Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

by Rossiter Johnson; Selden Connor; John Brown Gordon; Henry W. B. Howard; O. O. Howard; John Tyler Morgan; John Clark Ridpath

CHAPTER XVI.

EMANCIPATION.

This Chapter is illustrated with portraits of early abolitionists, and Virginia officials at the time of the celebrated John Brown Raid.

LINCOLN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY—McCLELLAN'S ATTITUDE—THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S ATTITUDE—PREDICTIONS BY THE POETS—SLAVES DECLARED CONTRABAND—ACTION OF FRÉMONT—HUNTER'S PROCLAMATION—BLACKS FIRST ENLISTED—DIVISION OF SENTIMENT IN THE ARMY—MARYLAND ABOLISHES SLAVERY—THE PRESIDENT AND HORACE GREELEY CORRESPOND ON THE SUBJECT—EMANCIPATION PROCLAIMED—AUTUMN ELECTIONS—ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN DELAWARE, KENTUCKY, AND MISSOURI—THE FINAL PROCLAMATION—THE RIGHT OF THE PRESIDENT TO DECLARE THE SLAVES FREE.

The war had now (September, 1862) been in progress almost a year and a half; and nearly twenty thousand men had been shot dead on the battlefield, and upward of eighty thousand wounded, while an unknown number had died of disease contracted in the service, or been carried away into captivity. The money that had been spent by the United States Government alone amounted to about one billion dollars. All this time there was not an intelligent man in the country but knew the cause of the war, and yet more than a hundred thousand American citizens were killed or mangled before a single blow was delivered directly at that cause. General Frémont had aimed at it; General Hunter had aimed at it; but in each case the arm was struck up by the Administration. One would naturally suppose, from the thoroughness with which the slavery question had been discussed for thirty years, that when the time came for action there would be little doubt or hesitation on either side. On the Confederate side there was neither doubt nor hesitation. On the National side there was both doubt and hesitation, and it took a long time to arrive at a determination to destroy slavery in order to preserve the Union. The old habit of compromise and conciliation half paralyzed the arm of war, and thousands of well-meaning citizens were unable to comprehend the fact that we were dealing with a question that it was useless to compromise and a force that it was impossible to conciliate.

Mr. Lincoln had hated slavery ever since, when a young man, he made a trip on a flat-boat to New Orleans, and there saw it in some of its more hideous aspects. That he realized its nature and force as an organized institution and a power in politics, appears from one of his celebrated speeches, delivered in 1858, wherein he declared that as a house divided against itself cannot stand, so our Government could not endure permanently half slave and half free. "Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." Why, then, hating slavery personally, and understanding it politically, and knowing it to be the cause of the war, did he not sooner declare it abolished?

On the one hand, he was not, like some of our chief magistrates, under the impression that he had been placed in office to carry out irresponsibly a personal policy of his own; and, on the other, he was shrewd enough to know that it would be as futile for a President to place himself far in advance of his people on a great question, as for a general to precede his troops on the battlefield. Hence he turned over and over, and presented again and again, the idea that the war might be stopped and the question settled by paying for the slaves and liberating them. It looked like a very simple calculation to figure out the cost of purchased emancipation and compare it with the probable cost of the war. The comparison seemed to present an unanswerable argument, and in the end the money cost of the war was more than one thousand dollars for every slave emancipated, while in the most profitable days of the institution the blacks, young and old together, had not been worth half that price. The fallacy of the argument lay in its blindness to the fact that the Confederates were not fighting to retain possession of their actual slaves, but to perpetuate the institution itself. The unthrift of slavery as an economic system had been many times demonstrated, notably in Helper's "Impending Crisis," but these demonstrations, instead of inducing the slaveholders to seek to get rid of it on the best attainable terms, appeared only to excite their anger. And it ought to have been seen that a proud people with arms in their hands, either flushed with victory or confident in their own prowess, no matter where their real interests may lie, can never be reasoned with except through the syllogisms of lead and steel. Perhaps Mr. Lincoln did know it, but was waiting for his people to find it out.

