THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.

As we have before stated, we were garrisoning the city of Nashville when we received the Emancipation Proclamation, and during the one hundred days that ensued between its publication and enforcement, there was considerable stir in army circles as to the propriety and legality of such a measure. In our own regiment the officers held a meeting for the purpose, as it were, of ratifying the Proclamation, at which the following resolutions, by Colonel Langley, were spread before the meeting for its approval and adoption:

Resolved, That we are as ready and willing to aid the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, in carrying out his proclamation to emancipate the slaves in certain territory therein mentioned, as a necessary war measure, as we are to aid in the execution of any order from the War Department.

Resolved, That he who fails to see written in unmistakable characters, the doom of slavery as a consequence of the war, must be totally blind to the great panorama of events which daily pass before him, and he who would avoid confusion and anarchy, must also see the necessity of organizing and disciplining slaves, made free by military authority; and further, if organized and disciplined, the great error we commit as a nation, by not employing such persons, so made free, to the most advantageous purposes in crushing out the present rebellion, even if it be to arm and fight them against the rebellious hosts that oppose us.

But these resolutions seemed too radical, and many opposed them strongly. However before three months rolled around, the very men who were the bitterest and loudest in their denunciation of them, at the time, were seeking for commissions in colored regiments. The resolutions pointed out, with true prophetic utterance, the course which the government pursued in regard to the slaves, but at the time they looked to some as being altogether wrong. Tempora et mores mutantur.

RESOLUTION PASSED BY SENATE AND HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE
OF LOUISIANA.

Headquarters Military Division of the Miss.

Goldsboro, N. C., April 7, 1865.

Special Field Order.}
No. 49.} EXTRACT.

The general in chief announces for the information of this army the following resolutions received: