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tion"* of the slaves of the South, to take effect after the first of next January, thus unmasking the objects of the war, and exhibiting to the world the sublime of administrative madness.

*The following is a copy of this remarkable document:

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES A PROCLAMATION.

Washington, Sept. 22, 1862.

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare, that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States and the people thereof, in which States that relation is, or may be, suspended or disturbed; that it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all the slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted or thereafter may voluntarily adopt the immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the efforts to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon the continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the governments existing there, will be continued; 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 State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be thenceforward and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the naval and military 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 he 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 have not been in rebellion against the United States.

And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey and enforce within their respective spheres of service the act and sections above recited.

And the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States, who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion, shall (upon the restoration of the constitutional relation between the

Since the commencement of the war, the Abolitionists had gradually compassed their ends at Washington, or rather the real objects and inherent spirit of the war had been gradually developed. They had legislated slavery forever out of the territories; they had abolished it in the District of Columbia; they had passed laws confiscating the property of "rebels" and emancipating their slaves, and declaring all fugitive slaves free within their military lines; they had made it a crime on the part of their military officers to restore or aid in restoring any fugitive slave to his master; and finally, they had procured from President Lincoln a proclamation declaring all the slaves in the Confederate States beyond the lines of their land and naval forces "henceforward and forever free."

This infamous proclamation, while regarded by the South as a fulmination of exasperated passion, was in the North a source of weakness and division. It divided the North and strengthened the enemies of Mr. Lincoln's administration without creating any enthusiasm among its friends. The few in the North who still had some regard for the written constitution under which they lived, contended that the President could not proclaim emancipation except under the pressure of military necessity, and what sort of a military necessity, it was asked, was that which admitted of a delay of a hundred days. The fulmen brutum issued to appease the anti-slavery party proved a fire-brand at home. Many even of this party were dissatisfied and decried the proclamation because of its tardiness. "There was a time," said the New York Tribune, "when even this bit of paper could have brought the negro to our side; but now slavery, the real rebel capital, has been surrounded by a Chickahominy swamp of blunders and outrages against that race which no paper spade can dig through.'

United States and their respective States and people, if the relation shall have been suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

To the South the fulmination of Lincoln was a crowning proof of the true principles of the party that had elevated him to the Presidency, and that on its accession to power had made perfidious use of the most solemn pledges.* It was a public confession of the fact that conquest, extermination and emancipation were the real objects of the war-a fact which the enemy for a while had affected to deny. It attempted to accomplish by the horrours of servile insurrection what our enemy had failed to accomplish by military operations. It

* One of the most singular juxtapositions between the professions of the North at the commencement of hostilities and its present ideas, is afforded in Mr. Seward's famous letter, written to the French Government on the 22d April, 1861, and his subsequent circular to the Yankee ministers in Europe. It is one of the most singular of all the juggleries and summersaults of Yankee diplomacy.

In the first pronunciamento of Secretary Seward, written "by the direction of the President," occurs the following passage:

"The condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the same, "whether it succeeds or fail. The rights of the States, and the condition of 'every human being in them, will remain subject to exactly the same laws "and form of administration, whether the revolution shall succeed or whether "it shall fail. Their constitutions and laws and customs, habits and institu"tions in either case will remain the same. It is hardly necessary to add to "this incontestable statement the further fact that the new President, as well "as the citizens through whose suffrages he has come into the administration, "has always repudiated all designs whatever, and wherever imputed to him "and them, of disturbing the system of slavery as it is existing under the Con"stitution and laws. The case, however, would not be fully presented were "I to omit to say that any such effort on his part would be unconstitutional, "and all his acts in that direction would be prevented by the judicial "authority, even though they were assented to by Congress and the people." Within eighteen months after Seward declares officially to one of the ministers of the government that the President has no wish and no right to interfere with the institutions of the "rebellious" States, he writes another letter, also directed to the ministers abroad, announcing the adoption of a policy which, if it could be carried out, would make a complete revolution in the social organization of the South. Utterly regardless of his former position and declaration, he undertakes to justify the "emancipation" proclamation of the Yankee President. But this is not all. What shall we say of the effrontery of the lie, when Seward asserts that the abolition proclamation is not only a just and proper act, but avows his belief that the world will recognize "the moderation and magnanimity with which the government proceeds in a matter so solemn and important!”

confessed to the world his inability and failure to accomplish. his purposes by regular and honorable hostilities. It was, in short, the diabolical attempt of an infatuated ruler, unworthy of authority, in a fit of disappointed malice, to inflict the worst horrours known to human nature upon eight millions of people who had wisely rejected his authority.

