THE POWER, DUTY, AND NECESSITY OF DESTROYING SLAVERY IN 
 
 THE REBEL STATES. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. ISAAC N. ARNOLD, OF ILLINOIS. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY C, 1S04. 
 
 The House being in Committee of the "Whole on the State of the Union, and having under con¬ 
 sideration the President’s proclamation, Mr. ARNOLD said : 
 
 Mr. Chairman : In June, 1S5S, a comparatively unknown man uttered in the State 
 House at Springfield, Illinois, a sentiment which is already historical. Its philosophy, 
 its profound sagacity, its prophetic prescience, its unparalleled boldness and hon¬ 
 esty, were characteristic of the man, who, then obscure, has become already, to-dav, 
 the foremost character in American history. The sentiment was this : 
 
 “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this Government cannot perman- 
 ently exist half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved: I do not exr-ect the 
 house to fall; but I expect it will cease to be divided.” 
 
 This, the first emphatic enunciation of the philosophical fact of the antagonism 
 between liberty and slavery, the eternal and “ irrepressible ” conflict between them, 
 electrified the country, and made Abraham Lincoln President of the United States! 
 
 The moment the fact is recognized that liberty and slavery are antagonistic, and 
 that thei% can be no peace between them—that our country, all of it, must pass into 
 the dark night of slavery, or all of it emerge into the clear light of freedom—all 
 loyal, patriotic men become at once anti-slavery men, abolitionists. 
 
 Such I avow myself here, to-day, and I shall deem it a proud distinction if I can 
 merit the name by aiding in bringing about the entire abolition of slavery in mv 
 suffering country. 
 
 And a^, when in the palmy days of the Roman republic, the people came to feel, 
 by an instinctive conviction, that Carthage must be destroyed that Rome might live, 
 so, to-day, the American people feel that slavery roust die that liberty and the Union 
 ^may live. “ Delenda est Carthago ” became then the motto of every loyal, patriotic Ro¬ 
 man. “Down with slavery” is becoming the motto of every loyal,"' patriotic American. 
 .~^ s . R° man constancy, courage, and persistence finally triumphed over Carthage 
 so will American constancy, courage, and determination triumph over slavery. = ’ 
 
 When the Son of God proclaimed a common Father and the universal brotherhood ■ 
 of man, He enunciated the great moral principle which brought on the irrepressible 
 conflict with slavery. It is difficult, it seems to me, for a man to recognize fully the 
 truth of IBs teaching, in the light of this rebellion, without becoming an opponent 
 of slavery. Just to the extent that Christianity prevails, slavery will disappear. 
 The glorious light of Christianity must fade from the earth, or slavery cease It is ' 
 a relict of a barbarous and a savage age, and, thank God, it is melting rapidly awav 
 before the light of the nineteenth century. 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF LIBERTY. 
 
 , W ® U * (1 be a ' m .°st interesting task to retrace the footprints of liberty, amidst 
 the dust and rubbish which have gathered over the history of the past; 'to follow 
 the ofttimes obliterated pathway by which, since Christ’s sermon on the mount 
 freedom regulated by law has been developed into its present majestic and grand 
 proportions. I hesitate not to .affirm that all that there is which is valuable in 
 republican and free institutions has its foundation in the sublime morality and broa 1 
 humanity of the Bible. The glorious theme of man’s struggle through the age' 
 fm libei t}, is yet to be written. Historians have told us much of courts and camps 
 of the changes of dynasties, of battles by land and on the sea ; but who among then 
 has traced the history of man’s progress, and his struggles, through the a£s for 
 
 \ l t b T Ul the pUrSU,t 0f ha PP inese ? ” This history, even as presented by 
 that nation and race most interesting to us—the English—has yet to be fully wrif- 
 
 dL T nfV m ° mn has yet to write who has gone back and‘recorded for } ii8 the • 
 dawn of freedom among the early Saxons, its memorable triumph on the field of 
 
