abolish slavery by constitutional amendment? Sir, I warn you against the course this Congress is pursuing. Already you have crushed out every feeling of love of the Union in the people of the revolted States; and you are besotted if you think that acts of oppression and wrong can be perpetrated in the border slave-States, without producing estrangement and even enmity there. Kentucky has remained true to her faith pledged to the government, and I warn you not to persevere in inflicting on her insult and outrage."

On the refusal of Mr. Morris to withdraw the previous question, which provoked the spiteful response of Mr. Mallory that "justice is a thing I have long since ceased to hope for from that side of the House," there sprung up a series of motions designed to stave off and delay the passage of the bill. Mr. Cox of Ohio appealed to Mr. Morris to have the bill referred back again to the Committee on the Judiciary. The latter and other members expressed a willingness to allow sufficient time for a full examination, and expression of views concerning it, even to fix a subsequent day for a vote; but those hos tile to it refused any "unanimous consent in regard to taking the vote," and a sharp debate followed. Mr. King of Missouri opposed the bill in an elaborate speech. "The law," he said, "now sought to be repealed, was passed in the discharge of a solemn duty to the slaveholding States, a duty enjoined by the Constitution, and which cannot, in my opinion, be repealed by Congress without a total disregard of an imperative obligation." Mr. Cox made a sharp, incisive speech, not only in opposition to that particular measure, but in condemnation of the general policy of Mr. Lincoln and his adminis tration, and closed with this arraignment: "Your executive," he said, "is a usurper of the powers wisely distributed to the other departments of the government. Here you sit to-day, striving to strike down the only mode whereby one peculiar clause of the Constitution can be carried out, and propose no mode as a substitute either by State or Federal action. Your ideas are not those of the higher, but of the lower law. They do not come from the sources of law and light and love above. They sunder all the ties of allegiance, and all the sanctions of

faith. You are destructionists: you would tear down all that is valuable and sacred in the past, and build up nothing in their place. You are revolutionists."

But those who spoke for the bill were equally emphatic and undisguised. "I make," said a member, "no distinction whatever between the act of 1793 and the act of 1850. Today they are equally obnoxious, and, in my opinion, equally infamous. I revere the memory of the founders of the Republic; but I am not so infatuated as to believe that the fathers would ever have passed the act of 1793 had slavery then been in rebellion against them. It is fit that American statesmen in this age of the world, at this period of the great American war, at a time when the Republic is smarting and bleeding, if not reeling, under the blows that slavery has given it, and at a time when a hundred thousand black men are fighting for the flag, and not one against it, it is fit that American statesmen, here assembled to deliberate and act upon this momentous question, should have an opportunity to record their votes for posterity to read." Mr. Morris made, near the close of the debate, a brief and earnest speech in advocacy of the right and duty of adopting some such measure. "These statutes," he said, "are repugnant to the sense of every good man who has not been educated to believe that the slave code is more imperative than the Constitution itself. I say, sweep out a law which no man respects who is not a votary of human slavery. It is an abomination."

The previous question was then ordered, and the bill was adopted by a vote of eighty-two to fifty-seven.

It was taken up in the Senate, on motion of Mr. Sumner, on the 21st of June, though Mr. Hendricks of Indiana interposed objection, and Mr. Saulsbury of Delaware expressed the belief that "no practical good can result from it." The near approach of the close of the session, with its pressure of accumulating business, the anxiety of members to secure action on bills intrusted to their care, and the fear that the debate to which the bill would give rise would consume time they desired for other subjects led to opposition and counter-motions. Even Mr. Hale opposed it. "There are several very impor

VOL. III.