JOHN BROWN.

The Louisville (Ky.) Courier, in a paragraph quoted on [page 63] of this volume, had told a great deal of bitter and shameful truth; but when it entered upon the prophecy that the North would soon resume the yoke of the slaveholders, it was not so happy. And yet it had strong grounds for its confident prediction. Not only had a great Peace Convention been held in February, 1861, which strove to prevent secession by offering new guaranties for the protection of slavery, but the chief anxiety of a large number of Northern citizens and officers in the military service appeared to be to manifest their desire that the institution should not be harmed.

The most eminent of the Federal generals, McClellan, when he first took the field in West Virginia, issued a proclamation to the Unionists, in which he said: "Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors to induce you to believe our advent among you will be signalized by an interference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly: not only will we abstain from all such interference, but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand crush any attempt at insurrection on their part." In pursuance of this, he returned to their owners all slaves that escaped and sought refuge within his lines. It was an every-day occurrence for slaveholders who were in active rebellion against the Government that he was serving, to come into his camps under flag of truce and demand and receive their runaway slaves. The Hutchinsons, a family of popular singers, by permission of the Secretary of War, visited his camp in the winter of 1861-62, to sing to the soldiers. But when the general found them singing some stanzas of Whittier's that spoke of slavery as a curse to be abolished, he forthwith issued an order that their pass should be revoked and they should not sing any more to the troops. And even after his retreat on the peninsula, McClellan wrote a long letter of advice to the President, in the course of which he said: "Neither confiscation of property ... nor forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.... Military power should not be allowed to interfere with the relations of servitude, either by supporting or impairing the authority of the master, except for repressing disorder."

In all this General McClellan was only clinging blindly and tenaciously to the idea that had underlain the whole administration of the government while it was in the hands of his party: that the perpetuation of slavery, whether against political opposition or against the growth of civilization and the logic of political economy, was the first purpose of the Constitution and the most imperative duty of the Government. Democratic politicians had never formulated this rule, but Democratic Presidents had always followed it. President Polk had obeyed it when with one hand he secured the slave State of Texas at the cost of the Mexican War, and with the other relinquished to Great Britain the portion of Oregon north of the forty-ninth parallel, but for which we should now possess every harbor on the Pacific coast. President Pierce had obeyed it when he sent troops to Kansas to assist the invaders from Missouri and overawe the free-State settlers. President Buchanan had obeyed it when he vetoed the Homestead Bill, which would have accelerated the development of the northern Territories into States. And innumerable other instances might be cited. The existence of this party in the North was the most serious embarrassment with which the Administration had to contend in the conduct of the war—not even excepting the border States. As individuals, its members were undoubtedly loyal to the Constitution and Government as they understood them, though they wofully misunderstood them. As a party, it was placed in a singular dilemma. It did not want the Union dissolved; for without the vote of the slave States it would be in a hopeless minority in Congress and at every Presidential election; but neither did it wish to see its strongest cohesive element overthrown, or its natural leaders defeated and exiled. What it wanted was "the Union as it was," and for this it continued to clamor long after it had become as plain as daylight that the Union as it was could never again exist. Whenever the National armies met with a reverse, if an election was pending, this party was the gainer thereby; if they won a victory, it became weaker. Whenever a new measure was proposed, Congress and the President were obliged to consider not only what would be its legitimate effect, but whether in any way the Democratic press could use it as a weapon against them. Hence the idea of emancipation, though not altogether slow in conception—for many of the ablest minds had leaped at it from the beginning—was tardy in execution.

ORIGIN OF THE WORDS, "CONTRABAND OF WAR," APPLIED TO SLAVES—FIRST USED BY GENERAL BUTLER.