 A*™ ym j d ki / trUggle9 through the reigns of the Henrys and the Edward* its 
 fierce and bloody contest with Charles the First, the Roundhead against the Cav- 
 a ier; thence to the Petition of Right, pausing with sad steps at the grave of Ha mb 
 
 on« S ” 8 I': 8Ca T ol t, 0f ( RU98ell J and AI S*T" ; thence t 0 g the revoTnZ 
 
 Of 16S8 the gradual but sure advance to the noble efforts of Fox and Erskine and 
 Curran to secure freedom of speech, liberty of the press, and trial by jury down to 
 
 SeiZZTr? ::iVrL lhe } Ens,! i comt,tut, .r' wbe ° wd 
 
 eUvtw cannot^breathtflrrEngiand!” aimin ^ “ ^ ““ #f tb « " th-t 
 
 God speed the hour when the Chief Justice of our land may truthfully announce 
 
2 
 
 the same fact. Then, and not till then, would I have crowned the dome of this Capi¬ 
 tol with the statue of Liberty. The great English bard who expiated a life of 
 follies by giving himself a martyr to Greece, has said : 
 
 “ Freedom’s battle, once begun, 
 
 Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, 
 
 Though baffled oft, is ever won.” 
 
 The historian who writes the story of man’s progress from slavery and barbarism 
 to Christian civilization and liberty, will find no more interesting page than that 
 which is now being filled with the struggle in which we are engaged; none where 
 the contest between liberty and slavery has been more clearly defined ; none upon 
 a grander theater; none where the combatants, by their numbers, genius, ability, 
 and heroism, have given more dignity and sublimity to the contest. 
 
 WEAPONS OF FREEDOM. 
 
 When, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln uttered the philosophic truth that freedom and 
 slavery could not permanently exist together—that our country would become all 
 free or all slave—be did not anticipate any but a moral conflict. The weapons by 
 which he expected freedom to triumph were the weapons of truth and free discus¬ 
 sion. Free speech, a free press, reason, the schoolmaster, the sermon, the lecture, 
 the printing-press, the telegraph, the ballot: these were the agencies, the weapons, 
 by which the battle was to be fought. It was with the ballot, and not with bullets, 
 the victor} 7 was expected to be won. The victory was won by these peaceful 
 agencies in the election of Abraham Lincoln as President. Slavery, conscious that 
 it could not stand free discussion, that it must be destroyed if free speech and a 
 free press were tolerated, appealed from the ballot-box to the sword, and brought 
 upon the country this terrible war. 
 
 SLAVERY MUST DIE BY THE LAWS OF WAR. 
 
 Slavery having plunged the nation into this war, it is fit that it should die by the 
 laws of war. Slavery stands before the world to day guilty of all the calamities of 
 our'country. Every dollar expended, every suffering endured, every drop of blood 
 spilled, every wound, and every death, on every battle-field and in every hospital, 
 is the penalty we pay for the existence and toleration of American slavery. 
 
 It is to-day a rebel and a traitor. Let us declare it an outlaw under our Con¬ 
 stitution and laws. 
 
 There has never been a day since our existence as a nation when slavery was loyal 
 to the Constitution and the Union. Now an open enemy, striking at the heart of 
 the Republic, it has always been a plotting, stealthy, secret traitor, undermining 
 the Constitution, and sapping the foundations of our liberties. 
 
 INDICTMENT AGAINST SLAVERY. 
 
 The counts of the indictment against slavery, were I to recapitulate its outrages and 
 its wrongs, from the organization of the Government down, would swell to volumes. 
 
 The effects of slavery in retarding our national growth and prosperity are ap¬ 
 parent at a glance. 
 
 The finest portion of our country, with the richest soil, situated in the most genial 
 climate, has been blighted by this curse. Watered by navigable streams, nearer to 
 the sun, with every element of prosperity and wealth showered upon it, yet poor, 
 sparsely settled, with neither thrift, nor comfort, nor commerce, nor manufactures, 
 nor culture, nor art, nor intelligence ; all because labor was not free. AY bile sterile, 
 rocky, cold, bleak, barren New England, under the influence of free labor, smiles 
 with abundant harvests, every valley blooms like a garden, every hill shelters a 
 thriving village ; with every element of comfort, with a commerce whitening every 
 sea, with skilled and intelligent labor which sends its manufactures to the uttermost 
 parts of the earth. Why is this? Because liberty dwells among the mountains of 
 New England, and slavery blackens and desolates the sunny plains of the South. 
 
