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MR. LINCOLN'S CONSISTENCY.

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had the senators and members of Congress from the South continued in their place, they might have frustrated every item of his policy, or at least embarrassed its action. His two proclamations respecting the slaves of masters in disloyal states, the one giving warning of the other by a period of two months, were issued in his character of commanderin-chief, an office with which the Constitution invested him, and which he could only discharge towards a foreign enemy, or rebellious citizens; and they enforced only the confiscation act of Congress against rebels in arms. The measure was demanded by the pressure of the war and the urgent importunities of many virtuous citizens in private and public.

Had not such a measure been adopted, not alone would the rebellion have been strengthened by disappointment among able-bodied slaves, but the sympathies and convictions of millions of friends of the slave would have been turned from the government of the Union. The commander-inchief had no right to interfere in the administration of loyal states, or to confiscate their nominal property. The President therefore did not extend to them the action of his proclamation. But in the proper season he addressed a message to their representatives, urging that a measure of emancipation should be considered by them. Mr. Lincoln explained to the Chicago deputation 'coming from his own state, not that his private opinions had changed, but that as a faithful man who had taken the oath of President he must employ his prerogatives only in a constitutional manner for maintaining the Union; and that the abolition of slavery must proceed from the proper quarter before it could become an act of his administration. In like manner, his oath and the demand of the people constrains the President to seek to preserve the territories of the Union un broken and undiminished, as he had received them to keep and not only to punish rebels but protect many a loyal citizen yet remaining in the States, where a conspiracy of

traitors had fomented and forced rebellion. The conscription was enacted by Congress as a law at the urgent call of men, some of whom subsequently sought to employ it to the discredit of Government, and the men who resisted it by violence were doubtless the dupes of knavish and unprincipled demagogues. The debts which have been occasioned by the war, are assumed by a loyal people who prefer that the bonds for it shall be paid by themselves. The conduct of Mr. Lincoln to the generals is not only gracefully accepted by the men themselves most personally concerned, but is so far approved by the whole people as that it may be safely said never was a President so popular in the United States.

The power over the slave and to maintain slavery in the South had never been touched by congressional legislation or presidential authority; nothing was proposed to be done by Mr. Lincoln as successful candidate, or by his supporters. The oppressed and crushed slave remained exposed to the brutality of his tyrant; though such men as Senators Preston and Hammond had declared from their places in Congress, that if an abolitionist should come within the borders of their state, or if chance should throw him in their way, he might expect a felon's death; "notwithstanding all the interference of all the governments on earth, including the Federal Government, we will hang him." Thus it was resolved by the leaders of rebellion that the liberty of speech and of the press would be abolished, and a felon's death would await him who dared to print or utter any denial that slavery is just or moral; and in the declaration of causes for secession by Carolina, the chief one set forth was "the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery;" by this it was asserted, the Federal government will have become their enemy. The prerogative of a free election was therefore denied to the

SOUTH versus NORTH.

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North; and further it was declared, that as the North did not act efficiently in catching fugitive slaves and returning them to slavery, the constitutional compact had been deliberately broken, and South Carolina was released from her obligations.

"Thus, then, it stands. The South, stimulated by selfinterest, saw that an experiment which never had succeeded in the world before, was about to fail here also; the experiment of maintaining in perpetuity, side by side, under the same government, two conflicting labour systems. She saw that her 'philosophical truth' must be accepted as the corner-stone, or else altogether rejected by the builders. She saw that the North would not accept it. She saw that public opinion at the North would continue to condemn it as sinful and unchristian. She saw that the North would never consent to have freedom of speech and of the press suspended throughout half the republic. She saw that the pride of the North would never submit to the passage of a constitutional amendment, making Anti-Slavery opinions a disqualification for the Presidency. She saw that under any plan of reconstruction short of assimilation of labour systems, fugitive-slave law difficulties would increase, in number and bitterness, year after year.