As early as 1836 John Quincy Adams, speaking in Congress, had said: "From the instant that your slaveholding States become the theatre of war, from that instant the war-powers of the Constitution extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way in which it can be interfered with." And in 1842 he had expressed the idea more strongly and fully: "Whether the war be civil, servile, or foreign, I lay this down as the law of nations—I say that the military authority takes for the time the place of all municipal institutions, slavery among the rest. Under that state of things, so far from its being true that the States where slavery exists have the exclusive management of the subject, not only the President of the United States, but the commander of the army has power to order the universal emancipation of the slaves." The poets, wiser than the politicians, had long foretold the great struggle and its results. James Russell Lowell, before he was thirty years of age, wrote:

"Out from the land of bondage 'tis decreed our slaves shall go, And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh; If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore, Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore."

Twenty years later he saw his prediction fulfilled. But generally the anticipation was that the institution would be extinguished through a general rising of the slaves themselves. Thus Henry W. Longfellow wrote in 1841:

"There is a poor, blind Samson in this land, Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel, Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand, And shake the pillars of this commonweal, Till the vast temple of our liberties A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies."

It seems a singular fact that throughout the war there was no insurrection of the slaves. They were all anxious enough for liberty, and ran away from bondage whenever they could; but, except by regular enlistment in the National army, there never was any movement among them to assist in the emancipation of their race.

The first refusal to return fugitive slaves was made as early as May 26, 1861, by Gen. B. F. Butler, commanding at Fort Monroe. Three slaves, who had belonged to Colonel Mallory, commanding the Confederate forces near Hampton, came within Butler's lines that day, saying they had run away because they were about to be sent South. Colonel Mallory sent by flag of truce to claim their rendition under the Fugitive Slave Law, but was informed by General Butler, that, as slaves could be made very useful to a belligerent in working on fortifications and other labor, they were contraband of war, like lead or powder or any other war material, and therefore could not and would not be delivered up. He offered, however, to return these three if Colonel Mallory would come to his headquarters and take an oath to obey the laws of the United States. This declaration—at once a witticism, a correct legal point, and sound common sense—was the first practical blow that was struck at the institution; and it gave us a new word, for from that time fugitive slaves were commonly spoken of as "contrabands." They came into the National camps by thousands, and commanding officers and correspondents frequently questioned the more intelligent of them, in the hope of eliciting valuable information as to the movements of the enemy; but so many apocryphal stories were thus originated that at length "intelligent contraband" became solely a term of derision.

The next step was the passage of a law by Congress (approved August 6, 1861), wherein it was enacted that property, including slaves, actually employed in the service of the rebellion with the knowledge and consent of the owner, should be confiscated, and might be seized by the National forces wherever found. But it cautiously provided that slaves thus confiscated were not to be manumitted at once, but to be held subject to some future decision of the United States courts or action of Congress.

Gen. John C. Frémont, the first Republican candidate for the Presidency (1856), who has had a romantic life, and in whose administration, instead of Lincoln's, the war would have occurred if he had been elected, was in Europe in 1861, and did the Government a timely service in the purchase of arms. Hastening home, he was made a major-general, and given command in Missouri. On the 30th of August he issued a proclamation placing the whole State under martial law, confiscating the property of all citizens who should take up arms against the United States, or assist its enemies by burning bridges, cutting wires, etc., and adding, "their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." The President called General Frémont's attention to the fact that the clause relating to slaves was not in conformity with the act of Congress, and requested him to modify it; to which Frémont replied by asking for an open order to that effect—in plain words, that the President should modify it himself, which Mr. Lincoln did.

On the 6th of March, 1862, the President, in a special message to Congress, recommended the adoption of a joint resolution to the effect that the United States ought to coöperate with, and render pecuniary aid to, any State that should enter upon a gradual abolition of slavery; and Congress passed such a resolution by a large majority.

