A   402045
4 53
RIGHTS AND DUTIES
OF THE
UNITED STATES RELATIVE TO SLAVERY
UNDER THE LAWS OF WAR.
NO MILITARY POWER TO RETURN ANY SLAVE.
"CONTRABAND OF WAR" -
INAPPLICABLE BETWEEN THE
UNITED STATES AND THEIR INSURGENT ENEMIES.
BY DAVID LEE CHILD.
[REPUBLISHED, WITH NOTES, FROM " THE LIBERATOR."]
" We occupy in this supreme moment no petty Thermopylae, guarding some paltry
(r eece, lut the broad, majestic pass, thlatcommands the wealth and worth oflhunia-l
nature itself, the ThlermopylaE of the human mind." - HENRY JAMES.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED  BY  R. F. WALLCUT,
No. 221 WASHINGTON STREET.
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THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
PART I.
POWER OVER SLAVES AS PERSONS.
CONTRABAND iS derived from contrabando, a Spanish word,
formed of contra, against, and bando, a proclamation or law.
In a general sense, it means all goods imported or exported
contrary to law. This is the contraband of commerce, and
depends upon the regulations of each particular nation within
its territorial jurisdiction.
Contraband of war comprehends such articles only as are
used directly, and sometimes those which may be used indirectly, in carrying on war. Of the first class are arms, munitions, soldiers' uniforms, horses, ships of war, etc.; of the second are saltpetre, chemicals for making fulminating powders,
and, under some circumstances, provisions, money, ship-timber,
naval stores, and, in general, any articles destined for the
military or naval use of an enemy, though susceptible of
other uses.
These a nation at war may prevent neutrals from carrying
to its enemies; and, if neutrals are caught in making such
conveyance, they may be punished, either personally or by
the confiscation of the hostile goods, together with the vessels
or vehicles employed in their transportation.
This sort of restraint upon commerce with enemies is
applicable to neutrals alone, and depends wholly on the law
of nations. An enemy has a right to supply himself with all
kinds of commodities in war as in peace; and the adverse
'4 -           +; 1    X:':; 
THIE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
party has an equal right to seize, if he can, and confiscate
them, not as contraband of war, but as the property of an
enemy. In the present case, it would also be the property of
traitors, waging an unprovoked and unprincipled war against
their unoffending and too patient fellow-citizens, against their
oaths of allegiance, and against the Constitution and laws
they have concurred in establishing.
There is but one other party who can convey any thing to
these enemies, and that is a citizen of our own. By the
laws of war, all traffic, contract, intercourse or correspondence between the enemies of a country and its citizens or
subjects, is strictly forbidden. Hence all property of theirs,
destined or in process to be transferred to the enemy, or
property of the enemy destined to be transferred to our own
citizens, is liable to capture and confiscation, not as contraband of war, but as enemy's property.
Such presumptuous and sordid citizens, besides suffering such
forfeiture, remain amenable to the laws of their country for
treason or misdemeanor, according to the nature and aggravation of the case.
All commerce between belligerent parties being thus prohibited, and all goods, wares and merchandize passing, or
destined to pass, to and fro between them, liable to seizure
and confiscation, contraband of war, which implies that goods
not coming under that description are free, can have no distinct existence, but is merged by the common law of nations
in the general contraband of commerce.
For these reasons, there can be no contraband of war between belligerents, and it is immaterial whether the war be
foreign or domestic. It follows that slaves cannot be taken
under that title.
Is there any right arising from the state of war, by which,
without violation of the Constitution or laws, we may capture or receive, employ or free them?
Slaves must be considered either as persons or property.
Mr. Madison, in "The Federalist," maintains that they are
both.  On their personality, he justifies the provision of the
Constitution giving, on their account, to their masters, a
heavy additional representation in the national legislature
and executive. Upon their chattelism is based the provision
for hunting them like partridges, and requiring the people of
4 
POWER OVER SLAVES AS PERSONS.
the Free States, not to abstain like poor Englishmen from
poaching, but to bag the game, and send it back to the lordly
owner, when it flies from his warren!
The Constitution affects to deal with slaves as persons
only.  But it gives Congress the "power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, between the several States, and
with the Indian tribes."
In exercising this power in behalf of the victims of the
foreign slave trade, as Congress did the first moment that the
Constitution untied their hands, they encountered no constitutional difficulty in treating them as a subject of commerce.
No other idea appears to have been entertained or suggested
on that occasion. But when the question of the power of
Congress to prohibit the slave trade "between the several
States" came before our Supreme Court, (" supreme in mischief,") it was discovered by that learned tribunal, that slaves
being named in the Constitution as persons, cannot be considered, in a legal sense, as property, but as persons only; and
inasmuch as persons cannot be a subject of commerce, they
decreed that Congress have no authority to prohibit the
Amnerican slave trade! They forgot, or did not pause to
reflect, that under this construction, Congress could not have
touched the foreign slave trade; and that our treaties with
Great Britain for its suppression, and our fleets on the coast
of Africa, would all be unconstitutional!  Because the term
" foreign nations" is annexed to the same enabliny words as
the term "several States."  HIow the South would  have
yelled, if such an absurd and monstrous inconsequence had
been committed against any interest of hers, or in favor of
any interest of the North!
It would be with an ill grace that slaveholders and producers should object to viewing slaves as "persons," having
under that title long enjoyed with entire impunity the lucrative luxury of slave-breeding, and in sequence, a vast domestice slave trade. And if they do object, it is of little consequence, for I do not in this discussion make it a paramount
object to please and propitiate them, as would seem to be
the case with many of the public servants, entrusted with the
administration of the government and the conduct of the
war.
As "persons,"  slaves stand in the same relation to an
5 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
enemy conquering and occupying the country of their residence, as their masters do. Here is a principle of the laws
of war, perfectly settled and unquestioned: Conquerors have
the right, to the extent of their conquests, to establish such
government and laws as they see fit, subject to the " higher
law" alone. It is true that they usually permit the civil
laws of the vanquished to remain in force; and they do so
remain as a matter of course, until expressly altered or abolished by the new sovereign. From this rule, however, is
necessarily excepted that portion of the territory which is in
the actual occupation, and the area of the operations, of the
victorious army. There, martial law invariably supersedes
all constitutional and municipal law, so far as concerns the
treatment of the vanquished. Indeed, distinguished jurists
have suggested that martial law is as much a part of the
common law as the law merchant, or parliamentary. But,
however it may be considered in this respect, its scope is
confined to the hostile and the vanquished; except in the
case of enemies and emissaries in our bosom, in which Congress, if it deems it necessary, may suspend the privilege of
the habeas corpus, and thus give to the authorities, both civil
and military, the power of restraining, at their discretion,
all disloyal, dangerous or suspected persons.
In all the conquered territory, the orders and proclamations of the commanding generals, or of the sovereign powers
which they serve, are, for the time being, the supreme law;
and, by the direction of that power, or with its approval, the
commanders of armies may prescribe such changes, and initiate such reforms and measures of every kind, as they deem
best for the satisfaction, security and indemnification of the conquering nation, for the interests of justice, peace and liberty,
and for the general welfare of all concerned. They may dissolve the system of society which they find, and substitute any
other which they deem more conducive to the improvement
and happiness of the vanquished, and the peace and safety of
the conquering nation.
Thus the British nation, of which we were a part in the
war with the Pretender in 1745, totally abolished "the patriarchal constitution of the Highlands." * There was much
* Hume.
6 
POWER OVER SLAVES AS PERSONS.
that was painful, and some things unnecessarily harsh, in this
radical and enforced reformation; yet the most enlightened
statesmen and purest philanthropists of Scotland, as well as
England and America, have recognized the great rebellion of
the Chevalier, to restore his dynasty to the throne, as a providential dispensation, inasmuch as it afforded the United
Kingdom a favorable opportunity, and the most effective
means, of eliminating from its polity an incongruous and
dangerous element.
The castles of the rebels were sacked and burned, cattle,
provisions and other moveable property carried off, the inhabitants disarmed or pursued, and sternly shot down; the hereditary jurisdictions, services, customs and even costumes of
the clans, abolished; the traitor chiefs convicted, attainted
and executed to the number of eighty or ninety for high treason, and the territory parcelled out in small leasehold estates
to loyal, industrious, and skilful cultivators. It was not even
allowed to be sold, lest the rebel families should recover possession by purchase, through third persons. The thoroughness
and impartiality of the overthrow are evinced by the fact,
that Lady Mackintosh, on a charge of treason, was subjected
to imprisonment, and her moveable property carried off,
although she was not brought to trial, and notwithstanding
that her husband was actually in the service of the yovernment. Of course, this was the use of the war power.
In 1797, Napoleon I., having beaten and neutralized the
King of Sardinia, conquered Lombardy,  and broken  and
driven from Italy the powerful armies of Austria, was occupied in pursuing the remnants, and pushing his conquests
toward Vienna, when the usurping oligarchy of Venice,
called a Republic, but in reality one of the foulest and cruelest despotisms that ever oppressed a nation or disgraced
human nature, broke the peace with France, and stirred up
insurrections in his rear. Thereupon he turned suddenly
upon that accursed and effete aristocracy of assassins, and at
one swoop swept them out.  He substituted  a democratic
Republic for the ancient sham. This was the war power, and
so far from being deemed a mistake or a reproach, it has always been considered lawful, just and beneficent, and celebrated
among the honorable and redeeming traits of the great but
too ambitious warrior and statesman who did it. In crushing
7 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
these insurrections, he thought it necessary to resort to military executions, as some of our Southern commanders did in
the " war of pretexts," against poor inoffensive Mexico!
In 1829-30, the French conquered a piratical and slave
State, for centuries the scourge and opprobrium of the Christian nations of Europe and America, who, through the terror
of its audacity and ferocity, had for centuries tolerated and
even subsidized the blood and slave-hunting conspiracy against
the human race. Its area was just equal to the island of
Great Britain. Its chivalrous conquerors annihilated the
government, dissolved the State, expunging its laws and
social forms, its piracy and slavery, and substituting a polity
to which the vanquished were strangers, and against which
they entertained a mortal antipathy. One slap, dealt by the
D)ey of Algiers in the face of a French consul, moved a
mighty and Christian people to wipe out, under the laws of
war, that detestable and too long endured "barbarism."
What would not that victorious army have done, if they had
had our cue to fight and exterminate? if not only their ministers of peace had been threatened with outrage and chased
ignominiously away, but also thousands of their peaceable
and unoffending fellow-citizens, travelling and sojourning
under the sacred guaranty of oaths and compacts, had been
horribly lacerated with whips, plundered, mutilated, hung by
the neck, hung by the heels, to die slowly by torture, which
tortures the imagination; coffined alive and then cast into the
sea, or tarred and then lit like a candle - for no offence
except that they were Frenchmen, and would not consent to
commit treason, and join in parricidal war against their country? It was the most damning crime of Nero, that he crucified Christians with their heads downward, and daubed
them over with combustibles to burn alive as lights in the
night!
In the Revolutionary war, the British received some thousands of fugitives from Southern bondage, and never gave up
one of them. With these refugees, they peopled Sierra Leone,
and, in part, the island of Trinidad. The descendants of
those forlorn creatures, victims of a brutalizing system, are
now the owners of about half the shipping and other property
of that opulent island. Similar improvement and success
have attended the settlement of Sierra Leone.
