.

The triumphs of the Democratic party had taken place in the most powerful and populous States of the North. The States in which the party gained in the fall elections of 1862 contained a majority of the Free State population; had two-thirds of the wealth of the North; and furnished a majority of the troops in the field against us. This important and imposing demonstration of public opinion in the North was interpreted by the Republican party as significant of a Democratic design of "reconstruction," in which the Southern States might be brought back into the Union with new constitutional guaranties. But this idea, if it was ever seriously entertained by the Democratic party of the North, found enough to discourage it in the manner in which the bare suggestion of it was cried down in all parts of the Confederacy, and by every organ of public opinion there. The Confederate press desperately and savagely denounced the idea of "reconstruction." The Examiner said of the Northern people: 66 They do not yet understand that we are resolute to be rid of them forever, and determined rather to die than to live with them in the same political community again." The Dispatch declared: "We warn the

Democrats and conservatives of the North to dismiss from their minds at once the miserable delusion that the South can ever consent to enter again, upon any terms, the old Union. If the North will allow us to write the Constitution ourselves, and give us every guaranty we would ask, we would sooner be under the Government of England or France than under a Union with men who have shown that they cannot keep good faith, and are the most barbarous and inhuman, as well as treacherous of mankind. But do not expect us to degrade ourselves and cast dishonour upon the graves of our kindred by ever returning to the embrace of those whose hands are dripping with the tears and blood of our people." The leaders and politicians of the Confederacy were not behind the press in denouncing the idea of any possible reunion with the North. Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederate States, made a speech in North Carolina, which in view of the sequel attached to this man, is a curious personal reminiscence of the war. He said: "As for reconstruction, such a thing was impossible-such an idea must not be tolerated for an instant. Reconstruction would not end the war, but would produce a more horrible war than that in which we are now engaged. The only terms on which we can obtain permanent peace is final and complete separation from the North. Rather than submit to anything short of that, let us resolve to die like men worthy of freedom."

It appeared indeed that the people of the South had fully made up their minds; that they were prepared to suffer all the calamities of the most protracted war; and that they would never, on any terms, politically affiliate with a people, who were guilty of an invasion of their soil, and whose atrocities in the war had caused the whole civilized world to shudder.

MILITARY OPERATIONS IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF 1863.

Before reaching the great campaign of 1863, dated with the fighting months of summer, we find certain minor operations of the war within the period of winter and early spring, of which we may coveniently give here a summary account. The heavy rains of winter and early spring prevented heavy movements on land, and this period in the history of the war we shall generally find occupied by attempts of the enemy on the seacoast or by amphibious expeditions on the inland waters of the Confederacy. The most important of the events referred to as preceding what may be indicated as the grand campaign of 1863, were the recapture of Galveston by the Confederates; renewed attempts of the enemy on Vicksburg, with some other enterprises on the waters of the Mississippi; and the repulse of the Federal fleet at Charleston. The narrative of these events is mostly a story of successes for the Confederates-the sum of which was considerable,