Gen. David Hunter, who commanded the National forces on the coast of South Carolina, with headquarters at Hilton Head, issued a general order on April 12, 1862, that all slaves in Fort Pulaski and on Cockspur Island should be confiscated and thenceforth free. On the 9th of May he issued another order, wherein, after mentioning that the three States in his department—Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina—had been declared under martial law, he proceeded to say: "Slavery and martial law, in a free country, are altogether incompatible. The persons in these three States heretofore held as slaves are therefore declared forever free." On the 19th of the same month the President issued a proclamation annulling General Hunter's order, and adding that the question of emancipation was one that he reserved to himself and could not feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field. General Hunter also organized a regiment of black troops, designated as the First South Carolina Volunteers, which was the first body of negro soldiers mustered into the National service during the war. This proceeding, which now seems the most natural and sensible thing the general could have done, created serious alarm in Congress. A representative from Kentucky introduced a resolution asking for information concerning the "regiment of fugitive slaves," and the Secretary of War referred the inquiry to General Hunter, who promptly answered: "No regiment of fugitive slaves has been or is being organized in this department. There is, however, a fine regiment of persons whose late masters are fugitive rebels, men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the National flag, leaving their servants behind them to shift as best they can for themselves. In the absence of any fugitive-master law, the deserted slaves would be wholly without remedy, had not their crime of treason given the slaves the right to pursue, capture, and bring back these persons of whose protection they have been so suddenly bereft."

Frémont's and Hunter's attempts at emancipation created a great excitement, the Democratic journals declaring that the struggle was being "turned into an abolition war," and many Union men in the border States expressing the gravest apprehensions as to the consequences. The commanders were by no means of one mind on the subject. Gen. Thomas Williams, commanding in the Department of the Gulf, ordered that all fugitive slaves should be expelled from his camps and sent beyond the lines; and Col. Halbert E. Paine, of the Fourth Wisconsin Regiment, who refused to obey the order, on the ground that it was a "violation of law for the purpose of returning fugitives to rebels," was deprived of his command and placed under arrest. Col. Daniel R. Anthony, of the Seventh Kansas Regiment, serving in Tennessee, ordered that men coming in and demanding the privilege of searching for fugitive slaves should be turned out of the camp, and that no officer or soldier in his regiment should engage in the arrest and delivery of fugitives to their masters; and for this Colonel Anthony received from his superior officer the same treatment that had been accorded to Colonel Paine. The division of sentiment ran through the entire army. Soldiers that would rob a granary, or cut down trees, or reduce fences to firewood, without the slightest compunction, still recognized the ancient taboo, and expressed the nicest scruples in regard to property in slaves.

On the 14th of July the President recommended to Congress the passage of a bill for the payment, in United States interest-bearing bonds, to any State that should abolish slavery, of an amount equal to the value of all slaves within its borders according to the census of 1860; and at the same time he asked the Congressional representatives of the border States to use their influence with their constituents to bring about such action in those States. The answer was not very favorable; but Maryland did abolish slavery before the close of the war, in October, 1864. On the very day in which the popular vote of that State decided to adopt a new constitution without slavery, October 12th, died Roger B. Taney, a native of Maryland, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who had been appointed by the first distinctly pro-slavery President, and from that bench had handed down the Dred-Scott decision, which was calculated to render forever impossible any amelioration of the condition of the negro race.

On July 22, 1862, all the National commanders were ordered to employ as many negroes as could be used advantageously for military and naval purposes, paying them for their labor and keeping a record as to their ownership, "as a basis on which compensation could be made in proper cases."

HORACE GREELEY.

REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Thus events were creeping along toward a true statement of the great problem, without which it could never be solved, when Horace Greeley, through the columns of his Tribune, addressed an open letter to the President (August 19), entitling it "The Prayer of Twenty Millions." It exhorted Mr. Lincoln, not to general emancipation, but to such an execution of the existing laws as would free immense numbers of slaves belonging to men in arms against the Government. It was impassioned and powerful; a single passage will show its character: "On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion, and at the same time uphold its exciting cause, are preposterous and futile; that the rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if slavery were left in full vigor; that army officers who remain to this day devoted to slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union; and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union."