8 
POWER OVER SLAVES AS PERSONS.
It is often cited as an illustrious example of an honorable
peace, that the Roman victors imposed upon the Carthagenians, as a sine qua non, that they should abstain in future
from human sacrifices to their God-  3Ioloch.
From the foregoing principles and examples it results, that
war and conquest-supposing always the cause to be justconfer upon the conquerors the right of making, in proportion
as they advance, any change they deem conducive to the good
of society, in the political and social state and relations of
their vanquished enemies; that they may level up and level
down, castes, orders and degrees; annihilate constitutions and
governments, establish democratic Republics in lieu of Oligarchies, enfranchise the enslaved, and abolish inhuman customs. And it follows, further, that when the victorious
armies withdraw, or while they remain in possession, the
sovereign nation whom they serve may abolish, alter, ordain
and establish laws for any and all purposes, which to them
seem good, subject to the laws of God alone.
For it would be the height of iniquity and absurdity for a
country, forced by cruel, wicked and unprovoked aggressions
to sacrifice tens of thousands of the lives of its sons, and
hundreds of millions of their hard-earned treasure, to confer
at once, and without probation, upon subdued traitors, all the
political and personal liberties, immunities and privileges of
brave, loyal and untainted citizens; thus capacitating them
either to renew their treason and hostilities, or to thwart, by
sharing and abusing those liberties and privileges, all wholesome and necessary measures of prudent restraint, and perhaps of rehabilitation.
The Constitution of the United States imposes no necessity
for such imbecility, absurdity and injustice. It does not
extend proprio vigore over a conquered territory. That is
an arch-heresy, which has too long survived its inventor, J.
C. Calhoun, but cannot, it is believed, long survive its most
distinguished advocate, the late Mr. Douglas.
But whatever may betide in this respect, the slave, onoe
freed by the war power, will be free for ever.
Not only has our government  a right to employ slaves,
captured or escaped, in building fortifications, to enlist them
in our armies, or let them go free under their protection, but
it is their positive duty to them and the country, and they
9
I *
I:.Iil.
I: 
TIIE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
will be guilty of a high misdemeanor for which impeachment
will lie for every case of neglect or refusal so to do. Suppose they should attempt to return a white refugee, who has
had the good luck to escape hanging, burning or burying
alive, and to reach Fortress M1onroe, or the left bank of the
Potomac, or the city of New York-would any judge hesitate to issue a writ of habeas corpus, and this too with indignation at so daring and heartless a violation of law and justice, and to discharge the intended victim? The case of
every black or brown refugee from the enemy is the same in
law, and vastly more urgent in fact. Ile would go back to
assured and inhuman torture or death.
PART II.
POWER OVER SLAVES AS PROPERTY.
Col. Henry Lee, of the Revolutionary Army, afterwards
General and Governor of Virginia, was annoyed during much
of his life by the importunity of creditors and the pursuit of
bailiffs.  H]e was a most gallant officer, and a genial and
hospitable gentleman; but, like most Southerners, not overscrupulous in keeping contracts and paying debts. He was
ingenious and skilful in the art and stratagems of war,
and once entrapped and cut to pieces a body of four hundred
and fifty Carolina Tories by sending their leader an order, in
the name of Col. Tarlton, to meet him at a rendezvous. Lee
was a favorite of Washington, and presumed so far upon his
friendship and indulgence as to sell, as his own, eleven hundred acres of wood and timber land belonging to the General, passing a formal title and taking the money. After a
while, a rumor of this "raise" reached the Father of his
Country, and he interrogated the adventurous Colonel on the
subject.  The latter replied that he "wanted money badly,
and as it was a wild out-o'-the-way lot, he supposed his General wouldn't want it."  To which Washington rejoined,
' Pehaps not; but I have one request to make of you, and
that is,,that you will not sell Mount Vernon."
*i':
10
4 - * 
POWER OVER SLAVES AS PROPERTY.
This distinguished soldier and author, father of General
Lee, now commanding in chief the Virginia insurgents, procured a lodge to be built for him on the Maryland and Virginia line, with a room in each State, so that from whichever
the officers of the law came, he could take sanctuary in the
other!
To the slave-breeders and drivers, the slave-duality dodge
has been as convenient as his dual lodge to Harry Lee.
Having in the first part of this discussion locked up, for
the present, one of the rooms, I now propose to lock the
other.
To the end of augmenting their ability to abuse their
wretched bondmen and women, regulate and fleece industrious
and opulent States, and maintain a gigantic monopoly of
slave-manufacturing and trading, protected by us with the
death-penalty, our late masters have no longer, under this
government, any occasion to count their slaves as " persons."
Now  they would doubtless renounce "with alacrity" that
wonderful constitutional privilege, so prolific of power and
profit in times past. But this shift cannot save their human
chattels, any more than the Constitution-whose protection,
with their accustomed modesty, they invoke at the gates of
our fortresses and the pickets of our camps, after repudiating
all its obligations, and trampling and spitting upon its banner- can save either their chattels or themselves from being
grasped and moulded by the hand of war.
By the laws of war, the victors in a just cause may seize,
appropriate to the uses of the war, carry off, confiscate, distribute or destroy every species of property, public or private, belonging to their enemies. The Rules and Articles,
established by Congress for the government of our armies,
recognize this principle in all its breadth; for while they
guard by swift military penalties, in addition to the ordinary
civil ones, the property of our own citizens, they make no
provision for the protection of the property of our enemies,
evidently intending to leave the latter to the law of nations,
the exigencies of the service, and the integrity and discretion
of those employed therein.
It is certainly and fortunately true, that private property
is usually respected, but that strict law permits its seizure at
the discretion of the conquerors, is a position which cannot be
successfully controverted,
11 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
This right, though available at discretion, is not to be
abused. It cannot be used, except by privateers, to sate
private avarice, and mere lust of plunder. The just and
impregnable grounds of all seizures of enemies' property,
are the crippling of their resources of every sort, replenishing
and sustaining our own, promoting the success, securing the
objects, and expediting the conclusion of the war. Thus all
captured property is to be faithfully applied, or carefully
preserved, for the service of the conquering nation.
These restrictions, prescribed by the laws of war, and
based on equity, humanity and good conscience, relieve the
strict right and discretionary power of taking enemies' property from the invincible repugnance which every just and
generous mind must feel to the unlimited and indiscriminate
plunder even of the most unjust and odious aggressors.
"The conqueror has a right to seize on all the property of the
enemy that comes within his power, and it matters not whether it
be moveable or immoveable.  These seizures may be made-1, In
order to obtain what he demands as due, or an equivalent; 2, To
defray the expenses of the war; 3, To force the enemy to an equitable peace; 4, To deter, or, by reducing his strength, hinder him
from repeating, in future, the injuries which have been the cause of the
war-. And with this last object in view, a power at war has a right
to destroy the property and possessions of the enemy for the express
purpose of doing him mischief." - Maiteas' Law of Nations, pp.
287-8.
The above is a summary of the principal rules applicable
to this point, as they have been established by the highest
authorities on the law of nations.
By what right did our Sixth seize the arms of the secessionists and assassins of Baltimore? These were private
property, in a private warehouse. The justification is that
they belonged to enemies and traitors. By what right did
Ellsworth take the flag, or a regiment its camping ground, in
Virginia? By what right does our army raise an entrenchment there, or even win a field of battle, if that be its fortune? By what right are we seizing scores of vessels and
boats in the Chesapeake and Potomac, and hundreds of barrels of flour in mills and on freight trains, and the very
trains and railroads? These are all private property. There
can be but one answer- the right in war of stripping, weakening and vanquishing the enemy, supplying and strengthen
12 
POWER OVER SLAVES AS PROPERTY.
ing ourselves, and winning the palm of victory and the
blessings of peace.  By that same right, the chained chattel
was taken from the Alexandria slave-pen and destroyed,i. e., converted into a man, protected and employed by the
Michigan regiment. He is now performing important service to his benefactors and to the people of the United States;
while to a certain, though not the same extent, the loss of a
commodity, capable of making an ash-cake, dressing and
roasting a pig, and brandishing a pickaxe, shovel or firelock,
impairs the efficiency and amount of the forces and means of
enemies and traitors.  Suppose it had been a roasting-jack or
washing machine in the Marshall House, and our men needed
those articles; could they by the laws of war take them, and
be forbidden by the same laws to take a thinking locomotive,
laughing, sympathizing, thankful article, containing in itself
those machines, and many more? Or is it an insuperable
objection to the exercise of an ordinary and undoubted right,
that thereby we shall incidentally do " the will of God," and
make the Mayna Charta of our fathers a reality? "All
men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights, among which is Liberty."
"God wills man free,
Man wills him slave;
I will as God wills;
God's will be done."
"Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by
your tradition?"  Are you fools, or stricken with madness, or
incurable poverty of spirit? Or are you the slaves of custom, or emasculated minions of the late slave oligarchy? If
these be the fruits of free schools, I, for one, go with the redoubtable Pryor, against them and the whole "free list."
"We have got to hating every thing with the prefix free. Free
farmis, free labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free children,
free schools, all belong to the same brood of damnable isoes.  But the
worst of all these abominations  is the modern system of free
schools." - Richnimond Examiner, 1856.
The capture and possession of the property of enemies
taken on land, divests the owner of his right, and vests it in
the conquering nation; and it is immaterial whether it be
captured or voluntarily surrendered.
13 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
If there be any who admit these principles, and yet deny
that we have a right to seize, or receive, when voluntarily
surrendered, those moveables, "which have been the cause of
the war," and whose capture, reception and conversion into
men are, not merely direct and efficient, but perhaps the only
sure means of success in the war, and, at any rate, of speedy
and permanent peace-they utter an absurdity too selfevident to require any other refutation than its statement.
What! has property in human blood and bones-the right
to exact work without wages, to sell and tear from kindred,
home and country, to torture the body to death and brutalize
the soul- grown so sacred in this enlightened age and
Christian nation, that it is to be exempted from the rules
and incidents to which every other species of property is subject, and favored with a national republican policy of insurance? Call it republican, if you please, but it will in
reality be a little mnore than democratic; it will be diabolical.
What! did Washington, Lafayette, Mifflin, Minge, John
Randolph,  the Fitzhughs of Maryland and Virginia,  the
Clays and Thomes of Kentucky, the Rev. Drs. Nelson and
Brisbane, James G. Birney, (Cornelia Barbour, Angelina and
Sarah Grimke, John G. Palfrey, John G. Fee, Mattie
Griffith, George Washington P. Custis, and thousands  more,
who, for the love of God and man, and the good of their
own souls, renounced the baleful possession, and divested
themselves, and those dearest them, of legal inheritances,
only commit a fantastic and self-denying act of folly, or of
incredible hypocrisy and disinterested robbery? They proclaimed, by the most solemn transactions that pertain to life
and death, that there is a difference between this and other
property-not sanctifying and blessing, but infecting and
dooming it, and blighting all around it!
There are other principles of the law of nations, which
lead to the same result of arming the injured belligerent
with discretionary power over the persons and property of
the aggressors. A war begun and waged without just cause,
from selfish, rapacious, ambitious, envious and malicious
motives, and for unjustifiable ends, authorizes the aggrieved
party to inflict at discretion, upon its authors and supporters,
such penalties as the nature and aggravation of the offence
may require.
