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that he was issuing more rations to the slaves who have rushed to him than to all the white troops under his command.
They eat, and that is all.
Such were the views entertained by
Mr. Lincoln on the 15th day of September, 1862, on the subject of emancipation.
Tie time of this conference was significant.
The progress of the war was inauspicious; the
Confederates had penetrated the
North, and were actually threatening
Washington; and at all such periods of wavering confidence in the war, the
Northern Government was singularly prompt to incline towards the moderate party, and to hold up in its progress to radicalism.
It was certainly no time to decide domestic institutions in the
Confederacy when that belligerent was actually threatening the existence of the
Government at
Washington.
But at this precise conjuncture of politics the
battle of Sharpsburg was fought; the mask was dropped; and on the 22d September, 1862,
President Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation of emancipation, of which the following is the important portion:
That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any States or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.
This was followed by the proclamation of 1st January, 1863, designating the States in which emancipation should take immediate effect; the notice of one hundred days, counting from the preliminary proclamation, having expired.
Thus was consummated the triumph of the Abolition party of the North.
Thus was, at last, avowed the war upon slavery, and thus deliberately planned the robbery of the
Southern people to the extent of two thousand millions of dollars.
It is true that this proclamation was for the time of no effect, and that when it was issued it was worth no more than the paper on which its bold iniquity was traced; nevertheless, it was the avowal of a principle, the declaration of a wish, the deliberate attempt of the
Chief Magistrate of a nation to do that which was repugnant to civilization