Any one less a genius than Mr. Lincoln would have found it difficult to answer Mr. Greeley at all, and his answer was not one in the sense of being a refutation, but it exhibited his view of the question, and is perhaps as fine a piece of literature as was ever penned by any one in an official capacity: "If there be perceptible in it [Mr. Greeley's letter] an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right.... As to the policy I 'seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.... My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

JAMES G. BIRNEY.

THE SALE OF A SLAVE.

In truth, the President was already contemplating emancipation as a war measure, and about this time he prepared his preliminary proclamation; but he did not wish to issue it till it could follow a triumph of the National arms. Pope's defeat in Virginia in August set it back; but McClellan's success at Antietam, though not the decisive victory that was wanted, appeared to be as good an opportunity as was likely soon to present itself, and five days later (September 22, 1862) the proclamation was issued. It declared that the President would, at the next session, renew his suggestion to Congress of pecuniary aid to the States disposed to abolish slavery gradually or otherwise, and gave notice that on the 1st of January, 1863, he would declare forever free all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof should then be in rebellion against the United States. On that day he issued the final and decisive proclamation, as promised, in which he also announced that black men would be received into the military and naval service of the United States, as follows:

"Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"'That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, 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 then, 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 or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts 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.'

"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 in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government 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 following, to wit:

"Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemine, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

"And, by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

"And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

"And I further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

"In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

	(L.S.)	"Done at the city of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the 87th.
		"By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
	"WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."

THE BROKEN SHACKLES. ALLEGORICAL PICTURE, FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING BY JAMES E. TAYLOR.

The immediate effect of this action was what had been expected. The friends of liberty, and supporters of the Administration generally, rejoiced at it, believing that the true line of combat had been drawn at last. Robert Dale Owen probably expressed the opinion of most of them when he wrote, "The true and fit question is whether, without a flagrant violation of official duty, the President had the right to refrain from doing it." The effect in Europe is said to have been decisive of the question whether the Confederacy should be recognized as an established nation; but as to this there is some uncertainty. It is certain, however, that much friendship for the Union was won in England, where it had been withheld on account of our attitude on the slavery question. In Manchester, December 31, a mass-meeting of factory operatives was held, and resolutions of sympathy with the Union, and an address to President Lincoln, were voted. The full significance of this can only be understood when it is remembered that these men were largely out of work for want of the cotton that the blockade prevented the South from exporting. The Confederate journals chose to interpret the proclamation as nothing more than an attempt to excite a servile insurrection. The Democratic editors of the North assailed Mr. Lincoln with every verbal weapon of which they were masters, though these had been somewhat blunted by previous use, for he had already been freely called a usurper, a despot, a destroyer of the Constitution, and a keeper of Bastiles. They declared with horror (doubtless in some cases perfectly sincere) that the proclamation had changed the whole character of the war. And this was true, though not in the sense in which they meant it. When begun, it was a war for a temporary peace; the proclamation converted it into a war for a permanent peace. But the autumn elections showed how near Mr. Lincoln came to being ahead of his people after all; for they went largely against the Administration, and even in the States that the Democrats did not carry there was a falling off in the Republican majorities; though the result was partly due to the failure of the peninsula campaign, and the escape of Lee's army after Antietam. Yet this did not shake the great emancipator's faith in the justice and wisdom of what he had done. He said on New Year's evening to a knot of callers: "The signature looks a little tremulous, for my hand was tired, but my resolution was firm. I told them in September, if they did not return to their allegiance and cease murdering our soldiers, I would strike at this pillar of their strength. And now the promise shall be kept, and not one word of it will I ever recall."

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.	CHARLES SUMNER.

