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narrower than universal liberty, nothing lower than absolute justice, will be the ultimate goal of our policy towards this dependent race. The hateful prejudice that broke out here and there, a little while ago, in Brooklyn, in Cincinnati, and in Indiana, in acts of violence against them, has been met, we are glad to say, with no cowardly concession and no shortsighted compromise.* The strong arm of the government has been stretched to put it down, and the better reason of the people, we trust, will be effectual to blot it out. That prejudice has taken the shape of a ridiculous fear lest the emancipated slaves should crowd to the North, and compete with the whites in our labor market at "ten cents a day." Nothing is more certain, on the contrary, by the best evidence we have, than that the effect of freedom will be just the opposite, that one generation of prosperity and peace would win multitudes now in the North to the richer soils and more genial sunshine of the South.† But that is not the point. Doubtless it will be expedient for all classes of our population that each should be treated with exact justice, and find its natural level in the great fields of future opportunity. But the question of humanity, of protection from violence, of security for the humblest in those rights which government assures to all, comes first. Hostility of race results as much from ignorance as from passion. And the times of that ignorance, so long winked at, the year's experience has done something to dispel.‡

The intense hostility felt towards the immigration of free colored people, illus trated in the "black code" of Illinois and other Western States, results, we are told, from the practice of planters near the border, who have expatriated the old decrepit and helpless of their slaves, to occupy the alms-houses of their neighbors across the river.

† We cite the unprejudiced testimony of General Hunter: "None of the carefullyfostered delusions by which slavery has sustained itself at the North is more absurd than the bugbear of a general migration of Negroes to the North,' as a necessary sequence of emancipation. So far is this from being the fact, that, although it is well known that I give passes North to all Negroes asking them, not more than a dozen have applied to me for such passes since my arrival here, their local attachments being apparently much stronger than with the white race. My experience leads me to believe that the exact reverse of the received opinion on this subject would form the rule, and that nearly, if not quite, all the Negroes of the North would migrate South, whenever they shall be at liberty to do so without fear of the auction-block."

We should regret the kind and frank words of the President's recent address to

Some policy on the subject distinct and well defined is the more imperatively demanded, to remove the inconsistency, criminal and absurd, which has prevailed in our armies, in their dealing with such "contraband" blacks as have fallen within their lines. As to this, nothing more is needed than to carry out in good faith the provisions we have already cited from the Act of Confiscation. We are not prepared to censure the Executive for requiring the terms of General Fremont's proclamation to be restricted to the limits already defined by Act of Congress; or for declaring void General Hunter's "Order No. 11," which was issued without authority from head-quarters. But the same reasons which moved the President then must the more urgently compel him now to enforce the terms to which his own signature has given the authority of law. Slaves can no longer be systematically excluded from the army lines, as by General Halleck's "Order No. 3,"†so depriving our forces of the most trusty guides, the most willing laborers, and the most certain and direct evidence of the enemy's position. They can no longer be surrendered, as recently by General Butler in New Orleans, to the barbarous revenge of masters baffled in their schemes of treason, and wreaking their anger on these wretched victims. They can no longer be left to roam or herd, as in several districts of Virginia, an idle mob, except where toiling in the service of rebel owners, and in the presence of Northern armies finding only a strengthening and weightening of their chain. No longer, as in Northern Alabama, will notorious

a deputation of colored men, if the colonization scheme he urges on them should lure the mind of anybody away from the vastly wider and nearer question which concerns the destiny of the colored population here.

says:

The terms of these two celebrated orders are as follow. General Fremont "The property, real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri, 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 to be confiscated to the public use, and their slaves, if they have any, are hereby declared free men."-Proclamation of August 31, 1861. General Hunter says, briefly: "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.". - General Order of May 9, 1862.

† Issued, indeed, as a measure of military police, to exclude vagrants and spies, but very differently understood by the public.

rebels be allowed the run of our camps as spies, under pretence that they are in quest of fugitives. Nor will the pitiful Jesuitism be endured, laid (we trust unjustly) to the charge of the General-in-Chief, and repeated in Memphis, that free blacks shall receive wages for their service, while the condition of the slaves stands undetermined; or the teachers at Port Royal be afraid to speak of freedom to the people in their charge, lest they should be hereafter forsaken and "delivered up." By the law of the land, all are free who have sought the protection of our flag, escaping from masters or districts in rebellion.† Some definite policy was needed to remove what has been the great and most painful scandal of our arms. Even the crime of openly defending and sustaining slavery as an "institution" of the invaded territory, would be hardly worse than the incoherent, irresponsible, conflicting systems of camp police, dictated by caprice or prejudice, of perhaps fifty different commanders. Of course the definite policy determined on could only be the policy of freedom in the main. And we trust that the distinct announcement of it, by public law, will do away the criminal vacillation and confusion that have almost made us hesitate sometimes whether this could be called a war of liberty or justice.‡

Meanwhile, evidence has been accumulating in another quarter, of a sort to alarm us into rendering the tardy justice

*To quote from General McClellan's Army Order already referred to: "Per. sons so subject and so employed have always understood that, after being received into the military service of the United States, in any capacity, they could never be reclaimed by their former holders. Except upon such understanding on their part, the order of the President as to this class of persons would be inoperative. The General Commanding therefore feels authorized to declare to all such employés that they will receive permanent military protection against any compulsory return to a condition of servitude."