 In the one you find the happy home, the school-house, the church, the lyceum, the 
 newspaper, the railroad, the telegraph ; and everywhere domestic comfort and do¬ 
 mestic virtue, refinement, culture, the arts, taste, Christian civilization in its highest 
 forms. In the other, you find the great plantation, the slave-pen, squalor, poverty, 
 • misery; in place of the school-house, the slave market, where children, boys and girls, 
 are bought and sold ; ignorance, brutality ; without art, without literature, without 
 inventions or labor-saving machinery; everywhere slavery opeiating as a moral 
 blight, an intellectual extinguisher, reducing rapidly a once noble people into barba¬ 
 rism. * Such are the results of slavery. These results as naturally follow free labor, 
 and the degradation of labor, as that the summer produces fruit and the winter 
 destroys it. 
 
 AM history demonstrates that the feet that are fettered, and the hanu3 that are man¬ 
 acled cannot contend with those that are free. The hand that is enslaved produces 
 bo work of merit. The brain that conceives and the hand that executes all gieat 
 things must be free. 
 
3 
 
 9 
 
 n 
 
 77 ? 
 
 ** i 
 
 God has established the great law of compensation, that true national greatness 
 can never grow up from wrong and wickedness, and we behold to-day in our coun¬ 
 try its most striking illustration. 
 
 All history teaches that ignorance, vice, pauperism, and barbarism are the natural 
 and inevitable results of the degradation of labor. It is quite time to cut loose this 
 millstone from about our necks. 
 
 SLAVERY BECAME MASTER OF OUR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Slavery having, in an unfortunate moment been tolerated by the framers of our 
 Constitution, under the mistaken belief that it would be but a temporary evil, soon 
 aspired to and became the master of the Government. Having intrenched itself in 
 the very citadel of political power, conscious of its inherent weakness, it demanded 
 additional territory for its expansion, first Louisiana, then Florida, then Texas. 
 These territories, vast enough for an empire, having been secured, slavery then de¬ 
 manded the repeal of the Missouri line that it might carry its curse North as well 
 as South and West. 
 
 Why need I remind the people of the perfidious repeal of the Missouri compromise, 
 showing the slaveholder’s promise in this instance to be as sacred as a gambler’s 
 word or a secessionist’s oath? The story of the sublime struggle in Kansas, between 
 fraud and violence and outrage on one side, and heroic firmness on the other, has 
 not faded from the memory of the people. Her prairies, red with the blood of the 
 martyrs to liberty, her valleys, black with the cinders of her burned and devastated 
 towns and villages, attest alike the devotion of her people to liberty and the savage 
 barbarity of her enemies. All honor to Kansas 1 She was, indeed, the rock against 
 which the turbulent waves of violence rolled in vain. Single-handed she success¬ 
 fully resisted the slave power backed by the Federal Government. 
 
 Up to this period of the struggle, the career of the slaveholders in their lust of do¬ 
 mination had met with no seroius check. Slavery was absolute on the bench of the 
 Supreme Court; it dictated in the national councils; it furnished the Presidents, or 
 designated the most subservient tool it could purchase among its northern sy¬ 
 cophants to occupy the Executive Mansion. It was a ruler in the Halls of Con¬ 
 gress. The Army and the Navy, with West Point and the Naval School as its nur¬ 
 series—the training from which yet lingers—were its right and left hand to carry 
 out its purposes. The national treasure, collected in large proportion at the North, 
 was expended mainly at the South and to fill the pockets of slaveholders. The 
 qualifications for your representatives abroad were fealty to slavery. Every new 
 Territory was filled with the minions of this slave power, and was a3 regularly 
 trained up to the interests of slavery as the proteges of Jefferson Davis in military life 
 were trained to his will. 
 
