218 



CONGBESS, CONFEDERATE. 



The Senate amended it as follows : 



Provided, That not more than twenty-five per cent, 

 of the male slaves between the ages of eighteen and 

 forty-five in any State shall be called for under the 

 provisions of this act. 



It was then passed and sent to the House, 

 where the amendment was approved by the fol- 

 . lowing vote: 



V 



FEAS Messrs. Anderson, Barksdale, Batson, Bay- 

 lor, Blandford, Bradley, H. W. Bruce, Carroll, Clark, 

 Clopton, Conrad, Darden, De Jarnette, Dickinson, 

 Dupre, Elliott, Ewing, Funsten, Gaither, Goode, 

 Gray, Hanley, Johnston, Keeble, Lyon, Machen, 

 Marshall, McMullen, Melees, Miller, Moore, Murray, 

 Perkins, Read, Russell, Simpson, Snead, Staples, 

 Triplett, and Villere iO. 



NATS Messrs. Atkins, Baldwin, Chambers, Col- 

 yar, Cruikshank, Fuller, Gholson, Gilrner, Hart- 

 ridge, Hatcher, Herbert, Holliday, J. M. Leach, J. 

 T. Leach, Logan, McCallum, Ramsay, Rogers, Sex- 

 ton, J. M. Smith, Smith of- North Carolina, Turner, 

 Wickham, Wilkes, Witherspoon, Mr. Speaker 26. 



"When the bill was on its passage in the 

 Senate, after the instructions of the Virginia 

 Legislature, Mr. Hunter of Virginia said: 

 When we left the old Government we had 

 thought we had gotten rid forever of the sla- 

 very agitation; that we were entering into a new 

 Confederacy of homogeneous States where the 

 agitation of the slavery question, which had 

 become intolerable under the old Union, was to 

 have no place. But to his surprise he finds 

 that this Government assumes the power to 

 arm the slaves, which involves also the power 

 of emancipation. To the agitation of this ques- 

 tion, the assumption of this power, he dated 

 the origin of the gloom which now overspreads 

 our people. They knew that if our liberties 

 were to be achieved it was to be done by the 

 hearts and the hands of free men. It also in- 

 jured us abroad. It was regarded as a confes- 

 sion of despair and an abandonment of the 

 ground upon which we had seceded from the 

 old Union. "We had insisted that Congress had 

 no right to interfere with slavery, and upon 

 the coming into power of the party who, it was 

 known, would assume and exercise that power, 

 we seceded. We had also then contended that 

 whenever the two races were thrown together, 

 one must be master and the other slave, and 

 we vindicated ourselves against the accusations 

 of Abolitionists by asserting that slavery was 

 the best and happiest condition of the negro. 

 Now what does this proposition admit ? The 

 right of the central Government to put the 

 slaves into the militia, and to emancipate at 

 least so many as shall be placed in the military 

 service. It is a clear claim of the central Gov- 

 ernment to emancipate the slaves. 



If we are right in passing this measure we 

 were wrong in denying to the old Government 

 the right to interfere with the institution of 

 slavery and to emancipate slaves. Besides, if 

 we offer slaves their freedom as a boon we con- 

 fess that we were insincere, were hypocritical, 

 in asserting that slavery was the best state for 

 the negroes themselves. He had been sincere 



in declaring that the central Government had 

 no power over the institution of slavery, and 

 that freedom would be no boon to the negro. 



He now believed, as he had formerly said in 

 discussion on the same subject, that arming 

 and emancipating the slaves was an abandon- 

 ment of this contest an abandonment of the 

 grounds upon which it had been undertaken. 

 If this is so who is to answer for the hundreds 

 of thousands of men who had been slain in the 

 war ? Who was to answer for them before the 

 bar of Heaven ? Not these who had entered 

 into the contest upon principle and adhered to 

 the principle, but those who had abandoned 

 the principle. Not for all the gold in Cali- 

 fornia would he have put his name to such a 

 measure as this unless obliged to do it by in- 

 structions. As long as he was free to vote 

 from his own convictions nothing could have 

 extorted it from him. 



Mr. Hunter then argued the necessity of 

 freeing the negroes if they were made soldiers. 

 There was something in the human heart and 

 head that tells us it must be so ; when they 

 come out scarred from this conflict they must be 

 free. If we could make them soldiers, the con- 

 dition of the soldier being socially equal to any 

 other in society, we could make them officers, 

 perhaps, to command white men. Some future 

 ambitious President might use the slaves to 

 seize the liberties of the country, and put the 

 white men under his feet. The Government 

 had no power under the Constitution to arm 

 and emancipate the slaves, and the Constitution 

 granted no such great powers by implication. 



Mr. Hunter then showed from statistics that 

 no considerable body of negro troops could be 

 raised in the States over which the Govern- 

 ment had control without stripping the country 

 of the labor absolutely necessary to produce 

 food. He thought there was a much better 

 chance of getting the large number of deserters 

 back to the army than of getting the slaves into 

 it. The negro abhorred the profession of a 

 soldier. The commandant of conscripts, with 

 authority to impress twenty thousand slaves, 

 had, between last September and the present 

 time, been able to get but four thousand ; and 

 of these, thirty-five hundred had been obtained 

 in Virginia and North Carolina, and five hun- 

 dred from Alabama. If he, armed with all the 

 powers of impressment, could not get them as 

 laborers, how will we be able to get them as 

 soldiers? Unless they volunteer they will go 

 to the Yankees ; if we depend upon their 

 volunteering we can't get them, and those we 

 do get will desert to the enemy, who can offer 

 them a better price than we can. The enemy 

 can offer them liberty, clothing, and even farms 

 at our expense. Negroes now were deterred 

 from going to the enemy only by the fear of 

 being put into the army. If we put them in 

 they would all go over. 



In conclusion, he considered that the meas- 

 ure, when reviewed as to its expediency, was 

 worse than as a question of principle. 