+ If a precedent were wanted, it might be found in the example of Generals Gaines and Taylor, in 1838, who claimed the slaves of hostile Indians as "belligerent prisoners," and refused to restore them to their masters.

The following words of Secretary Cameron's instructions of August 8, 1861, ought to have been sufficient to prevent most of the abuses to which we have referred, that, while "it is the desire of the President that all existing rights in all the States be fully respected and maintained," at the same time "rights dependent on the laws of the State within which military operations are conducted must be necessarily subordinated to the military exgiencies created by the insurrection, if not wholly forfeited by the treasonable conduct of the parties claiming them."

due this people. It is impossible to tell how large a proportion of the slaves at the South have passions and ambitions that make them eager to break their chains, and would give them the fierce courage to undertake it. But there seems no reason to doubt that the materials exist there of a most formidable servile war, if circumstances should once kindle it. The air of servility, so strongly printed on the race, is often worn as a mask, we are told, and when lifted a little shows features of startling passion and pride. The testimony to this effect in "The Golden Hour" and "Among the Pines " makes some of the most curious and interesting portions of those remarkable books. It may be the barbaric passion and pride native to the African blood, kept unchanged through generations of servitude; it may be the haughtier instinct that runs with the blood of the oppressor, mingled in the veins of the oppressed. Either way, significant warnings come to us, that we cannot leave this great population safely out of our estimate of forces; or flatter ourselves that victory in the struggle, whichever way it turns, will leave them the humble bondmen they have been. The hour of their deliverance, they think, has struck. Some wait it patiently, as "they that watch for the morning"; some, eagerly and passionately, make it the burden of song, prayer, and prophecy, blend it with wild superstitions, and watch eagerly for every sign of the coming deliverance. Some of the more intelligent among them assert that they know they hold the balance of power in the war, that the decision of the contest cannot be, until they have thrown their sword into the scale. Others testify that a secret and mysterious league bands together the able and resolute of the blacks, from Maryland to Texas; that they wait eagerly the hour for striking the blow; that they will give their service to the party that first offers the reward of freedom; that any attempt to close this war without that act of justice being done, or to make them the victims of a new compromise, will result in an outbreak of despair, before which all the horrors that history tells of servile insurrection will grow pale. This "shorn, blind Samson in our land" will have the fury and the strength to overwhelm all our liberties in one common ruin. A little encouragement would have

made him a trusty ally a year ago; the time is not too late now to secure the loyal service without which we must miserably fail. Such is the testimony that comes, professing to tell us of the feelings and aspirations of the bondmen. How much is literal and sober fact, how much the coloring put upon facts in the wild dreams of liberty born of a time of violence and change, it is impossible for us to know. It may be folly to trust it altogether. Yet it seems the greater folly to despise it altogether. The warning is one among those things which have sharply forced upon us now the question, What shall we do with the slaves? It is distinctly understood -Count Gasparin gives place to it in his argument, and it is brought forward in the recent correspondence of the President with the members of Congress from the Border Slave States, - that the Confederate government (so called) has offered emancipation as the price of recognition by foreign powers. This offer, it is true, was coupled with conditions which looked like evasion and false pretence. What right had the Confederacy to pledge the action of sovereign States? What escapes and excuses might not be found hereafter to shun the fulfilment of the pledge? What would it be worth, the emancipation of unborn children, at some future time, contingent on conditions which no man can guarantee? The offer seems the very effrontery of diplomacy. Yet, if it served its end as a lure,* and emancipation is distinctly accepted in advance, as the alternative to submission or "subjugation," who knows how soon it may not become a fact, how soon the party of insurrection, driven to the wall, may not grasp this formidable weapon, which our scruples have too long forbidden us to employ, and arm with it a fresh half-million of fighting men? † Such thoughts, we are told, already occupy the minds, and stimulate the hopes and passions, of the slaves. And surely

* In Paris, we are told, "the Secessionists have arrived at that condition of effrontery as to be able to repeat day after day, without contradiction, in the Secession papers, that it is absurd to say that slavery has anything to do with the present conflict in the United States,' and that 'the South proposed some time ago to abolish slavery, and that the North objected'!"

"A cheap price to pay for a victory over the North, which would give them the power to recover their emancipated half-million by re-opening the slave-trade, and would not impair slavery at all." The Golden Hour, p. 50.

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