14 
POWER OvER SLAVES AS PROPERTY.
"It is implied in every social compact, that those who violate it
shall be reduced to submission, and even put to death, if that be
necessary to secure society against new disturbances, and the sacrifice
of new victims. Otherwise, human society could not exist."Isamnbert. Historical View of Public Law and the Law of Nations, p. 248.
"If a nation allows foreigners to enter its territory, it is bound to
respect their rights, so long as they conduct themselves peaceably;
and if, in breach of good faith, it proceed to punish them vindictively, when they have committed no offence, it is justly responsible for
its conduct to the nation to which they belong." - Jzdye Story,
Enc. Am., vol. 9,]). 145.
"Whether the State or its subjects be the offending party, if the
State refuse to make satisfaction, the property of each of its subjects,
coining within the reach of the injured State, is liable to seizure;
and even the persons of such subjects may be seized, but the life of
an innocent person cannot be taken, unless in extraordinary cases,
where there is no other means of obtaining the satisfaction due, and
of preventing future violations." - Martens, p. 268.
"Murder, or unnecessary personal violence, of any kind, committed upon enemies by a people at war, justifies and requires retaliation, either upon prisoners of war, or indiscriminately upon any
individuals of the guilty nation." - Grotius.
Murder or personal outrage is greatly aggravated, when,
to the title of stranger, which should be sufficient, is superadded that of fellow-citizen travelling or tarrying for health,
friendship, commercial intercourse, or local business, to
which he has been invited under the guaranty of contract or
pledges of hospitality, a claim which the wildest aborigines
and Arabs hold sacred. In this case, not only are public
faith and national comity confided in, but also private honor,
mutual oaths, and a common allegiance.   Yet what scores,
what thousands of our brethren and sisters, trusting to these
and to conscious rectitude, have been meanly and basely defrauded and robbed, barbarously tortured, and, with horrid
refinements of cruelty, murdered, by dastard and ferocious
multitudes, because         "Unshaken, unsubdued, unterrified,
Their loyalty they kept, their love, their zeal,
Though single."
Vattel is of opinion that there are cases in which a
belligerent has a right to destroy an unjust and ferocious
nation, like the Barbary States, for example.
These must of course be extreme cases, defying all ordinary
means of establishing justice and peace.
15 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
The repeated insurrections to restore the Stuart dynasty,
having always their chief incentive and aliment in  " the
patriarchal system of the Highlands," brought the British
nation at last to the solemn conviction that the interest and
safety of domestic peace and good government necessitated
the  extirpation  of that  " barbarism."    Therefore  they
ravaged with fire and sword several thousand square miles of
the insurgent territory, and put to death many thousand
traitors and rebels in the field of battle, on the block and
gibbet, and by shooting them down like wild beasts, as the
Southern rebels often do their slaves f,r no other offence
than the desire of liberty.
The punishment of the obstinate and sanguinary insurgents
of the Vendee was still more memorable; and illustrates
more strikingly the power with which the conquerors are
armed in a just and unavoidable war. Yet the guilt of the
Yendeans was far inferior to that of the American traitors.
Their position was precisely that of Kentucky,-resistance
to the orders of the nation to turn out their contingent of
men for the army. Kentucky has not resisted with arms, for
the very satisfactory reason that the government has subsided in face of her threats, and let her alone!
The United States have often laid waste Indian corn-fields
and villages, driving off their horses and cattle, and not unfrequently slaughtering the inhabitants.  This very year, we
pay more than three millions from the national treasury for
the performance of such service in Oregon.   And the brave
and humane Gen. Wool, who sought to stay it as unnecessary,
unjust and mercenary on the part of the Oregonians, appears
to have been discredited by the late administration on that
account. That his tried valor, skill and great experience
have not been called into the active service of the country
in this crisis, is matter of surprise and regret.
Gen. Jackson hung and butchered prisoners of war,
Indian chiefs, women, and British subjects, because he considered their offence in making war on the United States as
meriting it; and his acts received the sanction of the government and people.
In 1854, Gen. Harney massacred one hundred and fifty
men, women and children, at the instigation of Jefferson
Davis, upon a false charge of committing hostilities against
16 
NO MILITARY POWER TC RETURN SLAVES.
the United States by stealing-not mints, sub-treasuries,
ships and arsenals, but a poor stray and lame Mormon cow!
Virginia reduced prisoners to slavery in her wars with the
noble natives of her happy clime, generous, hospitable and.
forbearing as they had been to the riotous, rash, and bloody
wretches, who effected the first landings and settlement on the
soil of the Old Dominion. And she recorded her sense of
the guilt of those "barbarians" in rising in arms against
her, by statutes offering premiums for their scalps, and
awarding, as slaves to her soldiers, all the Indian captives
they might make.
PART III.
NO MILITARY POWER TO RETURN SLAVES.
By what authority do the officers of the United States
army assume to send back fugitive slaves, and to compel,
under the fearful penalty of disobedience of orders, the brave
and high-minded men under their command to become slavecatchers and the keepers of the slave-pens, to which they
every now and then convert their camps at the bidding of
some fragment of the late slave-oligarchy?
The Fugitive Slave Act has ceased to exist for traitors
and rebels. They have renounced the Constitution and the
laws, are levying war against them, and against the nation
which ordained, and its government which administers them.
Protection and allegiance are correlative.   The denial of
one cancels the obligation of the other.
But if the Fugitive Slave Act were still in full force, it
would not apply to a fugitive slave within the same State
where he made escape, nor within the District of Columbia.
"Persons held to service or labor in one State, escaping into
another," is the language of the Constitution. Those are
the only persons who come within the scope of the Act, except, of course, all men and women of the Free States, of
whom it makes slave-hounds and sluts
17
4 - 0 
TIIE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
It is a principle of all municipal laws, that any party may
refuse and renounce a law passed for their special behoof.
The South has renounced and disavowed the fugitive enactment with all the rest, and only asks that which is the first
desire of all criminals, " to be let alone."
To cap the climax  of absurdity and iniquity, there is in
our camps, forts and ships of war, no tribunal, provided by
the Act, to try a man for his liberty; no proofs prescribed
by it are adduced; in a word, none of its forms for the
arrest, detention, trial or surrender of the person claimed,
is, or can be, in those places, observed;  nor does  any
authority, created by the act, grant a certificate for " his
taking off."
It is by the war power, and by that alone, that these discreditable, rather, these devilish, deeds have been done.
For half a century, upon the plea that our hands were
tied by the Constitution of our fathers, we have warmly repelled the reproaches, heaped upon us by the world, for
shouting liberty with our lips, and cherishing slavery in
our bosom; yet no sooner are our hands freed from the bonds
of the slaveholders, and this by their own malignant and
murderous assaults upon the nation, than we apply ourselves
with new vigor and a more devoted subserviency to do their
dirty and fiendish work!  "What  trick, what device, what
starting-hole canst thou now find out, to hide thee from this
open and apparent shame?"
The foundation of the summary and terrible code of arms,
is the unavoidable necessity and duty of prosecuting a just
war with success, of executing justice upon wicked and
bloody tyrants and aggressors; extinguishing the cause or
causes which enkindle their hostility, and procuring the
speediest return of peace, compatible with the accomplishment of these objects. The return to enemies and traitors of
their fugitive slaves is in impious and fatal antagonism to
every one of these objects of the war, and consequently in
self-evident violation of its laws. It is using the war power
to protract and aggravate the horrors of war.   It is to
spare its guilty authors, multiply its innocent victims, and
confirm and perpetuate its cause. It is an inexpiable crime
against the poor and oppressed, and an immeasurable wrong
and injury to the people, who have, under God, the highest
18 
NO MILITARY POWER TO RETURN SLAVES.
moral and legal title to the services of the sympathizing and
well affected of the whole nation. He who inhumanly and
in violation of law rejects the offer to the Republic of devoted
service, and thrusts the devoter back to wicked torments and
into the ranks and trenches of the traitors, whence he may
never escape more, commits manifold moral treason, to say
the very least of it. If he be a military officer, acting
under orders, he should disobey them; for by the Rules and
Articles established by Congress for the government of the
army, no officer or soldier is bound to obey an unlawful
order. If he acts on his own responsibility, and with a
design of " giving intelligence" and " aid" to the enemies
of the United States, he ought to suffer death. If he err
from mere force of habit and tradition, like the Scythian
slaves, who after beating their masters in a succession of
combats with the sword, submitted trembling and terrorstricken, when their masters flung down the sword and drew
their whips, he should be erased from the army rolls, as a
cripple.   If he be a cabinet or other high civil officer,
directing or counselling the rendition of a slave by the
military arm, he should be removed by the President, or impeached and east out by Congress. A few stern and vigorous
examples would teach our foes and friends too, together with
the whole nest of pernieious spies, prostitutes, and traitors in
the metropolis, that it is not a cheap and trivial affair to attempt the life of a nation!
There is no principle or rule of war which authorizes us to
treat slaves, flying to us from traitors and rebels, in any 
other manner than we would white deserters and refugees from /
their armies  and hangmen,  their lynch law  and prisonhouses.
I might rest this point on natural right, on the power of
civilized and Christian warriors to unmake slaves, whom
heathen and barbarous wars originally made; and, above all,
upon the total absence of any adverse principle or authority.
But I will not do so. English and American history furnish
positive and practical support to the position.
Two days after the preliminary treaty of independence
and peace between the United States and Great Britain had
been agreed by Franklin, John Adams, and Jay, on the part
of the United States, I-enry Laurens, of South Carolina, ap
19 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
pointed with them to conduct the negotiation, arrived at
Paris, and insisted upon the insertion of an additional article,
stipulating that "no slaves or other property" should be
carried off by the British army at the evacuation of the
posts in their occupation. The demand was admitted by the
British Commissioners, and the treaty, so modified, signed
November 30, 1782.
A large number of slaves, who had taken refuge with the
enemy's forces, or been captured by them, and not yet removed, were claimed by Washington under the above-mentioned article. But Sir Guy Carleton, commander-in-chief
of the evacuating army, rejected the claim, maintaining that
his prisoners and proteges were not embraced in the stipulation.  He undoubtedly regarded them as freemen and British
subjects from the moment of their capture or reception, and
so not touched by the treaty; and he took good care to
secure their safety by sending them away in the first embarkation some months prior to Evacuation Day.   Honor to
the memory of the brave and faithful veteran! He consented to leave a list of these persons, to the end that those
claiming to be their owners might try their luck, in an application to his government, for compensation. Of course
they failed not to make fierce reclamations. The question
remained unsettled till 1794, when, by Jay's treaty, the
claim was formally relinquished. This was one great cause
of the Southern rage against the treaty and the negotiator. 1
In the last war with Great Britain, 1812-15, no protracted
incursions were made into Southern territory, and few descents on the slave coast, yet a large number of slaves
escaped to the British camps and ships of war. They were
so stupid as to run away from "happiness" to "misery,"
from "kind masters" to " Cochrane the pirate."  These persons were all treated and disposed of conformably to the precedent established by Carleton; but the British government,
contrary to its course in that case, consented to make compensation for them.
