CHAPTER XLVII.

RESULTS OF THE CONFLICT.

EFFECT OF DISASTERS AT BULL RUN.-EXCITEMENT RESPECTING SLAVERY.-NEW LAWS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.-PROCLAMATION OF GENERAL DAVID HUNTER-SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.-RESOLVES OF THE THIRTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS.-HON. EDWARD M. STANTON.-COLONEL ROBERT G. SHAW.-ACT OF EMANCIPATION.-LETTER OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER-DUTIES OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN.

SOON after the assembling of Congress, upon the breaking out of the slaveholders' rebellion, as it was manifest that slavery was the cause and the support and the motive power of the rebellion, an effort was made to confiscate the property and emancipate the slaves of all rebel masters. Incredible as it may seem, at that hour, sympathy with slavery was so strong, and the desire to conciliate the Border Slave States, who were so bitterly opposed to the measure, was so potent, that the resolve could not be passed. The slaves continued, through their enforced labor, to feed the armies of rebellion and dig the trenches and repair the fortifications before which Northern patriots were profusely shedding their blood. It was not until God laid upon us the Egyptian plague of the disastrous battle of Bull Run, that the nation could be persuaded to let even the slaves of traitors in arms go free. The traitor, John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, who still lingered in the halls of Congress that he might thwart all endeavors to crush the rebellion, denounced this movement as "the first of a series of acts loosing all bonds." This bill was passed on the 3d of August, 1861. The carnage of Bull Run, which had occurred but three weeks before, pushed it through. But even that plague of blood and woe could only secure the emancipation of such slaves as had been employed by their traitorous masters "upon any fort, navy-yard, dock, armory, ship, intrenchment, or in any military or naval service whatsoever, against the government and lawful authority of the United States." The slaves

who by millions were working in the field, under the lash, to feed these armies, were still to remain in bondage.

As the rebellion developed increasingly gigantic proportions, and it was manifest that the country was engaged in a death-grapple with its foes, General John C. Fremont issued, in Missouri, a proclamation which was hailed with enthusiasm by all the loyal masses of the North, but which roused to intense indignation the pro-slavery party in the Border States. In this proclamation, issued on the 30th of August, 1861, General Fremont said:

"Real and personal property of those who shall take up arms against

the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part with their enemies in the field, is declared confiscated to public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared freemen."

It is difficult to imagine the uproar which the sentence we have italicized created among the pro-slavery men in the North and in the Border States. General Fremont was denounced in the most vehement terms, and his dismissal from command clamorously called for. President Lincoln was alarmed. He wrote to General Fremont, requesting him to modify his proclamation so that it should embrace only those slaves who had been employed by their masters in actual military service. General Fremont replied, as has been stated in the first volume, in words which will forever redound to his honor:

"If your better judgment decides that I was wrong in the article respecting the liberation of slaves, I have to ask that you will openly direct me to make the correction. The implied censure will be received as a soldier always should receive the reprimand of his chief. If I were to retract of my own accord, it would imply that I myself thought it wrong, and that I had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded. But I did not."

To this the President replied, with his characteristic frankness, under the date of September 11th: "Your answer, just received, expresses the preference on your part, that I should make an open order for the modification, which I very cheerfully do. It is therefore ordered, that the said clause of said proclamation be so modified, held, and construed as to conform with and not to transcend the provisions on the same subject, contained in the act of Congress entitled 'An Act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes."

On the 25th of January, 1862, Secretary Seward, in accordance with the rapidly growing demand of public sentiment, issued an order from the President, forbidding the Marshal of the District of Columbia from receiv ing into custody "any persons claimed to be held to service or labor, and not charged with any crime, unless upon arrest or commitment, pursuant to law, as fugitives from such service or labor." Even this so slight recog nition of the rights of the colored men excited the most violent opposition. But the tide of freedom was now slowly, yet surely, rising, and nothing could stay its progress.

In March, Congress adopted a recommendation of the President, offering "to cooperate with any State which may adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system."

Eagle-eyed slavery was again alarmed, and petitions from Kentucky were sent to the United States Senate, entreating Congress "to disregard all schemes for emancipation."

At the same time both halls of Congress were flooded with petitions. for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, which was under the exclusive legislation of Congress. The advocates of slavery were equally active. Even from the Free State of Illinois, whose southern

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 expulsion 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 nego tiated 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 soma 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, or 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