CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



219 



to be enlisted, but would be mainly upon tbose 

 that are now in the military service by freeing 

 their wives and children. 



"What, then, is the object of the measure? 

 It is not much to encourage enlistments. "We 

 have already sent more than our proportion of 

 negroes to the field. "We have but a small rem- 

 nant yet remaining. The measure does not 

 propose to be limited to those who have not 

 enlisted "and who may yet be enlisted, but it 

 proposes to comprehend those who have enlisted 

 as well as those who may hereafter enlist. The 

 object is to deprive slave owners of their prop- 

 erty ; it is still further to demoralize the insti- 

 tution ; it is to break it up per fas aut nefas; it 

 is utterly to disregard the Constitution and the 

 laws which secure equally with every other this 

 description of property to their owners, and 

 trample them under foot, lawlessly, unjustly, 

 without answering any wise policy of the Gov- 

 ernment, and utterly to destroy slave property. 



"Is the Senate going to lend itself to the 

 passage of such a measure ? Before doing so, 

 ought it not to ask seriously and gravely whence 

 is its power to pass so extraordinary a meas- 

 ure?" 



The subject was again considered in the 

 Senate on Jan. 5th, when Mr. Doolittle, of 

 "Wisconsin, said : " The Senate has already 

 passed a proposition to amend the Constitu- 

 tion of the United States, so as to put an end 

 to the slavery question, in all its forms, by an 

 amendment of the fundamental law of the land, 

 which is above Congress, above the Supreme 

 Court, and above the President ; and which, 

 when once established, no change of Presi- 

 dents, no change of the decisions of the Su- 

 preme Court, and no change of the legislation 

 of Congress, can affect at all. That measure, 

 sir, which passed the Senate at the last session, 

 is now pending in the House of Representa- 

 tives. It will at once, if adopted by the House, 

 be submitted to the Legislatures of the several 

 States, and passed upon undoubtedly during 

 the present winter, before the adjournment of 

 the Legislatures in the spring ; and thus the 

 vexed question, and the whole of it, will be 

 disposed of and put outside of Congress, and 

 outside of its power or control, and there will 

 be an end to the agitation of the question. 



" Mr. President, there is one other suggestion 

 I wish to make. There are those who serious- 

 ly doubt whether we have the constitutional 

 power to do what is now proposed by this 

 measure. Among our friends just as earnest 

 friends of our cause, and opposed to slavery as 

 much as my friend from Massachusetts there 

 are those who seriously doubt whether you 

 have the constitutional power to pass this reso- 

 lution in the form in which it is placed ; but 

 no one can have any doubt that it is constitu- 

 tional to amend the Constitution. All can 

 agree in that, when perhaps this, pressed to a 

 vote, might produce a division among the real 

 friends of freedom in the country." 



Mi'. Wilson, of Massachusetts, said : " Of 



the power to do this I do not entertain a doubt, 

 and the most eminent lawyers of this country 

 concur in this opinion. AYe may and probably 

 shall have to pay for them. The masters may 

 have a claim against the Government. They 

 will no doubt come here with the claim, and it 

 may be that the claim will be fully allowed, 

 though of course I cannot say how that will 

 be ; the claim is an open one ; but I have no 

 doubt of our power to pass this resolution, and 

 I think we should not hesitate a moment in 

 doing so at a time when we want soldiers, 

 when we are calling for men to join the army, 

 when we are pressing the want of men upon 

 the country." 



Mr. Saulsbury, of Del., in opposition, said : 

 " I should like the advocates of this measure to 

 present arguments to the Senate to convince 

 them, if possible, that it is within their power, 

 as the legislators of the country, to pass a 

 measure of this kind. I do not wish to hear, 

 if I may be pardoned the remark, speeches 

 upon the evils of slavery, upon the wickedness 

 of slavery ; but I wish the question to be met 

 in this light : have we the power, have we the 

 authority, under the Constitution of the United 

 States, to enact a law of this kind ? Has the 

 Congress of the United States the constitutional 

 authority to enter within the limits of the re- 

 spective States, and to declare that any person 

 who is held in slavery under the constitution 

 and laws of that particular State shall be free? 

 Has the modern doctrine of 'military neces- 

 sity ' gone so far that when we are in a state 

 of war, whatever the Congress of the United 

 States shall decree is constitutionally decreed ? 

 When this question shall legitimately come be- 

 fore the Senate for full discussion, I shall main- 

 tain the doctrine that not only have you not 

 the power to decree the freedom of the wife 

 and the children of the negroes who volunteer 

 in your army, if they are from States where sla- 

 very is recognized, but you cannot give perma- 

 nent freedom to the negro volunteer himself if 

 he be a slave. There is no principle more 

 clearly recognized in international law than 

 this, that if a slave be captured from his lawful 

 owner by one belligerent, and he afterwards 

 comes back into the possession of the other 

 belligerent by recapture, he reverts, according 

 to the doctrine of the jus postUminii, not to 

 the belligerent power, but to his original owner. 

 So, sir, I say to-day that if you go into a State 

 of the Southern Confederacy and dress up a 

 slave in your uniform and put him in your 

 army, although you may by all the solemnity 

 of an act' of Congress say that he shall be for- 

 ever free, yet if he be recaptured, when recap- 

 tured he is no longer a free man ; he does not 

 belong to the Southern Confederacy ; but the 

 Southern Confederacy is bound to deliver him 

 to his original owner. 



" That, sir, is the international law. It is the 

 law which a great and distinguished statesman 

 from the honorable Senator's own State main- 

 tained when he was a member of the Cabinet ; 



