UNITED STATES. 



833 



could find when they passed through. It seemed, I 

 say, perfectly clear that we had to strike at this under 

 prop of the rebellion ; and so, when President Lincoln 

 thought fit to issue his proclamation, I said Amen, with 

 all my heart. 



It was never intended to interfere with the States that 

 were loyal. The proclamation comes up as a great 

 feature in this war. In my judgment the proclamation 

 was the right thing in the right place, and without it, 

 I am just as sure as I am of my own existence, that we 

 could not have made the progress we have made ; and 

 I hold the man who denounces the proclamation either 

 speaks ignorantly of that of which he knows but little 

 or nothing, or else he really desires that the rebellion 

 should succeed. There is no alternative. The rebel- 

 lion would have succeeded but for the proclamation. 

 He opposes it because he does not understand it, or 

 because he wishes the rebellion to succeed. But then, 

 say some, you are making war upon the people of the 

 South, and you will not let them come back into the 

 Union with their slaves. Well, now, gentlemen, there 

 are two classes of States in the South; there is the 

 class of States not affected by the proclamation. We 

 have simply nothing to do except to bid God speed to 

 the unconditional Union men of those States. They 

 will do their own work in their own way, and in their 

 own time, and all we have to do is to stand by them. 

 But in the States which are affected by the proclama- 

 tion, the case is different. Either the proclamation was 

 a great monstrous sham and an imposition in the face 

 of the whole world, or else that proclamation was an 

 effectual thing, and there are no slaves to-day in the 

 rebel States. They are all enfranchised by the procla- 

 mation, for what says it: all the slaves are declared 

 now and forever free, and the executive power is 

 pledged to the maintenance of this freedom. If it were 

 not so, it woul_d be a national imposture, and I would 

 no more be guilty of that piece of infamy than I would 

 steal into your house at night and rob your pantry. 

 But what h'ave we to do with this proclamation in the 

 rebellious Slave States? It is a very simple thing. Just 

 simply to recognize the Union men who remain in those 

 States. Such men as Durand, Mr. Flanders, and Mr 

 May, and a whole host of others who were known as 

 slaveowners, are now satisfied that the Union men of 

 the South must see to it, that slavery must never be 

 permitted to be reestablished in those States. 



Take such a man as the Hon. Mr. Anderson. When 

 he went home and stood up for the Union, what did 

 the slave aristocracy do for him? They drove him 

 from the State, and his wife and little ones were ob- 

 liged to take shelter in the bushes ; and so with multi- 

 tudes of Union men in Texas at the present day, but 

 all of them wish to get back and establish a free State 

 in Texas, because they say no other than a free State 

 can ever protect them from the enemies of freedom, 

 and I was going to say, of human nature. Again, in 

 Florida, there were many, who were driven away who 

 are now anxious to return. Is there a man here who 

 wants these noble, generous Union men of the South 

 to go back to be trampled under foot by restored reb- 

 els? Let them go back, but let them go back under 

 the aegis of the American Union, with the protection of 

 the Government pledged to them, and then they will 

 take care to settle this question of slavery. They will 

 amend the Constitution so as to put the slavery ques- 

 tion where it ought to be. When that is done, who is 

 going to talk about the proclamation? You have here, 

 my fellow citizens, an intelligent statement, as it seems 

 to me of the manner in which this thing can be settled, 

 simply by standing by the unconditional Union men, 

 who almost all of them have embraced the doctrine of 

 emancipation in the border States, and standing by 

 the Union men in the pro-slavery States, and letting 

 them protect themselves against the institution of 

 slavery. 



In Baltimore, at a large meeting two days 



previous to the State election in November, the 



Secretary of the Treasury, in a brief speech, thus 



alluded to the progress made in emancipation : 



VOL. IIL 53 A 



Fellow citizens, one word more. The unconditional 

 Union cause is one and the same throughout the land; 

 it is one in Ohio; it is one in Missouri; and the time 

 has come when all unconditional Union men of the 

 whole country must stand together, and shrink from 

 no responsibility which the times may bring about. 

 You will shrink from none. You will do your duty on 

 the 4th of November. You will proclaim your adhe- 

 sion to the cause of the Union and to the cause of 

 emancipation in tones which cunnot be misunderstood. 



In June, an appeal was made to the Presi- 

 dent by a delegation claiming to represent the 

 wishes of forty out of fifty parishes of Louis- 

 iana, to grant "a full recognition of all the 

 rights of the State as they existed previous to 

 the passage of an act of secession, upon the 

 principle of the existence of the State Consti- 

 tution unimpaired." The President declined 

 to give the committee authority to act under 

 the existing State Constitution, as a portion of 

 the people desired to amend it. (See LOUISIANA.) 



The views of the President relative to his 

 proclamation, were still further expressed in a 

 letter to a mass convention at Springfield, Illi- 

 nois, dated August 26th : 



I suggested compensated emancipation, to which 

 you replied you wished not to be taxed to buy ne- 

 groes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy 

 negroes, except in such way as to save you from great- 

 er taxation to save the Union exclusively by other 

 means. You dislike the emancipation proclamation, 

 and perhaps you would have it retracted. You say it 

 is unconstitutional. I think differently. I think the 

 Constitution invests its commande'r-in-chief with the 

 law of war in time of war. The most that can be said, 

 if so much, is that slaves are property. Is there, has 

 there ever been any question that, by the law of war, 

 property both of enemies and friends may be taken 

 when needed? And is it not needed whenever taking 

 it helps us or hurts the enemy? Armies, the world 

 over, destroy enemies' property when they cannot use 

 it, and even destroy their own to keep it from the en- 

 emy. Civilized belligerents do all in their power to 

 help themselves or hurt the enemy, except a few things 

 regarded as barbarous or cruel. Among the excep- 

 tions are the massacre of vanquished foes and non- 

 combatants, male and female. But the proclamation, 

 as law, either is valid or is not valid. If it is not valid 

 it needs no retraction. If it is valid it cannot be re- 

 tracted any more than the dead can be brought to life. 

 Some of you profess to think its retraction would op- 

 erate favorably for the Union. Why better after the 

 retraction than before the issue? There was more 

 than a year and a half of trial to suppress the rebellion 

 before the proclamation issued; the last one hundred 

 days of which passed under an explicit notice that it 

 was coming unless averted by those in revolt return- 

 ing to their allegiance. The war has certainly pro- 

 gressed as favorably for us since the issue of the proc- 

 lamation as before. (See PUBLIC DOCUMENTS.) 



The views of the President were still farther 

 manifested relative to the permanency designed 

 to attach to this proclamation, in his amnesty 

 proclamation accompanying his message to 

 Congress, early in December. In the oath re- 

 quired to be taken before a pardon will b 

 granted to any person, is the following clause : 

 "that I will, in like manner, abide by and 

 faithfully support all proclamations of the Pres- 

 ident, made during the existing rebellion, hav- 

 ing reference to slaves, so long and so far as 

 not modified or declared void by decision of 

 the Supreme Court." 



