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The Abolition of Slavery the Right of the Government Under the War Power · William Lloyd Garrison — chapter 3 of 4 · ~2,159 words · public domain

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A Northern invasion of Virginia and of Kentucky, if necessary, carrying along with it the Canadian line of African freedom, as it must do from the very nature of civil war, will produce a powerful Union reaction. The slave population of the border States will be moved in two directions. One branch of it, without the masters, will be moved Northward, and the other branch, with the masters, will be moved Southward, so that, by the time the Northern army will have penetrated to the centre of the border slave States, they will be relieved of the substance and abstract rights of slave property for all time to come.

Finally, the revolted States having appealed to the sword of revolution to redress their wrongs, may soon have to choose between submission to the Union or the bloody extinction of slavery, from the absence of any law, any wish, any power for its protection.-- Ibid, April 20.

By land and water, if she places herself in the attitude of rebellion, Maryland may be overrun and subdued in a single week, including the extinction of slavery within her own borders; for war makes its own laws.

We are less concerned about Washington than about Maryland. Loyal to the Union, she is perfectly safe, negroes and all; disloyal to the Union, she may be crushed, including her institution of slavery. Let her stand by the Union, and the Union will protect and respect her-- slavery and all.--Ibid, April 21.

Virginia, next to Maryland, will be subjected to this test. She has seceded, and hence she will probably risk the breaking of every bone in her body. If so, we fear that every bone in her body will be broken, including her backbone of slavery. The day is not far off when the Union men of the revolted States will be asked to come to the relief of their misguided brethren, for, otherwise, the war which they have chosen to secure their institution of slavery may result in wiping it out of existence.--Ibid, April 23.

In advance of this movement, President Lincoln should issue his proclamation, guaranteeing the complete protection of all loyal Union men and their property, but warning the enemies of the Government of the dangers of confiscation, negroes included.

If Virginia resists, the contest cannot last very long, considering her large slave population, which will either become fugitives or take up arms against their masters.--Ibid, April 24.

That we are to have a fight, that Virginia and Maryland will form the battle-ground, that the Northern roughs will sweep those States with fire and sword, is beyond peradventure. They have already been excited to the boiling point by the rich prospect of plunder held out by some of their leaders, and will not be satisfied unless they have a farm and a nigger each. There is no sort of exaggeration about these statements, as the people of the border States will shortly ascertain to their cost. The character of the coming campaign will be vindictive, fierce, bloody, and merciless beyond parallel in ancient or modern history.--Ibid, April 28.

The class of population which is recruiting in our large cities, the regiments forming for service in behalf of the Union, can never be permanently worsted. They will pour down upon the villages and cities of Virginia and Maryland, and leave a desolate track behind them, and inspire terror in whatever vicinity they approach.--Ibid, April 29.

It will be idle for Tennessee and Kentucky to attempt to escape from the issue, and to remain at peace, while the remainder of the country is at war. Neutrality will be considered opposition, and the result of a general frontier war will be, that slavery, as a domestic institution of the United States; will be utterly annihilated.--Ibid, April 30.

The rebellion must be put down by some means or another, else it will put us down; and if nothing else will do, even to proclaim the abolition of slavery would be legitimate. All is fair in war...Gen. Fremont and the other Generals must act according to circumstances, and their own judgment, unless when otherwise ordered...If he is acting on his own responsibility, he is only carrying out the Confiscation Act, so far as the slaves are concerned...We have no fear of the result.--N. Y. Herald, Sept. 3.

BUT ONE WAY OUT.

To our apprehension, God is fast closing every avenue to settled peace but by emancipation. And one of the most encouraging facts is that the eyes of the nation are becoming turned in that direction quite as rapidly as could have been anticipated. Some men of conservative antecedents, like Dickinson of New York, saw this necessity from the first. But it takes time to accustom a whole people to the thought, and to make them see the necessity. It was impossible for Northern men to fathom the spirit and the desperate exigencies of the slave system and its outbreak, and consequently to comprehend the desperate nature of the struggle. We were like a policeman endeavoring to arrest a boy-ruffian, and, for the sake of his friends and for old acquaintance sake, doing it with all possible tenderness for his person and his feelings--till all of a sudden he feels the grip on his throat and the dagger's point at his breast, and knows that it is a life-and-death grapple.

Slaveholding is simply piracy continued. Our people are beginning to spell out that short and easy lesson in the light of perjury, robbery, assassination, poisoning, and all the more than Algerine atrocities of this rebellion. It cannot require many more months of schooling like the last eight, to convince the dullest of us what are its essence and spirit.

Our people also are rapidly finding out that no peaceful termination of this war will be permitted now by the Slave Power, except by its thorough overthrow. The robber has thrown off the mask, and says now to the nation, "Your life or mine!" Even the compromising Everett has boldly told the South, "To be let alone is not all you ask--but you demand a great deal more." And in his late oration, he has most powerfully portrayed the impossibility of a peaceful disunion. Many men, some anti-slavery, were at first inclined to yield to the idea of a separation. But every day's experience is scattering that notion to the winds. The ferocious spirit exhibited from the first by the Secessionists towards all dissentients, the invasion of Western Virginia by Eastern, the threats to put down loyal Kentucky, the foray in Missouri, the plan for capturing Washington, which was part of the original scheme, are convincing proofs, that if by any pacification whatever our troops were disbanded to-day, to-morrow a Southern army would be on the march for Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and perhaps Chicago.

