1862] THE PROVISION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 177 Again, the next section of the same act says: "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 rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto."* In this connection it is worth while to read again the words of the Constitution: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." Let it be observed that there is no limitation, no qualification, no condition whatever attached to this clause of the Constitution. The words "no person held to service" included every slave in the United States. In Article I, section 9, and in Article V, are exceptions suspending the operation of the general provision. But in this provision there are none, because it was intended there should be none. The provision was designed to include every slave, and to be in force under all cir cumstances. Perhaps it may be urged as an objection to this assertion, that the Confederate States were out of the Union and beyond the protection of the provisions of the Constitution. This objection can not be admitted in extenuation of this crime of Congress and the Executive; for there was, thus far, no act of Congress, nor proclamation of the President in existence, showing that either of them regarded the Confederate States in any other position than as States within the Union, whose citizens were subject to all the penalties contained in the Constitution, and therefore entitled to the benefit of all its provisions for * Laws of the United States, 1862. their protection. Unhesitatingly it may be said, and as will be still more apparent further on in these pages, that all the conduct of the Confederate States, pertaining to the war, consisted in just efforts to preserve to themselves and their posterity rights and protections guaranteed to them in the Constitution of the United States; and that the actions of the Federal Government consisted in efforts to subvert those rights, destroy those protections, and subjugate us to compliance with its arbitrary will; and that this conduct on their part involved the subversion of the Constitution and the destruction of the fundamental principles of liberty. Who is the criminal? Let posterity answer. CHAPTER XXVI. Forced Emancipation concluded.-Emancipation Acts of President Lincoln.-Emancipation with Compensation proposed to Border States.-Reasons urged for it. -Its Unconstitutionality.-Order of General Hunter.-Revoked by President Lincoln.-Reasons.-"The Pressure" on him.-One Cause of our Secession.The Time to throw off the Mask at Hand.-The Necessity that justified the President and Congress also justified Secession.-Men united in Defense of Liberty called Traitors.-Conference of President Lincoln with Senators and Representatives of Border States.-Remarks of Mr. Lincoln.-Reply of Senators and Representatives.-Failure of the Proposition.-Three Hundred Thousand more Men called for.-Declarations of the Antislavery Press.-Truth of our Apprehensions.-Reply of President Lincoln.-Another Call for Men.Further Declarations of the Antislavery Press.-The Watchword adopted.— Memorial of So-called Christians to the President.-Reply of President Lincoln. -Issue of the Preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation.-Issue of the Final Proclamation.-The Military Necessity asserted.-The Consummation verbally reached.-Words of the Declaration of Independence.-Declarations by the United States Government of what it intended to do.-True Nature of the Party unveiled. Declarations of President Lincoln.-Vindication of the Sagacity of the Southern People.-His Declarations to European Cabinets.-Object of these Declarations. Trick of the Fugitive Thief.-The Boast of Mr. Lincoln calmly considered. THE attention of the reader is now invited to a series of usurpations in which the President of the United States was the principal actor. On March 6, 1862, he began a direct and unconstitutional interference with slavery by sending a message 1869] EXECUTIVE INTERFERING WITH SLAVERY. 179 to Congress recommending the adoption of a resolution which should declare that the United States ought to cooperate with any State which might adopt the gradual abolition of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by such change of system. The reason given for the recommendation of the adoption of the resolution was that the United States Government would find its highest interest in such a measure as one of the most important means of self-preservation. He said, in explanation, that "the leaders of the existing rebellion entertain the hope that this Government will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region, and that all the slave States north of such part will then say, 'The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section. To deprive them of this hope substantially ends the rebellion, and the initiation of emancipation deprives them of it and of all the States initiating it." the purposes When it, was asked where the power was found in the Constitution to appropriate the money of the people to carry out of the resolution, it was replied that the legislative department of the Government was competent, under these words in the preamble of the Constitution, "to provide for the general welfare," to do anything and everything which could be considered as promoting the general welfare. It was further said that this measure was to be consummated under the war power; that whatever was necessary to carry on the war to a successful conclusion might be done without restraint under the anthority, not of the Constitution, but as a military necessity. It was further said that the President of the United States had thus far failed to meet the just expectations of the party which elected him to the office he held; and that his friends were to be comforted by the resolution and the message, while the people of the border slave States could not fail to observe that with the comfort to the North there was mingled an awful warning to them. It was denied by the President that it was an interference with slavery in the States. It was an artful scheme to awaken a controversy in the slave States, and to com mence the work of emancipation by holding out pecuniary aid as an inducement. In every previous declaration the President had said that he did not contemplate any interference with domestic slavery within the States. The resolution was passed by large majorities in each House. This proposition of President Lincoln was wholly unconstitutional, because it attempted to do what was expressly forbidden by the Constitution. It proposed a contract between the State of Missouri and the Government of the United States which, in the language of the act, shall be "irrepealable without the consent of the United States." The words of the Constitution are as follows: "No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation, grant letters of marque and reprisal, coin money, etc."* This is a prohibition not only upon the power of one State to enter into a compact, alliance, confederation, or agreement with another State, but also with the Government of the United States. Again, if the State of Missouri could enter into an irrepealable agreement or compact with the United States, that slavery should not therein exist after the acceptance on the part of Missouri of the act, then it would be an agreement on the part of that State to surrender its sovereignty and make the State unequal in its rights of sovereignty with the other States of the Union. The other States would have the complete right of sovereignty over their domestic institutions while the State of Missouri would cease to have such right. The whole system of the United States Government would be abrogated by such legisla tion. Again, it is a cardinal principle of the system that the people in their sovereign capacity may, from time to time, change and alter their organic law; and a provision incorporated in the Constitution of Missouri that slavery should never thereafter exist in that State could not prevent a future sovereign convention of its people from reëstablishing slavery within its limits. It will be observed, from what has been said in the preced * Article I, section 10. 1862] INTERFERENCE OF MILITARY COMMANDERS. 181 ing pages, that the usurpations by the Government of the United States, both by the legislative and executive depart ments, had not only been tolerated but approved. Feeling itself, therefore, fortified in its unlimited power from "necessity," the wheels of the revolution were now to move with accelerated velocity in their destructive work. Accordingly, a manifesto soon comes from the Executive on universal emancipation. On April 25, 1862, the United States Major-General Hunter, occupying a position at Hilton Head, South Carolina, issued an order declaring the States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina under martial law. On May 9th the same officer issued another order, declaring "the persons held as slaves in those States to be for ever free." The Executive of the United States, on May 19th, issued a proclamation declaring the order to be void, and said : "I further make known that, whether it be competent for me as commander-in-chief of the army and navy to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether at any time or in any case it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the Government to examine such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I can not feel justified in leaving to the decision of com manders in the field." Speaking of this order of Major-General Hunter soon afterward, President Lincoln, in remarks on July 12, 1862, to the border States Representatives, said: "In repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offense, to many whose support the country can not afford to lose. And this is not the end of it. The pressure in this direction is still upon me, and is increasing." This pressure consisted in the demand of his extreme partisans that the whole authority of the Government should be exerted for the immediate and universal emancipation of the slaves. By a reference to the statement of the causes of our withdrawal from the Union of the United States, it will be seen that |