In 1836, Gen. Jessup, commanding in the Florida war,
made, with the approval of Cass, Secretary of War, an alliance with the Creek nation, by which, on certain conditions,
they were to furnish from six hundred to a thousand Indian
warriors to serve during the war. One of the conditions
20 
NO MILITARY POWER TO RETURN SLAVES.
was, that they should have "all the plunder they might make
from the Seminoles." By that it was understood, that they
were to have and to hold as slaves all the negroes they might
capture.  This was a revival of the most ancient barbarism,
but quite in keeping with the general character of the contest. The Creeks captured about one hundred men, women
and children. These persons having been brought, after a
long imprisonment and various vicissitudes, within the military department of Gen. Gaines, were protected by him as
prisoners of war, and sent off, in the style of Sir Guy Carleton, in company with their friends and allies, the Seminoles,
to the West. Mr. Giddings, in his "Exiles of Florida," has
given an exciting and humiliating narrative of infinite chicaneries practised by the Executive, the War Department
and Indian Bureau to effect the enslavement of those unoffending people. In contemplating the dreadful moral and
physical desolation which marked that wretched marauding
of the slave democracy for innocent blood and merchantable
bones, it is inexpressibly grateful to listen to the wholesome
voice of one honest and energetic man; and to witness the
triumph of an earnest and timely utterance in behalf of justice, liberty and humanity.
Mr. Giddings, in one of his late letters, sums up the arguments of Gen. Gaines as follows:
"He asserted that in time of war all slaves are belligerents a
muchl as their masters. The slave men cultivate the earth and sup ply provisions. The women cook the food, nurse the wounded and \
sick, and contribute to the maintenance of war, often more than the
same number of males.  The  slave children equally contribute
whatever they are able to support the war.
" He could enter into no judicial examination of the claim of one
man to the bones and muscles of another as property. As a mili tary officer, maintaining the Federal Government by force of arms,
he could not know what the laws of Florida were.  He could bei
guided only by the laws of war, and the laws of any State must,
yield to the safety of the Federal Government." -Doc. House of
xepresentatives, 2d Session, 25th CoGtgress, No. 225.
Under color of a sale by the Creek captors to an American
dealer in human flesh, an attempt was made by civil process
to wrest his prisoners from the possession and jurisdiction of
the General. Ile appeared at the bar, and vindicated his
authority and the rights of the prisoners, citing in support of
21 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
both the well-settled laws and usages of war. In conclusion,
he said:
"I have not yet learned, while acting in my official capacity on
oath, to take the responsibility of doing that which is repugnant to
law, unjust and iniquitous, as I verily believe any favor shown to
this claim would be."
In 1838, Gen. Taylor, having succeeded Jessup in the
chief command, but not in unscrupulousness and subserviency
to slaveholders and hunters, refused to deliver to them his
negro prisoners, demanded by a crowd of Florida claimants
as fugitive slaves. He told them he had no prisoners but
"prisoners of war."  They insisted upon seeing them.  He
replied that "no man should examine his prisoners for such
a purpose," and he ordered them to quit his camp.
The world has adjudged it a crime and a blunder in Bonaparte, that he did not, at the commencement of the Russian
campaign, emancipate, re-nationalize and arm the Poles.
But he was seduced and entangled by his fatal Austrian alliance, just as Great Britain was in the war of the Revolution,
by her tenderness of the supposed interests and deference to
the wishes of the great and numerous slaveholding Tories of
the Carolinas.
A delusion from which even the truest and most thoughtful are scarcely exempt prevails in respect to local limitations
of the war power. That power, like the Constitution, acts
upon persons without necessary reference to State lines. As
the civil jurisdiction of the United States extends to all citizens and residents in peace, so in this civil war, the military
is capable of reaching all rebels, wherever they may be.
Congress has declared and the President has proclaimed no
war against State nor section. A gang of conspirators have
defied the laws, seized the muniments and sought the life of
the nation. War thus evoked aims its weapons at the conspirators and parricides, their aiders and abettors, wherever
they may be found, the same in Missouri as in South Carolina
or Eastern Virginia, and the same in Western Virginia and
MIaryland as in either.
True, there may be no need of marching or mustering an
army at every point where traitors may confederate and
make war upon their country, either directly or by giving
22 
NO MILITARY POWER TO RETURN SLAVES.
aid and comfort to the slave confederacy. But whether such
need exist, is a question for the superior civil and military
authorities of the nation.   It is for them, in the exercise of
a sound discretion, to determine where there are traitors and
enemies sufficiently formidable by their numbers, or by the
secret complicity of local authorities, for the hand of war to
smite. Wherever that may be, within the boundaries of the
Union, or on the wide ocean, there may they, and must they,
if faithful to the duties with which they are charged by this
people, so prodigal of their blood and treasure, strike. And
the seat or seats of war thus determined, do by necessary implication fall under the dominion of martial law; and all
persons and property, within the sphere of the operations of
armies, must be subject to the rules and exigencies of war.
As far as circumstances admit, it is best, perhaps, in practice,
to blend by common consent the action of the civil and military powers, leaving to the former the exercise of all ordinary
magisterial and administrative functions, which do not impinge upon the sterner, and, for the time being, more necessary and vital activities of the armed.
By the Constitution, property of every description, belonging to any citizen or resident of the United States, may be
taken for public use, "just compensation" being made therefor.  This is also a war power, and was exercised by both
parties in the Revolutionary War, each giving compensation
to their friends, and stripping those whom they respectively
regarded as enemies.
Thus I have shown: -
1. That we have at present an unquestionable legal right
to receive or capture slaves to any extent within and from
the territory of the enemy; and to receive those fleeing from
traitors and enemies everywhere, whether they be considered
as persons or property.
2. That we may employ, enlist or discharge them, paying
them fairly in the two first cases, and rendering them in the
last such protection and aid as we would any loyal white
deserter or refugee citizen, escaping to us from the hands of
our enemies.
3. That there is no power conferred by law, municipal or
international, upon our armies to deliver them up, nor to
arrest, detain nor use them, except with their consent and at
an equitable remuneration.
23 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
4. That it has been in violation of law, as well as of their
duty to God and their country, that our military and naval
officers, seamen and soldiers, have surrendered and sent them
back; that in every such case, a grave offence has been committed, for which obedience to orders affords no justification,
inasmuch as all orders to that effect, from whatever source,
are unlawful.
5. That no power exists to arrest by the military arm, or
return a fugitive slave to any claimant, however loyal he may
profess or prove himself to be.
6. That the Government has a clear right, either directly
or by the leaders of its armies, to call the slaves from service on the side of those attempting the life of the Republic,
to the side of those defending it.
As property, they may  be taken-1, to weaken  our
enemies, strengthen ourselves, and hasten the achievement of a
beneficial and permanent peace; 2, as "a removal of the cause
of the war," and the only possible preventive of future wars
whether we form one or more powers-and of perpetual
discord in a delusive peace; and 3, as a necessary punishment of crimes, habitual to Southern slaveholders as a body.
Among these may be reckoned  1. Thousands of cowardly and cruel personal outrages
and murders of Northern citizens, "who have committed
no offence."
2. Scores of felonious assaults in both Houses of Congress, culminating in an attempt to assassinate a Senator
in his seat, a deed applauded, defended and memorized
with a unanimity unusual even for the South; and all for
the suppression of freedom of debate in the highest legislative and executive councils of the nation.
3. And with the same intent, fatal duels, frequent
challenges to the duel, continual menaces of the duel, and
deadly insults designed to provoke the duel or degrade him
who refuses it; whereby the Senators and Representatives of
the North have been placed, during the whole existence of
the common government, in the insidious dilemma of violating law and moral principle, and incurring the general
condemnation and aversion of their friends and neighbors at
home; or of personal humiliation and fashionable ostracism
at the seat of Government; or of compounding with both
24 
NO MILITARY POWER TO RETURN SLAVES.
by submitting to a corrupt despotism, with its pistol in one
hand and bribe in the other, abandoning rights, duty and
self-respect, and betraying constituents and country.
4. Desecration of the ballot-box, the sceptre of the
sovereign people, and committing some hundreds of brutal
murders, together with rapes, and sacking and burning of
towns and dwellings in Kansas, for the extension of slavery.
5. Texas acquired by filibustering, and in sequence a
cowardly and rapacious war, "unconstitutionally begun" and
unmercifully prosecuted against weak, unoffending, suffering
and  distracted  Mexico, -both transactions involving the
guilt of myriads of murders, and both for the extension of
slavery.
6. Other filibusterings in Lower California, Northern
Mexico, Cuba and Central America, and therewith some ten
thousand other murders, for the extension of slavery.
7. Punic faith in violating a compact of peace of their
own proposing, and enviously destroying great interests of
their own creating.
8. The systematic violation of letters and printed correspondence for nearly thirty years, at the pleasure of every
Inquisitor postmaster or his familiars, throughout the entire
South.
9. Proscription of honest and capable men, and the
bestowmnent of official honors and emoluments upon the incompetent and corrupt, until the honors had become null
and the emoluments the rewards of prize-fighters at elections-the pay of mercenaries, enlisted to extend slavery
and maintain the baleful predominance of the Slave Power;
whereby the exercise of the most vital function of the
government, the dispensations of that earthly providence,
called federal patronage, had long degenerated into a mean
and base barter between sectional jealousy, ambition and
rapacity on the one part, and individual greed on the otheran unexampled and frightful system of bribery and corruption-in effect, a new slave trade, wherein "white slaves"
have been bought and sold in the District of Columbia, and
the interior of the White House, as regularly as black ones
outside of it.
10. Burning wretched bondmen at the stake, sometimes by
2
25 
TilE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
sentence of the law and often by mobs, without a single effort,
public or private, to efface this horror of the age.
11. Sacrificing, annually, by over-driving and under-feeding, by cruel and unusual punishments, and by sudden and
mortal violence, more thousands of human victims to Mammon, than were offered up by the Carthagenians, from a higher
motive, to their Moloch.
12. Violating, by unheard-of rules of parliamentary proceeding, imposed in defiance of natural and divine law, of
the guarantees of the Constitution, and of all the venerated
charters of English and American liberties, the sacred and
fundamental rights of petition and debate, with no relaxation
during ten years, except for the insulting  admission of
memorials from Slave States for the annexation of Texas;
and crowning these strange and persistent outrages by an attempt, under the charge of treason, to expel John Quincy
Adams for presenting a respectful petition, praying that Congress would " adopt measures for the peaceable dissolution of
the Union"; although he had moved, in the same breath, that
the petition be referred with instructions to report in favor of
its rejection, with the reasons thereof.2
13. Systematic and incessant rapine, fraud, corruption and
cruelty practised upon the unfortunate natives of our country,
by Southern States, citizens and federal agents,-selected
mostly from the South,- and by Administrations, wielding
in the interest of the slaveholders, and in obedience to their
behests, the whole power of the Republic-treasury, army
and militia of rapacious borderers, greedy of federal pay,
greedy of Indian "beauty and booty," greedy of pickings
and stealings from the commissariat and quartermaster's department; and repeatedly provoking wars of extermination
against those simple and upright peoples by disguising themselves as Indians, murdering whole families of their white
neighbors, and then summoning, in well-feigned terror, the
ready ruffians of the frontier and the nearest garrisons of the
army to the harvest of death.3
14. Enacting and executing, in palpable and virtually admitted violation of the Constitution, State laws for the
seizure and enslavement of citizens of Free States, coming
within the limits of Slave States on their lawful business; persisting for forty years in this flagitious villany, in the face of a
26 
NO MILITARY POWER TO RETURN SLAVES.
judicial decision against the validity of those laws by a
national court, composed of Southern judges; expelling,
with ignominious threats and demonstrations of personal violence, under the direction of Preston S. Brooks, representing
the Governor of South Carolina, the envoy of a Free State,
deputed to test in an amicable manner, in their own courts,
and finally, if necessary, in the highest of the nation, the
constitutionality of those inhuman enactments; and consummating this unparalleled audacity and defiance of all law,
divine and human, by ordaining that it shall be felony,
punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, for a minister
of peace to come within the borders of South Carolina on
such mission of justice and humanity again!