The South has sufficiently declared the cause of this trouble to be the irreconcilable conflict between their institutions and the fundamental principles of this government. While the cause remains in full strength, and after it has once burst forth in bloody and final collision, nothing will ever check that strife, whether in or out of the Union. The cause must be eradicated. Meanwhile, our own position, both before the world and in our own struggle at home, is a false one, so long as we blink the real issue.

Many indications are hopeful. Gen. Butler's letter to the Secretary of War, and the Secretary's reply, look in the right direction. The Confiscation Act is pregnant with great consequences, and may yet be so used as to become an emancipation act in all the rebel States. It is high time it were so used. We have serious doubts whether the rebellion will ever be suppressed till that trenchant weapon is wielded. We reverently doubt whether the Lord means it shall be. The quiet passage of the Confiscation Act was an immense step of governmental progress. Perhaps it was all that the nation as a whole and the government were ready for. It may answer as a keen wedge. But we trust that, in December, Congress will make clean work by the full emancipation of all slaves in the rebel States, and by provision in some way for the speedy and certain extinction of slavery in the loyal States. To accomplish the latter event, we would ourselves willingly submit to any proper amount of pecuniary burden, provided it could be so arranged as not to recognize a right of property in man.--Chicago Congregational Herald.

PROCLAMATION OF GEN. FREMONT.

HEADQUARTERS, WESTERN DIVISION, St. Louis, Aug. 30, 1861.

Circumstances; in my judgment, are of sufficient urgency to render it necessary that the Commanding General of this Department should assume administrative powers of the State. Its disorganized condition, helplessness of civil authority, and the total insecurity of life and devastation of property by bands of murderers and marauders, who infest nearly every county in the State, and avail themselves of public misfortunes and the vicinity of a hostile force to gratify private and neighborhood vengeance, and who find an enemy wherever they find plunder, finally demand the severest measures to repress the daily increasing crimes and outrages which are driving off the inhabitants and ruining the State. In this condition, the public safety and the success of our arms require unity of purpose, without let or hindrance, to the prompt administration of affairs. In order, therefore, to suppress disorder, maintain the public peace, and give security to the persons and property of loyal citizens, I do hereby extend and declare martial law throughout the State of Missouri.

The lines of the army occupation in this State are, for the present, declared to extend from Leavenworth by way of posts to Jefferson City, Rolla and Ironton, to Cape Girardeau, on the Mississippi river. All persons who shall be taken with arms in their hands, within these lines, shall be tried by court martial, and, if found guilty, shall be shot.

Real and personal property, owned by persons who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part with the enemy in the field, is declared confiscated to public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men. All persons who shall be proven to, have destroyed, after the publication of this order, railroad tracks, bridges or telegraph lines, shall suffer the extreme penalty of the law. All persons engaged in treasonable correspondence, in giving or procuring aid to the enemy, in fomenting turmoils and disturbing public tranquility by creating or circulating false reports or incendiary documents, are warned that they are exposing themselves. All persons who have been led away from allegiance are requested to return to their homes forthwith. Any such absence, without sufficient cause, will be held to be presumptive evidence against them.

The object of this declaration is to place in the hands of the military authorities power to give instantaneous effect to the existing laws, and to supply such deficiencies as the conditions of the war demand; but it is not intended to suspend the ordinary tribunals of the country where law will be administered by civil officers in the usual manner, and with their customary authority, while the same can be peaceably administered.

The Commanding General will labor vigilantly for the public welfare, and, by his efforts for their safety, hopes to obtain not only acquiescence, but the active support of the people of the country.

(Signed,)

J. C. FREMONT, Major General Commanding.

SLAVERY HAS DONE IT.

Let us not for one moment lose sight of this fact. We go into this war not merely to sustain the government and defend the Constitution. There is a moral principle involved. How came that government in danger? What has brought this wicked war, with all its evils and horrors, upon us? Whence comes the necessity for this uprising of the people? To these questions, there can be but one answer. SLAVERY HAS DONE IT. That accursed system, which has already cost us so much, has at length culminated in this present ruin and confusion. That system must be put down. The danger must never be suffered to occur again. The evil must be eradicated, cost what it may. We are for no half-way measures. So long as the slave system kept itself within the limits of the Constitution, we were bound to let it alone, and to respect its legal rights; but when, overleaping those limits, it bids defiance to all law, and lays its vile hands on the sacred altar of liberty and the sacred flag of the country, and would overturn the Constitution itself, thenceforth slavery has no constitutional rights. It is by its own act an outlaw. It can never come back again into the temple, and claim a place by right among the worshippers of truth and liberty. It has ostracised itself, and that for ever.

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