should be returned to their owners, or at least be prohibited from seeking refuge and remaining within the Federal encampments. The same line of policy was marked out plainly for commanding officers to pursue in dealing with slavery in other portions of the United States, showing conclusively that it was not the desire or intention of the Government to molest or interfere with the domestic institutions of any State. The States in rebellion did not appreciate or profit by this forbearing, lenient and coaxing treatment of the General Government, and long afterward, in 1862, the policy of the Federal Administration was necessarily changed to more vigorous measures against the rebellion and its handmaid, slavery, as demanded by the stern necessities of the times. The following extracts from an order issued by General Grant, while at Corinth, Miss., in August, 1862, show plainly that even at that stage of the contest the object of the war was not the general emancipation of negroes in the South, nor to meddle with the peculiar institution, except to receive and employ those fugitives who came into the camps as laborers, in the capacity of teamsters, cooks and servants. It was as follows:

HEAD-QUARTERS DISTRICT OF WEST TENNESSEE,}

GENERAL ORDERS, No. 72.

Corinth, Miss., August 11th, 1862.

Recent acts of Congress prohibit the army from returning fugitives from labor to their claimants, and authorize the employment of such persons in the service of the Government. The following orders are, therefore, published for the guidance of the army in the miliitary district in this matter:

I. All fugitives thus employed must be registered, the names of the fugitives and claimants given, and must be borne upon the morning reports of the command in which they are kept, showing how they are employed.

II. Fugitive slaves may be employed as laborers in the Quartermaster's, Subsistence or Engineer departments, and whenever by such employment a soldier may be saved to the ranks. They may be employed as teamsters, as company cooks-not exceeding four to a company -or as hospital attendants and nurses. Officers may employ them as private servants, in which latter case the fugitives will not be paid or rationed by the Government. Negroes not thus employed will be deemed unauthorized persons, and must be excluded from camp.

III. Officers and soldiers are positively prohibited from enticing slaves to leave their masters. When it becomes necessary to employ this kind of labor, commanding officers of posts or troops must send details always under the charge of a suitable commissioned officer- to press into the service the slaves of disloyal persons, to the number required.

This rule of military action in reference to slavery was rigidly adhered to and carried out in General Grant's campaign through Northern Mississippi, in December, 1862, and up to February of the following year, the time when his troops were encamped at Lake Providence. President Lincoln's proclamation of September, 1862, stated:

"That hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the 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. That it was his purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, to again recommend 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 government existing there, will be continued. That on the 1st day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hun

dred 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 States, shall be 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 to repress such persons, or any of them, in any effort 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."

Meanwhile the seceded States spurned this offer of remuneration and guaranty of property in case of their return to loyalty, and up to the first day of January, 1863, no proposition was ever heard of from

any of them, no action was ever taken on their part indicating a desire to resume their relations to the Union, upon the liberal terms proposed. The rebellion continued. The war was prosecuted in all its rigor, and on the first day of January, 1863, the chief executive of the nation, in fulfillment of what he had previously declared, and from which the South had had long opportunity to escape, sent forth the celebrated fiat of emancipation, carrying freedom to millions of human beings theretofore employed in the interests of the Confederacy, and striking a deathblow at the head and front of the rebellion itself. After reciting the substance of his September proclamation, he declared as follows:

"Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army and navy 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 one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose 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 fol