15. Corrupting and subverting, by fraud and force, the
vital prerogative of the elective franchise, and thereby foisting into the highest dignity in the Republic, and, as we have
proudly boasted, "the highest upon earth," two false  and
usurping, to the exclusion of two legally elected Presidents.
And because fraud and violence, striking at the ballot-box,
could no longer serve their purpose of ruling the nation, they
have resorted to treason and rebellion to ruin it.4
16. Reviving slave-trading piracy, and inaugurating Jeff.
Davis piracy.
17. Conspiring and raising civil war for the destruction of
their country, because they are no longer permitted to pervert its power, corrupt its morals, and disgrace its name.
As persons, all the slaves are " within our reach" by
means of that undying love of personal liberty which glows
in every human bosom. To their quickened sense, the dead
silence of despotism only makes of the South a whispering
gallery.   The smallest mutter, from Cabinet or camp, of
liberty to them, reaches with electric speed around the vast
dome, and may summon at a moment myriads to our side,
making of them rapturous defenders of the Union, instead of
forced assistants of its bloody assailants.
27 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
PAtT  IV.
ASPECT OF THlE QUESTION.
It has been asked-Why seek to explode Butler's doctrine
of "contraband  of war," when  you yourself cannot but
rejoice in the result of its application, inasmuch as it has
been the means of rescuing a goodly number of human beings
from wicked thraldom? Conceding that every friend of justice, liberty and humanity must feel a satisfaction in the immediate anid apparent result, I am still constrained to
reply:
1. That the assumption of Gen. Butler is totally unfounded
and false.
2. That the doctrine, besides being false, would be narrow
and impracticable if it were true; narrow, because it applies
to property only, and does not recognize men and women  as
persons; imlpracticable, because the seizure or reception and
possession of property as contraband does not divest the
owner of his right, and transfer it to the possessor. The
right remains in the original proprietor until the property
has been condemned by a court of prize, duly advertised for
sale at public auction, sold accordingly, and the proceeds paid
into court; and then, after deducting the costs of court,
paid over to the treasurer or other proper officer of the United
States. Thus the human chattel would remain a chattel,
with only a change of masters, the cities and towns of Free
States would be converted into slave marts, and the United
States into a regular slave-trader!
Mr. Cameron, in reply to Butler's first letter in May last,
directs him "to employ the fugitives, keep an exact account
of the labor by them performed, and the expense of their
maintenance." HIe evidently understands that the property
is not changed by the mere possession of the captor or receiver, but must await subsequent proceedings. He evidently
means that the fugitives are still held as slaves, subject to the
claim of their rebel masters, and that in some contingency
they may be restored to their possession; for there is no
instruction to give them any compensation for their labor, or
the promise of any. Thus they have been working diligent
28 
ASPECT OF THE QUESTION.
ly and very effectively, it is said, many of them for months,
without the comfort and encouragement of wages.  It is plain
that their wages is reserved for settling day with those amiable people, who have been robbing their servants all their
lives, and in order that they may continue to do it with an
immunity from the reproofs of just men, are now striving to
destroy the nation. With prodigious assurance, they demand
that we send back their slaves to help them do this thing!
This poor legal figment of contraband of war - in addition to its utter barrenness of ultimate benefit to the cause of
justice and freedom, and its standing in the way of a plain
and sensible rule of war, whereby the right of the owner is
divested and transferred by mere capture or reception and
possession of the slave, either as person or property- has
been working incalculable mischief to the highest interests of
the country, and to the confidence of the people in the prudence and vigilance of their rulers.
The express prohibition of commerce with the enemy in
the few specific articles of contraband of war, amounts
to a general license to sell and convey to him every thing
else! Thus some weeks after the capture of Fort Sumter,
and some months after the seizure and capture of our forts,
arsenals, custom-houses, mints, sub-treasuries, and thousands
of officers and soldiers of the United States regular army,
we find our commander at Cairo agreeing with the Tennessee traitors to let all freight, " shipped by or through
Cairo, pass safely, except it were for arming and equipping
the enemies of the United States." And as if this were not
shocking and monstrous enough, the further gratuity was
demanded and granted, that "boxes shipped by or through
Cairo  should not be subjected to an examination of their
contents by being opened, unless information should have
been previously received that they contained arms and
munitions of war destined for enemies."   The condition was
obviously futile, for whether such information were received
would depend upon the caution and secrecy of the enemy!
The negotiator of this nice arrangement with Col. Prentiss
was that sly old fox, Milton Brown, of Jackson, Tenn., the
mover,  in the House of Representatives, of a treaty  by
leyislation-the principal Whig coadjutor of John Tyler in
circumventing  his own  constitutional power, and the two.
29 
TIIE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
thirds vote of the Senate-a degenerate son of Ohio, fully
verifying the old Christian proverb, that "one renegade is
worse than ten Turks."
It is true that by the loud protest of the people, finding
themselves sold, this grand Cairo dodge was pretty soon
stopped, and the Mississippi shut up; yet the same stupid
and suicidal system of supplying our enemies with subsistence for their armies, and lending them strength to sever our
jugular veins, was continued through other channels; through
the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers; by Padueah in Kentueky, and by heavy trains of wagons from Kentucky through
the Cumberland Gap.
Four months ago, (May 20,) it was announced from Washington, that "measures would be taken to stop the indirect
shipment of provisions, which had been going on through
Padueah and other points since the direct (by Cairo) had
been stopped."  Nevertheless, upon the occupation of Paducah, a few days ago, by the Illinois and Missouri regiments,
to the infinite disgust of Gov. Magoffin, we had this comfortable announcement:-"Sept. 7.  The freight books of the
depot show shipments to the South of from one to five car
loads of flour, and as many of bacon, every day for sixty
days previous to its occupation by the Federal troops. Provisions of the value of $20,000 were seized at the depot."
At this rate, probably not less than one thousand earloads
passed through that depot between the closing of the Mississippi and the occupation of Paducah, which connects by railroad with Memphis, and by cross railroads from thence with
the rebel armies in Virginia.
But the mightiest stream of provisions and whiskey has
been and still is running by the Louisville and Nashville
Railroad. Again and again it has been rung in the ears of
fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and lovers, who are
sending off those
"Dear as the ruddy drops
That visit their sad hearts,"
and pouring out their treasures like water, to cripple the
resources and subdue the spirit of this most ungodly rebellion-that " hundreds," nay, " thousands" of carloads to replenish those resources and keep up that spirit, were passing
30, 
ASPECT OF THIE QUESTION.
by that route through Kentucky, and thence on by the great
Tennessee and Virginia Railroad straight to Richmond  and
.Ianassas! Both these Kentucky railways, firom Paducah
and from Louisville, extend by connections to New Orleans,
Miobile and Pensacola; and it is a well-attested fact, that
the army occupying the latter place have been fed, with the
exception of the fish they catch, onil Northern provisions, and
have kept their courage up  during the dull and hopeless
beleaguer of Fort Piekens " with excellent endeavor of drinking good, and good store" of Cincinnati whiskey. Over and
above the immense business of victualling the enemy done by
the foregoing agencies, are the cargoes of the steamers,
plying constantly on the two great rivers which pierce Kentu(cky and Tennessee, and run, by means of the connecting
railroads, through all rebeldom.
The supplies which freight those endless cars and steamboats are drawn mainly from our great West!  An inferior
portion is derived from Kentucky.
If we consider that the planting States have always relied,
to a great extent, even in time of peace, on those productive
sources for the sustenance of their families and slaves, the
serious importance and imperious necessity of the continuance
of them, now that the South has great armies in the field,
and hlundreds of thousands of producers have been converted
into mere consumers, will be self-evident.
This is the state of facts on which a few venal and traitorous individuals of the brave West, sellers of their country,
and dealers in the blood of their fellow-citizens, have been
and are still, more or less operating.  It is a state of facts in
which the law of contraband would prohibit the conveyance
of provisions to the enemy, if it were attempted by neutrals,
instead of licensing it when done by our own citizens!
It is further self-evident, that the absurd, perhaps selfdelusive, and, either way, contemptible position of Kentucky,
has been more deleterious to our cause, and is costing miore
lives of its heroic and self-consecrated defenders, than the
combined efforts of any five seceding and openly hostile
States!  Yet the leading Union and compromise journal in
that State, edited by "a Northern man with Southern prineiples," threatens those whom he is pleased to call "the ultra
North " with the revolt of Kentucky, and her adhesion
31 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
to the enemies of liberty and the Union! This is genuine
slave-driving arrogance and bluster. Be our plain answer
this: Hlaving survived the friendship of Kentucky, we will
endeavor to weather her enmity, which cannot be worse, and
we think would be a great deal better.
If we correctly understand the forecasting and proposed
accounting of the Secretary of War, he is making the United
States the agent and factor of slave-trading pirates and enemies, with whom, by the laws of war, and the President's
proclamation of August 16th, neither he nor any member of
the government, any more than a simple citizen, can lawfully
have any contract, intercourse or correspondence, unless it be
to treat of peace, the exchange of prisoners, the care of the
wounded, the abandonment of barbarian practices in the conduct of the war, reprisals for atrocities perpetrated upon
Northern and Union men, and other analogous subjects.
The fugitives held by us can only be restored by one of
two methods; either by the United States voluntarily relinquishing its claim, or by decree of a prize court, determining
the property not to be condemnable as contraband of war,
which any decent court would certainly do.
The first method must be the one which Mr. Cameron contemplates, for no man in his position would ever think of proceeding to adjudication on such a claim in any court inside of
Christendom. If such be the intention, it follows that our
government is still under the sorcery of the Delilah of compromise, and will continue to be shorn of its strength, and to
be the sport and derision of its foes; for only by compromise
with traitors can such restoration take place. To make it
under any other circumstances would be to incur mortal
guilt.
By the Rules and Articles of War, enacted in 1806,
"Whoever shall be convicted of holding correspondence with,
or giving intelligence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly, shall suffer death;" and by a law of 1790, "If any
person, owing allegiance to the United States, shall levy war
against them, or shall adhere to their enemies, giving them
aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, and
shall be thereof convicted, shall be adjudged guilty of treason against the United States, and shall suffer death."
It was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States,
32 
ASPECT OF TIlE QUESTION,
in its golden days, that the words "owing allegiance" are
immaterial, and that "not only the persons who bear arms,
but those who assist otherwise, are included among those
levying war." Every slave, therefore, who performs a part
in the drama of the war on the side of the rebellious faction,
is a traitor, and slaves might well be warned by proclalmation, not to incur the penalty of treason by aiding and abetting the treason of their masters!   Of course, slaves can
contract no guilt when, in taking such part, they yield to
overruling force, and act under duress; but though they do
thus act, the mischief may be the same as if they levied war
against the United States with the hearty concurrence of the
will.
