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LINCOLN'S SECOND PROCLAMATION OF FREEDOM.

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ble that a still larger majority would | States in time of actual armed rebellion

have voted against Emancipation. From an early hour of the struggle, the public mind slowly and steadily gravitated toward the conclusion that the Rebellion was vulnerable only or mainly through Slavery; but that conclusion was scarcely reached by a majority before the occurrence of the New York Riots, in July, 1863. The President, though widely reproached with tardiness and reluctance in taking up the gage plainly thrown down by the Slave Power, was probably ahead of a majority of the people of the loyal States in definitively accepting the issue of Emancipation or Dis

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the United States, and as a fit and necessary against the authority and Government of 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 precise

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.

Having taken a long step in the right direction, he never retracted nor seemed to regret it; though he some-ly times observed that the beneficial results of the Emancipation policy were neither so signal nor so promptly realized as its sanguine promoters had anticipated. Nevertheless, on the day appointed, he issued his absolute Proclamation of Freedom, as follows: 'Whereas, on the 22d 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 1st 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-inchief of the Army and Navy of the United

"And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; 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.

"Done at the city of Washington, this 1st day of January, in the year of our [L. S.] Lord 1863, and of the independence of the United States the 87th. "By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN. "WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."

On the abstract question of the right of the Government to proclaim and enforce Emancipation, Edward Everett, in a speech in Faneuil Hall, Boston, October, 1864, forcibly said:

"It is very doubtful whether any act of the Government of the United States was necessary to liberate the slaves in a State which is in rebellion. There is much reason for the opinion that, by the simple act of levying war against the United States, the relation of Slavery was terminated; certainly, so far as concerns the duty of the United States to recognize it, or to refrain from interfering with it. Not being founded on the law of nature, and resting solely on positive local law-and that not of the United States-as soon as it becomes either the motive or pretext of an unjust war against

the Union-an efficient instrument in the hands of the Rebels for carrying on the war -a source of military strength to the Rebellion, and of danger to the Government at home and abroad, with the additional certainty that, in any event but its abandonment, it will continue in all future time to work these mischiefs, who can suppose it is the duty of the United States to continue to recognize it? To maintain this would be a contradiction in terms. It would be to recognize a right in a Rebel master to employ his slave in acts of rebellion and treason, and the duty of the slave to aid and abet his master in the commission of the greatest crime known to the law. No such absurdity can be admitted; and any citizen of the United States, from the President down, who should, by any overt act, recognize the duty of a slave to obey a Rebel master in a hostile operation, would himself be giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

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growing in the legislative as well as the popular' mind-that Slavery had closed with the Union in mortal strife-a struggle which both could not survive.3

THE XXXVIIth Congress, as we | the extra session, evinced a steadihave seen'—while endeavoring to ly growing consciousness—steadily evade or to avert its eyes from the fact that it was Slavery which was waging deadly war on the Uniondid yet give fair notice, through the guarded but decisive language of some of the more conservative Republicans, that, if the Rebellion were persisted in, it must inevitably result in the overthrow of Slavery. And the action of that Congress, even at

1 Vol. I., pp. 564–8.

"On the day after the Bull Run rout, the writer first heard this conviction openly declared. The credit of the avowal belongs to Gen. John Cochrane.

Still, President Lincoln hesitated and held back; anxious that the Union should retain its hold on the Border Slave States, especially on Kentucky; and apparently hoping by Gen. Scott, and apparently acceded to by the Cabinet, he proceeds:

"I have said that the war may assume another aspect, and be a short and bloody one. And to such a war-an anti-Slavery war-it seems to me we are inevitably drifting. It seems to me hardly in the power of human wisdom to prevent it. We may commence the war without meaning to interfere with Slavery; but let us have one or two battles, and get our blood exci

3 Hon. Elisha R. Potter, of Rhode Island who may be fairly styled the hereditary chief of the Democratic party of that State-made a speech on the War to the Senate thereof on the 10th of August, 1861. After distributing theted, and we shall not only not restore any more blame of inciting the War between the Northern and the Southern 'ultras,' dilating on the resources of the South, and elucidating the nofighting, anaconda' mode of warfare proposed

slaves, but shall proclaim freedom wherever we go. And it seems to me almost judicial blindness on the part of the South that they do not see that this must be the inevitable result, if the contest is prolonged."

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ARMY SLAVE-CATCHING PROHIBITED.

that the alternative of conceded Disunion or constrained Emancipation might yet be avoided. His first Annual Message* cautiously avoided the subject; but proposed a systematic colonization-in some territory to be acquired outside of the present limits of our country-of those Blacks who had already, or might thereafter, become free in consequence of the war. He coolly added:

"It might be well to consider, too, whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in such colonization."

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Mr. James F. Wilson, of Iowa. Mr. Wilson, of Mass., soon reported' his bill; of which he pressed the consideration ten days afterward; but it was resisted with great ingenuity and earnestness by all the Opposition and by a few of the more conservative Administration Senators. Other bills having obtained precedence in the Senate, Mr. F. P. Blair reported to the House from its Military Committee, an additional Article of War, as follows:

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"All officers are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped from any persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due. Any officer who shall be found guilty by courtmartial of violating this article shall be dismissed from the service."

Congress acceded to this, so far as to appropriate $100,000 in aid of the colonization as aforesaid of the freedmen of the District of Columbia; which sum, or most of it, was duly squandered-to the satisfaction of cer- This bill was strenuously opposed tain speculators, and the intense, pro- by Messrs. Mallory and Wickliffe, tracted misery of a few deluded of Kentucky, as also by Mr. ValBlacks, who were taken to a wretch-landigham, of Ohio, while ably ed sand-spit, known as Cow Island, advocated by Mr. Bingham, of Ohio on the coast of Hayti, and kept there and passed by a (substantially) party so long as they could be: and this was vote: Yeas 83; Nays 44. Having the practical finale of the Coloniza- been received by the Senate and re-tion project. ferred to its Military Committee, it. was duly reported therefrom by Mr. H. Wilson; vehemently opposed by Messrs. Garret Davis, of Ky., Carlile, of Va., Saulsbury, of Del., and supported by Messrs. Wilson, of Mass., Howard, of Michigan, Sherman, of Ohio, McDougall, of Cal., and Anthony, of R. I., and passed:" Yeas 29; Nays 9-a party vote, save that Mr. McDougall, of Cal., voted Yea. The bill thus enacted was approved. by the President, March 13th, 1862.

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The XXXVIIth Congress having convened ' for its second (or first regular) session, Gen. Wilson, of Mass., gave notice in Senate of a bill to punish officers and privates of our armies for arresting, detaining, or delivering persons claimed as fugitive slaves; and Mr. O. Lovejoy, of Ill., simultaneously introduced a bill of like tenor in the House. Mr. Wilson submitted his bill on the 23d; a resolve to the same effect having been submitted by Mr. Sumner six days before; as one of like nature was this day laid before the House by

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Gen. Wilson, upon evidence that: the above act was inadequate to restrain the negro-catching propensities of some officers in the service, pro

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Jan. 6, 1862. Feb. 25. March 4.

10 March 10..

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