A free flag floats from yonder dome,
And at the nation’s hearth and home
The justice long delayed is done.”
With the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, commenced a new era at our country’s capital. The representatives of the Governments of Hayti and Liberia had both long knocked in vain to be admitted with the representatives of other nations. The slave power had always succeeded in keeping them out. But a change had now come over the dreams of the people, and Congress was but acting up to this new light in passing the following bill:—
“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, authorized, by and with the consent of the Senate, to appoint diplomatic representatives of the United States to the republics of Hayti and Liberia, respectively. Each of the said representatives so appointed shall be accredited as commissioner and consul general, and shall receive, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, the compensation of commissioners provided for by the Act of Congress approved August 18, 1856: Provided that the compensation of the representative at Liberia shall not exceed $4,000.”
The above bill was before the Senate some time, and elicited much discussion, and an able speech was made by Hon. Charles Sumner in favor of the recognition of the independence of Hayti and Liberia. To use his own expressive words, “Slavery in the national capital is now abolished: it remains that this other triumph shall be achieved. Nothing but the sway of a slave-holding despotism on the floor of Congress, hitherto, has prevented the adoption of this righteous measure; and now that that despotism has been exorcised, no time should be lost by Congress to see it carried into immediate execution. All other civilized nations have ceased to make complexion a badge of superiority or inferiority in the matter of nationality; and we should make haste, therefore, to repair the injury we have done, as a republic, in refusing to recognize Liberian and Haytian independence.”
Even after all that had passed, the African slave-trade was still being carried on between the Southern States and Africa. Ships were fitted out in Northern ports for the purpose of carrying on this infernal traffic. And, although it was prohibited by an act of Congress, none had ever been convicted for dealing in slaves. The new order of things was to give these traffickers a trial, and test the power by which they had so long dealt in the bodies and souls of men whom they had stolen from their native land. One Nathaniel Gordon was already in prison in New York, and his trial was fast approaching: it came, and he was convicted of piracy in the United States District Court in the city of New York; the piracy consisting in having fitted out a slaver, and shipped nine hundred Africans at Congo River, with a view to selling them as slaves. The same man had been tried for the same offence before; but the jury failed to agree, and he accordingly escaped punishment for the time. Every effort was made which the ingenuity of able lawyers could invent, or the power of money could enforce, to save this miscreant from the gallows; but all in vain: for President Lincoln utterly refused to interfere in any way whatever, and Gordon was executed on the 7th of February.
This blow appeared to give more offence to the commercial Copperheads than even the emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia; for it struck an effectual blow at a very lucrative branch of commerce, in which the New Yorkers were largely interested. Thus it will be seen that the nation was steadily moving on to the goal of freedom.