He, therefore, who from our side sends a man into the
ranks or trenches of the traitors, or a woman into the kitchen
or laundry of a rebel regiment, or either of them into the
potato, corn, rice, tobacco, cotton or cane fields to raise provisions for their armies, or bags and hogsheads of merchandize to fill the parricides' loan, is a traitor.  If one should
enlist men in the North, or in Canada, and send them South
for any of those purposes, or knowing that their services or
labor would be applied to any of those purposes, there would
be no doubt of the highly criminal nature of the transaction,
and no hesitation in arresting and arraigning him for treason;
because he could in no way levy war against the United
States more effectively.  It was decided by the same Court,
in the same case, [4 Cr. 470,] that a recruiting officer, sending men to the ranks of traitors, commits treason, though
he never go to a camp, fort or field.
What mode of "corresponding with and giving intelligence
to the enemy" can be more direct and certain than sending
back a fugitive slave, who has seen our forces, forts and lines
of fortification?  We have received, and are almost daily
receiving, useful information, little as we have profited by it,
and little as we have merited it, from fugitive slaves. As
our armies advance under competent leaders-if fiat is to
be-into the enemy's territory, their topographical knowledge and guidance will be of inestimable value. Already,
in repeated instances, the lives of our officers and soldiers
have been saved by vigilant and patriotic women of Frank
Pierce's "subject race." Subject! just as if he himself,
2*
33 
TIlE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
when he uttered, from the Presidential seat, that apostate and
undemocratic phrase, was not the abject subject of the meanest and most ferocious despotism on the face of the earth
which it contaminates! Those great-hearted women, at the
risk of their lives, have again and again warned our men of
ambuscades, which otherwise would have been fatal. The
refugee slave sent back to torments, sure to be increased by
his escape and his efforts to be loyal, will have the strongest
motive to propitiate the tyrant, who holds his life or death in
his hand, by imparting, though his whole heart be with us, all
the information in his power against us!
Not a single fugitive has thus far been set free, or obtained
an assurance of ultimate freedom. A great number, how
many none can tell, haveibeen thrust back, against law and
without mercy, to chains and traitors; from Fort Pickens by
Lieut. Slemmer, to die under tortures as a terrible example;
from Fortress Monroe by Col. Dimick; from the steamer
Quaker City; from the camps and columns of Gov. Sprague
and Col. Burnside of Rhode Island; of Col. Jones, Col.
Cowdin and Gen. Banks of Massachusetts; Gen. Patterson,
of Pennsylvania, himself a slaveholder, and strongly suspected of Secessionism; and many more.
While our armies have thus been violating law and
humanity, and in effect  aiding and abetting traitors and
enemies, citizens of Free States in the service of the United
States, endeavoring to take on board the steamer Star of the
West some of the troops betrayed by the black traitor
Twiggs, and afterwards captured in their unarmed state, contrary to capitulation, and their safeguard violated, by the
blacker traitor, Van Dorn, -were seized by the rebels, and
sold at public auction as slaves!  These unhappy men-unhappy, I fear, are all who trust this government for protection, except Secessionists and spies-were marched off by
their purchasers to life-long servitude in the interior, nobody
can tell where, and nobody thus far seems to care!  That no
circumstance of aggravation and national insult might be
wanting, they were carried a thousand miles from Indianola
to Montgomery, that they might be put upon the block, and
knocked off under the nose of Jeff. Davis! Has that fellow
been warned, by any word or deed of our government, of the
consequences which such fiendish acts must draw upon him
34 
ASPECT OF THIE QUESTION.
and his confederate kidnappers and flesh-jobbers? Not a bit
of it!  These living martyrs of liberty, more to be com rniserated than those among the dead, have not obtained from
the government even so slight a token of recognition and
sympathy as an official notice of their fate, or a public
record of their names!
Twice has our country engaged in foreign wars for the
single object of punishing this stupendous crime of reducing
its citizens to slavery.   In 1803, under Commodore  Preble,
and in 1815, under Decatur, before Tripoli and Algiers, we
redeemed our countrymen at the cannon's mouth from
captivity, barbarian in name and nature, but far less inhuman than that to which these traitors have doomed the
citizens and servants of the United States, within the last
three months, on our own shores!
So far from discerning any sign of a determination to redeem, as the government should do at any cost or sacrifice,
the victims of this high-handed villany, or to deter, by a just
and necessary retaliation from a repetition of it, we have
seen new enormities of the same kind committed in Florida
and Louisiana. Meantime, the venomous reptiles, who sting
us thus, are threatening, with high and swollen crest, to enslave two Yankees for every fugitive slave whom we shall
sell to Cuba, in addition to the 250 whom they feign that we
have already sold thither! Thus do they invent calumnies
to excuse the crimes they have committed, and new ones
which they meditate.
I have entire confidence in the integrity, sagacity and good
intentions of the President, but I wait with deep solicitude
for proofs of decision, firmness, promptitude and vigor, corresponding to the exigencies of this great crisis in the nation's
life. That this intellectual, high-spirited, industrious, opulent
and powerful people will demand and speedily and at any
price will have, a more comprehensive, searching, cleansing,
trenchant, swift and formidable conduct and sway of its unequalled moral and material forces, and a more complete
executive mastery of the magnificent situation, is as certain
as that Hercules had a club, and did not always grapple the
thievish, brutal and bloody enemies of mankind with naked
hands.   " He cut his club for himself  in the woods  of
Ne inea."
35 
THE  WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
I was one of the most anxious for the election of Mr.
Lincoln; and by suggesting every considerate and reasonable
allowance for the treacherous dismantlings and extraordinary
difficulties and embarrassments contrived for him by his mean
and worthless predecessor, I have striven earnestly to repress
an impatience for aggressive action against so malignant an
enemy, already making open war upon us before Mr. Lincoln's accession; and another impatience, more pronounced,
for the thorough expurgation of spies and Secessionists from
the Executive Departments, and traitors from the city of
Washington. But, now, every true friend of the administration or of the country has begun, however reluctantly, to
feel that time and the prodigious popular movement, now in
its sixth month, have rendered that defence as worthless as
James Buchanan. Some time ago, this impatience found a
little vent through the press in referring to the sudden dismemberment of a British Cabinet at the bidding of the people of England, grown impatient and half frantic at the
national disgrace and virtual murders resulting from their
neglect, blundering and imbecility, in the beginning of the
Crimean war-a war of remote and slight concern, compared
with ours for national existence. A curt and pretty severe
reply was flashed back from Washington, to the effect that
such allusion betrayed a pitiable ignorance of the great difference of organic structure between the Executives of this
Republic and of that Monarchy. Shall we take tamely this
rebuff of red-tape, and subside in awful silence before it?
Few of us are unfamiliar with that difference. We have
had sorrowful and mortifying occasions to consider it; and I,
for one, venture now, through this unshackled and unshackling
press, to declare, that the sooner the feature of the British
system, whereby the administration of it is rendered flexible
to the will of the nation, and the tools at all times transferable from feeble, impure  or unskilful hands, to those
which are trusty and able to use them, the better it will be
for our safety, honor and prosperity, and the perpetuity of all
that is dear and valuable in our noble institutions.
Things have changed since our Constitution was formed.
We  have had  experience, and we  have had trials and
humiliations.    We have lost some prejudices and learned
36 
ASPECT OF TIHE QUESTION.
some new truths. We have ceased, most of us, to mix in
one hash
"The Pope, the Turks,
The King, the )Devil, and all their works,"
and we have painfully learned, that, in its most important
executive feature, our Constitution is a failure, and executive
responsibility to the law, a myth.
When John Tyler was negotiating with filibusters for dismembering and robbing Mexico, pledging to them the protection of our army and navy against the efforts of the
Mexican government to destroy or whip them from its
borders, and,-that scheme being defeated by the exercise of
the treaty-making power of the Senate,-was intriguing to
bring in Texas by circumventing the treaty-imaking power of
the Senate; when Franklin Pierce was backing the Border
Ruffians in their murders, rapes and arsons, with the aid, and
whenever they got into trouble and danger, with the protection of the Federal troops; and when James Buchanan was
found to have been playing into the hands of traitors the
greatest stake in the land or the world-I urged, in each
case, upon some of our most faithful members of Congress,
that these men  should  be impeached  by the House, and
brought to trial at the bar of the Senate. The unvarying
answer was:  " It would  be useless.   The effect, if any,
would be to confirm their malversations, and lend them the
appearance of a legal sanction."  One gentleman said: "As
well impeach Satan before his'Synod of infernal Gods,'
Moloch, Belial, Beelzebub, Mammon and the rest."
Chancellor Kent, having been consulted in respect to
Tyler, replied that his course had been unconstitutional, unprincipled, " would lead to the ruin of the Union," and that
he ought to be impeached. Yet Tyler's sins were white as
snow, compared with the crimson dye of Buchanan's and
Pierce's.
It may be safely assumed, as an established result of the
working of the Constitution, that the Republican executive,
ordained for us by the fathers, is practically as irresponsible
and inviolable as the sovereign of Great Britain.  A vicious
President can do but little harm, if majorities of both houses
are against him; and if both or either is for him, it will al
37 
THIE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
ways be impossible to impeach and punish him, and conse quently to make good his constitutional responsibility.
The error of the Constitution consists in not providing a
tribunal, removed as far as possible from the political arena,
instead of the Senate, to try impeachments.
We, therefore, need, and if we love our country or our selves, we shall have, some new political arrangement to
remedy this capital defect.
The English have for ages recognized and accepted the law
and the fact of the entire irresponsibility of their sovereign.
" The king can do no wrong." But they have never left
themselves for a moment in the helpless condition in which
it has long been obvious that we are lying.
The British ministers are held responsible for executive
offences; and the ordinary method of enforcing this responsibility is by driving them from office, either by voting down
the mneasures they propose, or by a direct declaration of
"want of confidence."
This is the point of difference between the British and
American Constitutions, to which the rescript from Washington, in reproof of the distant muttering of the press, referred.
Seeing, therefore, that our actual position on this subject
is precisely that of Great Britain, why should we not adopt
her eminently democratic custom, and pack off a cabinet, or
part of a cabinet, whenever dissatisfaction with their principles, conduct or measures has become general, or "want of
confidence" has been unmistakably pronounced? If our
American Secretaries value office more than they do the approbation of their countrymen, and the welfare of their
country- for, surely, they are powerless for good, who have
lost or never possessed the public confidence-so much the
worse, and the President ought to remove them forthwith. If
he refuse, Congress should withhold from him the means of
exercising his office and carrying on the government. It
is scarcely conceivable that a continued disagreement and
a dead lock should ever ensue.
That our government has freed no slave, but has prevented many from passing to freedom, and is treating as
slaves all the fugitives who have escaped to them, is evident, not only from their being worked without wages,
3s 
ASPECT OF TIIE QUESTION.
payable to them, but also from their being confined to our
camps and fortifications, or to the jail of the District of
(Columlbia, in which, according to accounts, many have been
languishing.  When  the Massachusetts Third and Fourth
Regimnents-their term of service having expired-were about
to leave Fortress Monroe, taking with them some of the
servants to whom they had become attached and wished to
employ, they were peremptorily forbidden by Gen. Butler.