"Between Slavery and National Unity was her only choice. She selected and emblazoned Slavery; drew the sword, and severed the political bonds which connected her with the Free States.

"The men of the North say, Shall we tempt her again into fellowship by an offer to restore to her her constitutional rights, and a promise to maintain intact her system of slave-labour?' Vanquished, exhausted, but with her convictions unchanged, she might agree to such an armistice. Permanent she knows well it could never be; but she knows also the vast advantage, in her present prostrate condition, of two or three years' breathing time. Shall we offer her an opportunity so excellent to recruit her strength and replenish her resources?

"The ninth section of an Act of Congress, commonly called the 'Confiscation Act,' approved July 17, 1862, reads thus:

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'That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the Government of the United States, or who shall give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the Government of the United States; and all slaves of such persons found or being within any place occupied by Rebel forces and afterwards occupied by forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be for ever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.'

"By the decision of the Supreme Court already cited, all the inhabitants of the insurrectionary states are, in law, persons 'engaged in rebellion.' Therefore, all refugee slaves from insurrectionary states are, by this statute, declared free.

"Further as all the insurrectionary states have been 'occupied by Rebel forces,' and as we may reasonably conclude that, if we prevail against the South, all these states not already occupied by forces of the United States' will hereafter be so occupied, it follows that, by the operation. of this law, all the slaves in the insurrectionary states, even if no Emancipation Proclamation had ever been issued, would, before the end of the war, have probably been entitled to freedom.

"Strictly in the spirit of the above statute, and going only so far beyond it as to declare slaves in portions of the insurrectionary states not yet 'occupied by forces of the United States,' to be free in advance of such occupation, has been the President's action in the premises. Let us glance at that action.

"On the 25th of July, 1862, the President, in pursuance of the Act just quoted, issued a Proclamation warning all insurgents to return to their allegiance within sixty days, on pain of certain forfeitures and seizures.

"This warning proving ineffectual, the President, when the sixty days' notice had expired, issued a second Proclamation, declaring that the slaves held within any state, which on the 1st of January then succeeding should still be in rebellion against the United States,' shall be then, thenceforth, and for ever free.'

"On the 1st of January, 1863, 'by virtue of the power in him vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and

THE PROPERTY OF AN ENEMY.

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Navy of the United States,' he declared certain states, namely Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginiacertain parishes in Louisiana and certain counties in Virginia excepted-to be then in rebellion against the United States: and he further declared that all slaves in the said ten states, with the exceptions aforesaid, ' are, and henceforward shall be, free.'

"Were these proclamations legal? Had the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States the right to issue them?

"Our Supreme Court, in the decision already alluded to, thus endorses a well-known law of war:- The right of one belligerent not only to coerce the other by direct force, but also to cripple his resources by the seizure or destruction of his property, is a necessary result of a state of war.' Or, as Vattel has it: We have a right to deprive our enemy of his possessions, of everything which may augment his strength, and enable him to make war.'

"Humanity bids us respect the private property of non-combatants. It is barbarous to burn or pillage dwellings, to lay waste farms, to destroy public edifices, not military. But if property of an enemy be of a dangerous character, so that its existence imperils the success of the war, or if it be such as has been, or may be used with effect against us to prolong the war, we violate the clearest dictates of prudence if we neglect any opportunity to deprive the enemy of it. Thus of ammunition, of quartermaster's, and commissary stores. Thus, also, of forts, entrenchments, and the like. Let us apply these principles in the present case.

"Certain of our public enemies with the same rights (and no other) as alien enemies have, held on the first day of January last, within the above-named insurrectionary states, claims to the service or labour for life of some three millions of persons.

"This class of claims is, beyond all else, such property as imperils military success, such as augments the enemy's strength,' such as 'enables him to make war,' nay, gives him aid on a scale so vast, that without it the war would already, in all reasonable probability, have been brought to a close. It is not, indeed, quartermaster's and

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