If we wonder at the slowness with which that great struggle arrived at its true theme and issue, we shall do well to note that it has a close parallel in our own history. The first battle of the Revolution was fought in April, 1775, but the Declaration of Independence was not made till July, 1776—a period of nearly fifteen months. The first battle in the war of secession took place in April, 1861, and the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September, 1862—seventeen months. In the one case, as in the other, the interval was filled with doubt, hesitation, and divided counsels; and Lincoln's reluctance finds its match in Washington's confession that when he took command of the army (after Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill had been fought) he still abhorred the idea of independence. And again, as the great Proclamation was preceded by the attempts of Frémont and Hunter, so the great Declaration had been preceded by those of Mendon, Mass., Chester, Penn., and Mecklenburg, N. C., which anticipated its essential propositions by two or three years. A period of fifteen or seventeen months, however slow for an individual, is perhaps for an entire people as rapid development of a radical purpose as we could have any reason to expect.

In the District of Columbia there were three thousand slaves at the time the war began. In December, 1861, Henry Wilson, senator from Massachusetts, afterward Vice-President, introduced in the Senate a bill for the immediate emancipation of these slaves, with a provision for paying to such owners as were loyal an average compensation of three hundred dollars for each slave. The bill was opposed violently by senators and representatives from Kentucky and Maryland, and by some others, conspicuous among whom was Mr. Vallandigham. Nevertheless, it passed both houses, and the President signed it April 16, 1862.

In Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri slavery continued until it was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the National Constitution, which in December, 1865, was declared ratified by three-fourths of the States, and consequently a part of the fundamental law of the land.

The President's right to proclaim the slaves free, as a war measure, was questioned not only by his violent political opponents, but also by a considerable number who were friendly to him, or at least to the cause of the Union, but whose knowledge of international law and war powers was limited. Among these were Congressman Crittenden and Wickliffe, of Kentucky, who were stanch supporters of the Union, and Mr. Wickliffe offered resolutions declaring that the President has no right whatever to interfere with slavery even during a rebellion. The whole subject was treated in a masterly way by the Hon. William Whiting in his book entitled "War Powers under the Constitution of the United States." He says: "The liberation of slaves is looked upon as a means of embarrassing or weakening the enemy, or of strengthening the military power of our army. If slaves be treated as contraband of war, on the ground that they may be used by their masters to aid in prosecuting war, as employees upon military works, or as laborers furnishing by their industry the means of carrying on hostilities; or if they be treated as, in law, belligerents, following the legal condition of their owners; or if they be deemed loyal subjects having a just claim upon the Government to be released from their obligations to give aid and service to disloyal and belligerent masters, in order that they may be free to perform their higher duty of allegiance and loyalty to the United States; or if they be regarded as subjects of the United States, liable to do military duty; or if they be made citizens of the United States, and soldiers; or if the authority of the masters over their slaves is the means of aiding and comforting the enemy, or of throwing impediments in the way of the Government, or depriving it of such aid and assistance, in successful prosecution of the war, as slaves would and could afford if released from the control of the enemy; or if releasing the slaves would embarrass the enemy, and make it more difficult for them to collect and maintain large armies; in either of these cases, the taking away of these slaves from the 'aid and service' of the enemy, and putting them to the aid and service of the United States, is justifiable as an act of war. The ordinary way of depriving the enemy of slaves is by declaring emancipation."

He then cites abundant precedents and authorities from British, French, South American, and other sources, one of the most striking of which is this quotation from Thomas Jefferson's letter to Dr. Gordon, complaining of the injury done to his estates by Cornwallis: "He destroyed all my growing crops and tobacco; he burned all my barns, containing the same articles of last year. Having first taken what corn he wanted, he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs for the sustenance of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service. He carried off also about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them freedom, he would have done right. From an estimate made at the time on the best information I could collect, I suppose the State of Virginia lost, under Lord Cornwallis's hands, that year, about thirty thousand slaves." Whiting says in conclusion: "It has thus been proved, by the law and usage of modern civilized nations, confirmed by the judgment of eminent statesmen, and by the former practice of this Government, that the President, as commander-in-chief, has the authority, as an act of war, to liberate the slaves of the enemy; that the United States have in former times sanctioned the liberation of slaves—even of loyal citizens—by military commanders, in time of war, without compensation therefor, and have deemed slaves captured in war from belligerent subjects as entitled to their freedom."