Fourteen  of their  favorites  were  wrested  by  superior
authority from the Ellsworth Zouaves, under similar circumnistances, within that ancient and famous slave-pen, the
District of Columbia.   Since that occurrence, the Provost
Marshal of the District has issued orders, interdicting the
departure of any refugee slave for the North; while, on
the other hand, Gen. McDowell has forbid them to go
with the army South-a superfluous proceeding, so long
as he was in command of the army.
After such an accumulation of merits on our part toward
the traitors in arms, would it not be a wise and delicate
overture of conciliation and compromise, if Gen. Scott were
to write a letter, by a flag of truce, to the chief of the
traitors, enumerating and acknowledging the little amiabilities practised on their side toward us; toward our seamen of
the Star of the West; toward our defenceless prisoners and
wounded heroes, butchered on the field of battle; toward our
Northern citizens, tarred and burned alive at Pensacola and
other places, and hung everywhere, because they refused to
take arms against their country.; toward Southern Unionists,
continually hung and shot all over rebeldom for the same
cause! And when these and other flowers of chivalry shall
have been gathered for the traitors into one huge nosegay of
overpowering sweetness, tell them that "for these courtesies
we will lend" them our soldiers to pen and guard their
slaves, and a score or two of our regiments to put down their
risings for freedom, if so dreadful a crime as insurrection
should be committed by therm, and their masters cannot conveniently quell it without weakening too much the grand
army with which they propose to take Washington!
In his second letter, dated in July, ordering a change in
the imprisonment of fugitive slaves from the Alexandria jail
to our fortifications and camps, Mr. Cameron directs that
39 
TIHE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
their labor be " paid for," not paid. Here is no freedom nor
justice for the slave, only a change of masters.
In a third letter of " August, 18SI," in reply to Butler's
of July 30, the Secretary marches two steps forward. He
directs that fugitives from loyal masters be no longer surrendered or sent back, but employed, and, as we must presume
from former instructions, the same accounts kept as in the
case of fugitives from traitors. This is, undoubtedly, of considerable importance, and if the intimation, that the loyal
masters of fugitives thus received may expect compensation,
should be sanctioned by Congress, this great class of slaves
may be considered free as fast as they may please to
leave their masters, and take refuge with the Union forces.
This, it seems to me, is the plain and obvious construction of
the Secretary's letter; and yet it is impossible to feel confident of it, in view of the fact that the writer and Gen. McClellan have since interposed to effect the restoration of fugitives to
masters represented to be loyal!  If this be so, the Secretary
of War still hangs fire, and must be too infirm of purpose to
admit of much reliance upon his declarations or acts.
No positive assurance of freedom to the enthralled can be
found in any thing emanating from the government, except
in the confiscation act, passed at the late session of Congress,
and in Gen. Fremont's recent proclamation. The confiscation
act is a virtual invitation to all slaves employed, or intended
or permitted, or given or sold by their owners, to be employed, "in aiding, abetting or promoting insurrection or
resistance to the laws," to flee and take refuge with us.   Of
course, such slaves can never be restored. The act also
makes the same class liable to capture and confiscation as
prize, and enjoins upon the President to cause them "to be
seized, confiscated and condemned." This is interposing the
same delays and embarrassments which must attend the operation of the contraband doctrine, but with the important
difference, that the judicial process in the former will undoubtedly result in the enfranchisement of some slaves, but in
the latter, of none.
The proclamation of Gen. Fr'?lont, a name of good omen,
declaring the slaves of all the rebels of Missouri, FREEMIEN,
is the first word touching the real cause and end of this war
which has had the right ring. It abolishes instantly and ab
40 
ASPECT OF THE QUESTION.
solutely three fourths of the slavery of that State. I venture this assertion, not because there is an equal or any preponderance of the white population and wealth in favor of
treason, but because a rebellion, begun and waged for extending and eternizing slavery, necessarily embraces in its coils
a disproportionate number of the devotees of that basest and
beastliest form of Mammon-worship; and because treason,
like all other crimes, finds congenial nourishment in the rank
pollutions of slavery.
The residuum of slavery in Missouri cannot abide long
under the effects of this brave and broad sweep, but will be
speedily carried into the vortex.
Nor will the effects be confined to one great State. The
key-note is struck, which shall awake the grand symphony,
and usher in the Year of Jubilee.
"From harmony, fromn heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began;
From hlarmony to harmony,
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in MAX."
Here this disquisition originally ended; but the President's
countermand of Fremont's proclamation sinks the cheerful
and hopeful tone of the conclusion into the minor mode.
For this, there  must  be  great blame  somewhere.   A
controversy taking such hold of stern conviction and sense
of duty on one side, and savage passion on the other, admits not of safe trifling nor innocent vacillation. Let us,
then, frankly endeavor to ascertain the cause of the disappointment, and the duty of true men and patriotic Americans
in the premises.
Congress at its late session passed "an act to confiscate
property used for insurrectionary purposes." After providing
for the seizure and confiscation of all property so used, the
act goes on to make special provision for the forfeiture of
slave property, as follows: -
"Whenever hereafter, during the present insurrection against the
lUnited States, any person claimned to be held to service or labor
under the law of any State, shall be required or permitted by the
person to whom such service or labor is claimed to he due, to take up
arms against the United States, or to work or be employed in or upon
any fort, navy yard, dock, armory, ship, entrenchment, or in any
41 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
militaey or naval service whatever against the government and lawful
authority of the Uniited States, then the pIerson to whom such servie or labor is claimed to be due, slhall forfeit his claimr to such
labor, any law of the State or of the United States to the contrary
notwithlstandiing.  Anid  whenever thereafter the person claiming
such service or labor slhall seek to enforce the claim, it shlall be a full
and sufficient answer to such claim, that the person whose service or
labor is claimed had been employed in hostile service against the
iUnited States, contrary to the provisions of this act."
The difference between the scope of this act and of Fremont's proclamation is, that to the number of slaves belonging to rebels, and declared by the formner to be forfeited and
free, the latter adds all other slaves belonging to rebels, however employed. This class would probably be to the former
as ten or perhaps a hundred to one.
The act, therefore, greatly contracts that war power of
the President, by which he might call to the service of the
country all the slaves within the country, whether considered
as persons or property, and whether belonging to traitors and
enemies or to loyal citizens and friends; in the first case, as
forfeited by treason and rebellion, and in the second, as
liable to be taken, like any other private possession, for public
use, just compensation being given therefor.
The repugnance which the government had shown to make
use of the war power, except over law dear to free States,
may be presumed to have been the cause which moved Congress to enjoin upon them the use of it to the extent which
the act prescribes.  With Congress, it was a question of the
tenth of a loaf or none.  They meant  to put the President on the right track.  The President infers that he can
proceed upon it no further than he is allowed by the letter
of the law; in other words, that he can set free no slaves,
except they are employed in the "military or naval service " of the rebels.  This is a correct legal interpretation,
and so far as the civil law is concerned, he is bound by it.
But he told us in his late message to Congress, that under the
imperious necessity imposed upon him by treachery and civil
war, he had been compelled to transcend the Constitution in
order to save the country; and he enumerated as among the
laws he had transgressed, those limiting the military and
naval establishments of the United States, and the act of
habeas corpus. True, he raises a question whether the Constitution does not confer upon the Executive the power to
42 
ASPECT OF THE QUESTION.
suspend the latter in case of war or insurrection, but it is a
suggestion, not a proposition, nor an argument.
The habeas corpus act has been called in England " the greatest thing in the Great Charter "; it is the primary cause why
Inquisitions, Bastiles and Siberias have been impossible for
Englishmen and for Anglo- (not Anyola-) Saxons in America.
It was the high-water mark of liberty in all the political
storms of England, until the Puritans wrung from Charles I.
the concession, that "an order from the Kinfrg's majesty"
should hold no man restrained of his liberty longer than
three days, unless a judge or judges of the King's Bench or
Common Pleas, on bringing the prisoner before them by writ
of habeas corpus, should find that he was restrained of his
liberty according to the law of the land.
The English Petition of Right of 1639, and Bill of Rights
of 1689, prohibit the suspension of the privilege of the writ
except by Parliament; and every State Constitution in the
United States prohibits it, except by act of their Legislatures.
Suspending is repealing for the time being. No power less
than that which makes a law can repeal a law.
The reason why the Constitution of the United States
contains no express declaration to that effect in relation to the
habeas corpus is, that it did not occur to the framers of it
that any body, in a land- of liberty and law, would ever conceive that it could be otherwise!5
This great safeguard of personal liberty the President has
suspended on the Southern coast, at Baltimore, on all the
route to Philadelphia and at New York. He did so on the
plea of the necessity which treason and rebellion had created.
What was the situation of things in Missouri?  The noble
Lyon had laid down his life to hold in cheek an overwhelming
force, which he had scareely more hope of conquering than
Leonidas the host of Xerxes. That force, and two or three
more equal to it, in all 50,000 men, were converging toward
the feebly guarded Federal posts, and loyal people upon the
line and North of the MIissouri. Add to this, traitors of
more than Vandal destructiveness and ferocity lurked and
secretly banded in the territory best affected to the cause of
the Union.  It was the mournful and almost universal conviction of the country, that Missouri, with all its loyal inhabitants, except, perhaps, St. Louis, was lost.
Is there not in this situation ample justification of the
43 
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
General's use of the war power? There was no greater
necessity for it at Key West, Washington, Baltimore, and on
the route to Philadelphia. The President has the same
right to use his power over the confiscation act that he
has to ride on his war horse over any other law, and above
all, over the sacred bulwark of personal liberty!
Gen. Fremont had exercised his right with moderation,
under the circumstances. He might have called every slave
in the State to his standard. Mr. Cameron's order of "August, 1861," removed the distinction between the slaves of
loyal and disloyal masters, so far as fugitives are concerned.
Fremont restricted himself to the slaves of that class, whom
Congress by law, and the Hlouse by resolution, had marked to
be stripped; though there is reason to believe that he might
have gone further with the general and cordial concurrence of
the loyal Missourians. It was not with them, but with Kentuckians, the President's countrymen, that the disastrous
order, "dimming the shine" of the Pathfinder, originated.
The Louisville (Ky.) Journal boasts of the achievement, and
claims the honor for the Union men there!
I have sufficiently considered the false and fatal position of
Kentucky, and in so doing, I have said, in substance, no more
than the President himself did in his message to Congress.
But Kentucky applauds her own "rotten policy," and in
spite of it, she has been lauded by the lady of the President,
a daughter  of Kentucky.   He  himself is said  to have
stifly refused at first to sign "the Confiscation Bill," because "it would cost us Kentucky."   If these nineteen States,
which have saved the Constitution and the Capital, and will
save Liberty and the Union, could have been heard at that
moment, they would have said, in tones of thunder, "Then,
sir, it will cost us nothing that we would not willingly part
withal." Through her venerable and most influential citizen
and otherwise, Kentucky strove to seduce and bully the
Republican party into a degrading and delusive compromise.
The pressure was fearful, and appalled for a time the stoutest
hearts. Ever since that, she has been playing with a steampower of ten thousand horses into the hands of malignant and
murderous traitors.  If slave-driving dictation can ever be
tolerable to American freemen again, it cannot be so from
Kentucky at present; and it is as unsafe as it is indecent for
her to attempt it, or the government to listen to it.