26

tant bills," he said, "relating to the navy on the calendar; and I have received urgent and pressing letters from the Secretary of the Navy to call the attention of the Senate to them." Mr. Powell had in charge an important bill to secure freedom in elections, and he said that he did "not see what good armies or navies are going to do us, if we have no freedom of elections." A vote, however, to take it up was se cured.

were inter

The next day it met with the same opposition, and several of what Mr. Sumner styled "dilatory motions posed against taking it up. Among them was one by Mr. Powell to postpone the further consideration of the bill "till the first Monday of December next." But he withdrew it on the proposition of Mr. Sumner to "meet Senators half-way," and the bill was reported to the Senate without amendment. Coming up again the next day, Mr. Davis of Kentucky made a speech against it, and Mr. Saulsbury moved to strike out all but the enacting clause, and insert the words of the Constitution concerning fugitives, "and that Congress shall pass all necessary laws for the rendition of all persons who shall escape," and nine voted for his amendment. Reverdy Johnson also proposed an amendment, which received seventeen votes. The bill was then passed by a vote of twenty-seven to twelve. The President approved it on the 28th, and thus was swept from the pages of the statute-book the heartless and iniquitous, inhuman and infamous, fugitive-slave acts of 1793 and 1850.

CHAPTER XXX.

MAKING FREE THE FAMILIES OF COLORED SOLDIERS.

Colored soldiers. - Confederate threats.

- Bill by Mr. Wilson freeing families.

Op

Henderson's amendment and speech in behalf of loyal slavemasters. posed by Grimes and sustained by Johnson. -Testimony against slavery. Sherman's amendment and speech. - Doolittle. - Brown's proposition and speech. -Wilson's substitute. - Wilkinson, Pomeroy, Lane, Grimes. - Constitutional amendment. - Proposition to recommit.

Conness, Howard, Fes

senden. Slaves "property.". Davis, Willey. -Joint resolution. — Fail

ure. New session. - Resolution introduced. - Motion to commit. - Democratic opposition. - Mr. Sumner. Davis's confession. -Wade. - Powell's amendment. Carlile. Resolution adopted. Reported in the House. Debated. Passed.

THE President in his annual message, December, 1863, had estimated the colored soldiers in the service at "nearly one hundred thousand." They were mostly from the border States, and the slaves of loyal masters. While they were fighting the battles of the country, their masters, who were generally opposed to their enlistment, could sell into perpetual slavery their wives and children. To deter slaves from enlisting, or to punish them when they did enlist, slave-masters made merchandise of the wives and children of colored soldiers, and often sold them into a harsher bondage.

To put an end to a practice so cruel, unjust, injurious, and dishonorable to the country, Mr. Wilson introduced into the Senate on the 8th of January, in his bill to promote enlistments, a provision declaring that when any man or boy of African descent, owing service or labor in any State, under its laws, should be mustered into the military or naval service of the United States, he, and his mother, wife, and children, should be forever free. When the Senate proceeded to the consideration of the bill, Mr. Powell of Kentucky, pronouncing the section giving freedom to the wife, mother, and children of

the soldier"clearly unconstitutional," because it deprived "the loyal men of loyal States of their property by legislative enactment of Congress," moved to strike out that section.

It was then moved by Mr. Henderson of Missouri to strike out the words "his mother, wife, and children," and insert that "his mother, wife, and children" should be free if they owed service to any person who gave aid and comfort to the Rebellion. He avowed that he did not offer this amendment to protect slavery, and declared his readiness to abolish it throughout the country. He expressed the opinion that no State" will again take its place in the Union without first, by the action of its own people, abolishing slavery," and that when the Rebellion should be put down, "slavery forever dies."

The amendment was strenuously opposed by Mr. Grimes. He was unwilling that a man who had perilled his life for the institutions of his country should be taken off to slavery by any persons. He thought that the proposition would meet the approval of the country, and rejoiced that an opportunity had been given for the Senate to record their votes in its favor.

But the amendment was sustained by Mr. Johnson of Maryland. He thought no member of the Senate was more anxious than himself to have the country composed entirely of free men and free women. "The bill provides," he said, "that a slave enlisted anywhere- no matter where he may be, whether he be within Maryland or out of Maryland, whether he be within any other of the loyal States or out of the loyal States altogether is at once to work the emancipation of his wife and children. He may be in South Carolina; and many a slave in South Carolina, I am sorry to say it, can well claim to have a wife, or perhaps wives and children, within the limits of Maryland. It is one of the vices, and the horrible vices, of the institution, one that has shocked me from infancy to the present hour, that the whole marital relation is disregarded. They are made to be, practically and by education, forgetful or ignorant of that relation. When I say they are educated, I mean to say they are kept in absolute igno