The emancipation" proclamation not only strengthened the South and nerved her to greater exertions in the war, but it fortunately gave occasion to the world for a more interested observation and closer study of the peculiar institution of the Confederacy. The sympathies of Europe with the anti-slavery party in America were depressed by the conduct of that party, its exhibitions of ferocity and by the new manifestations which the war had made of the nature and moral condition of negro slavery in the South.

Indeed, the war had shown the system of slavery in the South to the world in some new and striking aspects, and had removed much of that cloud of prejudice, defamation, falsehood, romance and perverse sentimentalism through which our peculiar institution had been formerly known to Europe. It had given a better vindication of our system of slavery than all the books that could be written in a generation. It had shown that slavery was an element of strength with us; that it had assisted us in our struggle; that no servile insurrections had taken place in the South in spite of the allurements of our enemy; that the slave had tilled the soil while his master had fought; that in large districts unprotected by our troops, and with a white population consisting almost exclusively of women and children, the slave had continued at his work quiet, cheerful and faithful; and that, as a conservative element in our social system, the institution of slavery had withstood the shocks of war and been a faithful ally of our arms, although instigated to revolution by every art of the enemy, and prompted to the work of assassination and pillage by the most brutal examples of the Yankee soldiery.*

* The missionary settlements of the Yankees on the coast of South Caro

Since the commencement of the war the North had had almost exclusive access to the ear of the world, and had poured into it whatever of slander or of misrepresentation human ingenuity could suggest. This circumstance, which was at first thought to be a great disadvantage to us, had not only proved a harmless annoyance, but had resulted in invaluable benefit. It had secured sympathy for us; it had excited the inquiries of the intelligent, who, after all, give the law to public opinion; and it had naturally tempted the North to such lying and bravado as to disgust the world.

At the beginning of the war the North had assured the world that the people of the South were a sensual and barbarous people, demoralized by their institution of slavery, and depraved by self will and licentiousness below the capacity for

lina were an acknowledged failure, so far as the proposed education and exaltation of the blacks were concerned. The appearance of the ancient town of Beaufort, since it had fallen into the enemy's possession, indicated the peculiarities of Yankee rule, and afforded an interesting exhibition of their relations with the negro. The inhabitants had taken nothing away with them but their personal property and their valuable domestic slave servants. The furniture was left untouched in the houses. These houses were owned by the Barnwells, the Rhetts, the Cuthberts, the Phillipses, and other distinguished families of North Carolina. The elegant furniture, the libraries, the works of art, had nearly all disappeared. They had been sent North from time to time by Yankee officers, and many of these officers of high rank. The elegant dwelling-houses had been converted into barracks, negro quarters, hospitals and store-houses. The best houses had been put in complete order, and were occupied by the officers of the department and the abolitionist missionaries from Boston and elsewhere. The efforts of these missionaries to teach the negroes their letters and habits of cleanliness met with no success. Beaufort was full of negroes, well clothed, at government expense, fat, saucy and lazy. The town looked dirty and disorderly, and had the appearance of a second class Mexican village. Some of the missionaries had been elevated to the position of planters, and occupied the estates of the old Carolinians. The labor on these estates was performed by contraband negroes. These abolition lords assumed all the hauteur and dignity of the Southern planter. The only difference to the black labourer was that he had the name of freeman; his labour was as unrelenting as ever. Massachusetts missionaries and Massachusetts speculators enjoyed the larger share of government patronage here. The department of Hunter appeared to be experimenting in attempts to elevate negro to equality with the white man. Military operations were secondary considerations.

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