44 
NOTES.
Iote 1. Page 20.
The following "Notice" is copied from a Richmond (Va.)  paper of
July 30, 1795:  "Notice is hereby given, that in case the treaty entered into by that
dd  d arch traitor, J    n  J   y, with the British tyrant shall be ratified, a petition will be presented to the next General Assembly of Virginia, praying that the said State may secede from the Union, and be left
under the government and protection of one hundred thousand free and
independent Virginians."
Note 2. Page 26.
In the memorable contest, triumphantly sustained during thirteen days
by one old man of seventy-five, against the solid Southern phalanx and
their Northern allies, JIenry A. TVise -the arch-traitor, now at the head
of a rebel army, seeking the dissolution of the Union by treason, bloodshed and devastation -denounced Mr. Adams as "a black traitor," because he presented a petition for the peaceful and amicable dissolution of
the Union! R. -ff. T. Ilunter, of Virginia, the confederate Secretary of
State, and R. Barnwell Rhett, of South Carolina, the ringleader of the
revolt, who avows that he and his fellow-conspirators have been planning it
for near thirty years, withdrew from the Committee on'oreign Relations,
of which Mr. Adams was Chairman, because, they said, "recent occurrences
(meaning the great victory of the'old man eloquent') had induced themn
to doubt whether his removal by the Committee would meet the approbation of the House."  Thlomias W.  Gilmer, ex-Governor of Virginia, and
William7 Cost Johnson, of Maryland, mover of the celebrated XXI. lRule,
were other members of the Committee, and w;thdrew on the same occasion.
Johnson is said to have died in extreme degradation from intemperance,
some three or four years ago.  Gilner was killed by the explosion of the
P_eaeemaker, so called, on board of the war steamer Princeton, in 1844.
To)im -larshllll, of Kentucky, the author and leading advocate of the resolutions against Mr. Adams, less fortunate than Johnson, still survives
both famie and character.  They were all strong men, but not so strong
as truth.
Note 3. Page 26.
An  explanation is due for bringing this charge specially against slaveholders.  The reasons are that theirs is the exclusive guilt and infamisy of
persecuting the Aborigines, as a persuasive  to quit their ancient homes
Lid accept banishment to strange lands.  Theirs also is the peculiar guilt,
'ailing this persuasive, of plucking them up, in violation of fsty treaies, negotiatedl andI ratified with them frotm  the tihe of Wasllilgton down 
N  NOTES.
to 1829, and forcibly planting them in new and remote regions. The purpose of this unjust and cruel policy was the extension of slavery over the
fertile "Indian reservations," and the procurement of the most valuable
lands at a low or nominal price. The pretext was that Indians cannot
live in the limits of a civilized State.
Massachusetts, old and circumscribed as she is, and none too good in her
treatment of Indians, has tribes of them, embracing considerable numbers,
still living harmless and unharmed in her bosom, cultivating and enjoying extensive and valuable reservations, and managing their internal
affairs in their own way.
It is a striking and characteristic fact, that the first and last very
bloody and deeply disgraceful quarrel of this State with the natives was
caused by a drunken and dissolute captain and crew of a Virginia coaster.
This man, named Stone, having been fined a hundred pounds and costs
in Boston, and banished from the colony on pain of death, departed for
home. His evil genius led him to deviate and enter the Connecticut river,
where, coming in collision with the Pequots, a proud and powerful nation,
he and his followers, seven in number, were slain.
The  Massachusetts magistrates, seriously disquieted  by  the  danger
which all were supposed to incur by permitting the death of any white
man by the hands of Indians to pass with impunity, undertook to treat
as murder that which was probably nothing but an execution, justifiable
by Indian law.  But the allegations of the Pequots, though they were the
only surviving witnesses of the occurrence, were pronounced "false pretenses."  Hildreth [Hist. U. S. A., vol. 1, p. 238] says- "The  Pequots
insisted that the Virginians had been the aggressors, a thing in itself
sufficiently probable." Palfrey [Hist. N. E., vol. 1, p. 457] says that the
Pequets "protested that the affair was in part accidental and in part a
revenge for ill treatment from Stone; the latter branch of which allegation
was thought not unlikely to be true, as Stone had conducted himself ill
in Massachusetts, and had gone away under sentence of banishment, with
the threat of being put to death if he should return."
The slayers were demanded as murderers, but not given up.  This was
in 1734.  The affair dragged on with mutual irritations and cumulative
causes of animosity-the natural increase from the Virginia seed-until it
ripened into the deadliest hate, and until war by firebrand and sword, unpitying and unsparing of sex or age, ensued. The entire nation, as
noble, perhaps, as any of their brave and generous race, was swept from
the face of the earth, apparently without a fair hearing. In history,
they have not had, and cannot have, a fair hearing.
Of crimes committed by whites, disguised as Indians, I have heard and
read more than thirty years. They have occurred at various points of the
frontiers, Northern as well as Southern, though oftenest on the latter. It
is but just to add, that our Indian system, Indian quarrels and Indian
agencies have been managed exclusively by the Southerners and a few
"Northern men with Southern principles," or rather, of no principle, for
sixty years. The aim of their policy has been to make them feel that
they are "a subject race," to break their spirit, humble  their pride,
debase their character, and appropriate their mines and lands.
The white fiend's game of enacting the murderer at the expense of the
unhappy natives, has been played most frequently in Florida, where peace
was often made only to be broken by the incredible depravity of men eager
for kidnapping Seminole negroes, and for the restoration of the corrupt
and wasteful expenditures of the War Department in that dismal region.
It is difficult to obtain positive testimony to the allegations in the text.
From the nature of the case, the facts are known only to the culprits them
46 
selves.  The following is an extract from a letter dated "Fort Myers, Fa.,
May 24, 1856, and published in the Boston Telegraph: -
"The Ta2,pa Peninsular of this week contains a regular affidavit of a
man or two, who got frightened, and confessed to Capt. Ilooker, of the
Florida Volunteers and others,that they belonged to a regularly organized
band of WVIITE 3IEN, who disyuzse themselves as Indians, and go about plundering and murdering through the country."
Note 4. Page 27.
The principle, on which the proof of this deadly outrage upon the Republic and upon the whole human family rests, is this: The number of
voters in any community where the right of suffrage exists, bears a certain
proportion to) the whole population, the proportion being determined by
the qualifications required for the enjoyment of the right. Where it is so
far universal as to vest in every male citizen, who has arrived at twentyone years of age, and is not a lunatic, idiot nor convict, the proportion is,
one voter to aboutfour and a half inhabitants. In the New England States,
where, in addition to the requisites of age and sex, the paymuent of a tax
within a certain period, and a previous residence within the election district for a certain term prior to the election, are prescribed-and
where, by an exact and rigorous Registration of all qualified voters at
an ample time before opening the polls, illegal and fraudulent voting is
rendered well nigh impossible-the proportion varies from five to six inhabitants to every voter. In the Presidential election of 1844, very closely
contested, the average in all the New England States was one voter to every
five and six-tenths inhabitants.
In New York, where there was then no Registration, the proportion at
the same election was one voter to every four and five-tenths inhabitants,
including the free colored disfranchised; in Pennsylvania, one to every
five, including the same disfranchised; in Georgia, one to four and seventenths, including the free colored non-voters.
In any long-established State, or where the generation of pioneers has
grown aged or passed away, the number of voters under any American law
can never in any given election district, exceed one to every four or fve
inhabitants.
In the memorable contest between Henry Clay and James K. Polk in the
above-mentioned year, turning on the question of annexing Texas, it was
proved, in the Judicial Courts of Louisiana, that steamboats were chartered by the partisans of Polk, took on board all the riff-raff that could
be raked together, consisting of aliens, minors, convicts and vagabonds of
every description, under the enticement of liquor and pay; and then
steamed up and down the Mississippi, landing their pestilent freights to
vote at every hustings, which steamln power enabled them to reach during
the day of election.  Witnesses testified on the stand that they voted for
the Democratic candidate in two, three, or more counties, in that election,
and that the crowds which they accompanied voted in like manner!
The case of Plaquesmines, one of the river Counties -commonly called
Parishes -of Louisiana, will illustrate the whole matter.
At the three State elections preceding the Presidential of 1844, and
at the latter, the votes of that County stood as follows:                        Whig.              Dem.                Total.
1841    -    -    40    -    -         20    -    -        290
1842. —--         93-       -    -   179   -    -    -  272
1843    -    -    36    -    -         310    -    -       346
184 -  -  -        37 -  -  -         o1007  -            1044
47
NOT r, S - 
N  NOTES.
A gain of 698 votes, a little over 200 per cent., in one year! At that
time, the whole white male population of that County was only 803, of
whom, according to the census, 315 were minors, leaving only 408 who
could by any possibility be legal voters, even if the qualification of twentyone years of age had been the only one required; but it was not. The
Constitution of that State requires one year's residence in the County, and
the payment of a State tax within six months previous to election day.
It is a loathsome task to stir such mortal  putrescence! John Slidell
was the chief political engineer of that steamboat fleet, with its ladings of
corruption and death - he that could not interfere to save the life of a fellow Senator, because he was not on speaking terms with him! he who is
now an open traitor, and said to be destined by his confederates to proceed
soon on an itinerant mission!
The illegal and fraudulent part of Mr. Polk's vote in the County of
Plaquemines alone, say 650, fell but little short of his majority over
Mr. Clay in the whole of Louisiana; and with less than one-twelfth as much
fraud in one out of forty-three other Counties, would give him the six
electoral votes of that State, where Henry Clay was absolutely adored.
"An eagle, towering in his pride of place,
Was by a i'oeising owl hawked at and killed."
New York, Pennsylvania and Georgia, all deemed doubtful States, and
therefore fields fit for the fertilizer, corruption, presented, in the results
of those districts, where the slave party was in a majority, and appointed
the judges of elections, similar proofs of illegal and fraudulent voting.
Iaving no Registration, and no check lists, slave-partisans and office-seekers admitted to the ballot whom they pleased.
It was discovered and demonstrated, upon the full official returns of the
votes of those States, that in many of the districts above described, the
vote was so swelled by the increased slave-deinocratic majorities, that
the ratio of voters to population rose to one for about every three inhabitants!  The facts may all be found in the New York Tribune of that day,
and some of them in the Whig Almanac of 1845.
Polk's majorities in the States above mentioned were:
aggregate of 535,882 votes.
P"     331,876   "
g"      "  86,247   "
L"      "   26,865    "
Mr. Buchanan was elected, or rather accomplished an usurpation, by a
repetition of the same corruption, applied as before to doubtful States.
Thus, in Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania, his majorities were won by
notorious and audacious fraud and violence, brought to bear upon the ballot-box. One fact is decisive. It is known that he was lost without Pennsylvania; it is known that he carried the State by only 750 majority, and
there were issued in and from the city of Philadelphia, 6000 false and
forged naturalization papers, to make voters there and in Reading
and other cities of the State.
Note 5. Page 43.
This was the war power, and considerable more.  It was the war power
extended beyond the area, just as Jackson extended it beyond the period,
of war. The treatment of certain presses falls under the same remark.
48
New York,
Pennsylvania,
I Georgia,
Louisiana,
5106,
6332,
2147,
693,
in an
41