324 



CONGRESS, U, S. 



is enlisting slaves without asking the consent 

 of their masters, and they have the same privi- 

 lege in the State of Missouri ; but I am told 

 that this is not so in the State of Kentucky. 

 The Government can go into any part of the 

 country and take our sons and enlist them 

 without asking our consent, but the Govern- 

 ment of the United States cannot step into the 

 great State of Kentucky and enlist a slave with- 

 out asking the consent of his master. Sir, I 

 would enlist him if I chose to do so, and ask no 

 consent of the master anywhere. The Govern- 

 ment can take your son or an apprentice be- 

 longing to you without your consent, but it 

 must ask a slavemaster for his consent to enlist 

 an able-bodied man into the service of the 

 country. It is a thing which ought not to be 

 submitted to a day, and it ought not to be 

 acted upon a day longer." 



Mr. Brown, of Missouri, asked under what 

 authority the War Department paid the master 

 of the slave where the latter enlisted ? 



Mr. Wilson replied that there was no express 

 law for it ; and that he could not answer unless 

 it was, that they construed the law giving 

 authority to use the money received from per- 

 sons who had been drafted, to authorize its 

 appropriation in that manner. 



Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, said : " The Secretary 

 of War has clearly the power to use that money 

 in procuring substitutes, and the law makes no 

 distinction between white and black." 



Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, said : " The Sen- 

 ator from Missouri (Mr. Brown) asks what law 

 there is to justify the Government in paying 

 any thing to the masters of slaves who are taken 

 into the service of the United States. It is true 

 that although the term ' slave ' is nowhere found 

 in the Constitution, slaves are evidently con- 

 sidered as property within the meaning of the 

 fugitive clause and within the meaning of the 

 clause which prohibits to the people of the 

 United States the authority to change the Con- 

 stitution at all in that particular provision of 

 it which limits the authority of Congress upon 

 the subject of the foreign slave trade to the ex- 

 piration of twenty years from the adoption of 

 the Constitution. They were considered as 

 property, and were intended as property to be 

 protected by that clause ; and they have been 

 considered as property and are now considered 

 as property in your tax laws. So far as the 

 direct tax is concerned they are considered as 

 property. They are considered as property by 

 the laws of all the slave States. They are sub- 

 jects of distribution; they are liable for the 

 debts of the master; they are subjects of be- 

 quests, they are subjects of sale, and are in 

 every respect upon the condition of property ; 

 but notwithstanding that, they are no doubt 

 also to be considered as in the character of 

 persons. 



" I suppose no one will for a moment hesitate 

 in admitting that although they stand in the 

 relation of property in a certain sense they also 

 stand in the relation of persons to the Govern- 



ment, because I suppose every one will admit 

 that they could be guilty of treason as against 

 the United States. If the slaves in the United 

 States were to do as the white men in the 

 southern States have done I do not mean all 

 the southern States; thank God, I am not 

 obliged to say so if the slaves in the seceded 

 States had without the consent of the white 

 men risen in rebellion and resisted the laws of 

 the United States by arms, or if they were now 

 found aiding the traitors in the seceded States 

 in their effort by force of arms to destroy the 

 Government of the United States, they might 

 be considered and treated as traitors. In other 

 words, although slaves liable to all the relations 

 growing out of that condition, they are persons 

 owing allegiance to the United States and con- 

 sequently bound to abstain from every thing 

 which is a violation of allegiance ; and if they 

 were to go to the extent of levying war upon 

 the United States or of giving aid and comfort 

 to the enemies of the United States, they might 

 be dealt with as traitors. 



"But it by no means follows from that that 

 they are not to be esteemed as property, and that 

 the master is not to be paid for them as property. 

 The practice in Maryland, as I get from sources 

 of information that I know can be relied upon, is 

 that the recruiting officers, white officers, go to 

 the homesteads of the masters, and not only 

 enlist the slave without the consent of the mas- 

 ter, but without his own consent. The poor 

 ignorant black man who knows not to what 

 extent the evident power of the Government 

 may be carried, is told that he must enlist, and 

 he enlists under what may be considered and 

 what actually is compulsion. Whether he 

 would enlist (as I think he would in a majority 

 of cases) voluntarily, under the influence of no 

 threat, or under no fear, is a question not sub- 

 mitted to him at all. And not only is that done, 

 but the enlisting officer informs ah 1 the slaves 

 upon the plantation, whether able to do duty in 

 the field or not, old men and children and wo- 

 men, that they are all free ; and the result has 

 been that the whole of that population which 

 has been able to get off has gone off. That the 

 State will be benefited by the effect of it in the 

 end, I have no doubt ; but at the same time it 

 is due to my own convictions of what the Con- 

 stitution is, and the rights which the people of 

 Maryland have under that Constitution, to pro- 

 test without meaning to find fault with the 

 Government ; to protest, not in any acrimo- 

 nious sense, against this mode which they have 

 adopted to get the slaves of Maryland in the 

 armies of the United States." 



Mr. Grimes, of Iowa, in response to the re- 

 marks of Mr. Wilson, followed, saying: "I am 

 very glad, sir, that I addressed the inquiry that 

 I did to the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. 

 Wilson). I am rejoiced at the response he has 

 given to it, and I think the country will be glad 

 to know that the Administration has established 

 a policy in regard to the recruitment of colored 

 persons. I have heard for the last twelve 



