"The right to hold slaves is a right appertaining to all the States of the Union. They have the right to cherish or abolish the institution, as their tastes or their interests may prompt, and no one is authorized to question the right, or limit its enjoyment. And no one has more clearly affirmed that right than you have. Your inaugural address does you great honor in this respect, and inspired the country with confidence in your fairness and respect for law."
After asserting that a large portion of our people were fighting because they believed the Administration was hostile to their rights, and was making war on their domestic institutions, they further said:
"Remove their apprehensions; satisfy them that no harm is intended to them and their institutions; that this Government is not making war on their rights of property, but is simply defending its legitimate authority, and they will gladly return to their allegiance."
This measure of emancipation with compensation soon proved a failure. A proposition to appropriate five hundred thousand dollars to the object was voted down in the United States Senate with great unanimity. The Government was, step by step, "educating the people" up to a proclamation of emancipation, so as to make entire abolition one of the positive and declared issues of the contest.
The so-called pressure upon the President was now organized for a final onset. The Governors of fifteen States united in a request that three hundred thousand more men should be called out to fill up the reduced ranks, and it was done. The anti-slavery press then entered the arena. Charges were made against the President, in the name of
"Twenty millions of people, that a groat proportion of those who triumphed in his election were sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy he seemed to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of the rebels."
This is a simple statement of the progress of events, and it shows to the world how well founded were our apprehensions, at the hour of its election, that the Administration intended the destruction of our property and community independence. They further said:
"You are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipation provisions of the new confiscation act."
They further boldly added:
"We complain that the Union cause has suffered, and is now suffering, immensely from mistaken deference to rebel slavery. Had you, sir, in your inaugural address, unmistakably given notice that, in case the rebellion already commenced was persisted in, and your efforts to preserve the Union and enforce the laws should be resisted by armed force, you would recognize no loyal person as rightfully held in slavery by a traitor, we believe the rebellion would therein have received a staggering if not fatal blow."