 QUESTIONS OF TEACE AND WAR. OF FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC FOLICY, CONTROLLED AND 
 
 SHAPED BY SLAVEHOLDERS. 
 
 The slaveholder held the purse and the sword; he was king at the White House, 
 a ruler here in this Hall, a despot in the Senate, and everywhere a tyrant. 
 
 Such was the position of the slaveholder in 1858. 
 
 SLAVERY HAD REVOLUTIONIZED TOE GOVERNMENT AND DESTROYED TOE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Meanw r hile slavery had revolutionised the Government. The great principles of 
 Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence had ceased to have practical ex¬ 
 istence in a large part of the Union. Liberty of speech, freedom of the press, and 
 trial by jury had, to a great extent, disappeared in the slave States. Indeed, that 
 portion of the so called Republic had ceased to be a government of law, and had 
 become a government of a tyrannic, cruel oligarch}”, more odious, despicable and 
 cruel than any on earth. There was no redress for any outrage, however cruel, if 
 perpetrated in behalf and at the behest of slavery. The vengeance of the slave¬ 
 holder against the man who spoke or published in behalf of liberty was sharp, 
 speedy, and unrelenting. The bowie-knife and the bludgeon, the halter, and even 
 the stake, were the instruments of violence and torture resorted to by lynch 
 judges who found any bold enough to question the divinity of the “pecular institu¬ 
 tion.” In the slave States of this Union an anti-slavery man had no rights which a 
 slaveholder felt bound to respect. In those States the Constitution had disappeared. 
 I say, then that slavery had established a revolution in the slave States, overturned 
 a republican form of government and established a depotism in its place. 
 
 The degeneracy and barbarism produced by slavery are etrikingly illustrated by 
 Virginia. Before the rebellion a chief source of her wealth was in the cargoes and 
 cofiles of men, women, and children she raised and sent to the Gulf States for sale. 
 Some }”ears she exported her forty and fifty thousand ; and this was done without a 
 blush in the grand old Commowealth of Virginia—the land of Washington, the mo¬ 
 ther of statesmen! 
 
 Let us pause a moment, Mr. Chairman, and contemplate the saddest spectacle of all 
 this war—Virginia as she is to-day. She was worthy of her early pre-eminence. 
 Her early history was brilliant indeed. Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, 
 
4 
 
 Madison, and Marshall, all men of whom any nation might be proud. There is 
 something grand and majestic in the physical conformation of the old Commonwealth. 
 'With the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge running through her entire extent, she 
 seems fashioned for the abode of freemen. When we remember that her greatest 
 writer penned the Declaration of Independence and the Ordinance of 1787, and that 
 he declared that in a contest between her slaveholders and their slaves the Almighty 
 had no attribute which would take sides with the master; and when we look upon 
 her to-day, and see to wliat slavery has reduced the proud old Commonwealth, it is 
 indeed the saddest spectacle of the war. She is being purged as with fire; she will 
 pass through this agony, and come out of it restored, emancipated, disenthralled, and 
 regenerated. Once more shall she be hailed as the mother of States—free States— 
 and statesmen. Mount Yernon and Monticello will again become the Meccas of the 
 American patriot. Through the dark clouds which now envelop her the bow of 
 promise shall reappear; that bow shall rest upon liberty. When she shall have 
 passed through this agony, and shall arise freed and regenerated, when her every 
 petty tyrant shall have been dethroned, then will her stern old motto, “ Sic semper 
 tyrannis” have a new and glorious significance. 
 
 In view,then, of all the curses which slavery has inflicted upon the country, I im¬ 
 peach American slavery before the American people and their Congress, and demand 
 whether it shall still live. 
 
 I charge slavery with treason and with murder; I charge it with the murder of 
 every Union soldier who has been sacrificed since the rebels fired upon Fort Sumter; 
 
 I charge it with the assassination of Ellsworth and Lyon and Baker and McCook, and 
 the whole army of martyrs who have been perfidiously slain by slaveholders since 
 they began the 1’ebellion; I charge it with a conspiracy to undermine and subvert 
 the liberties and Constitution of my country, to erect a despotism upon its ruins; 
 
 I charge slavery with the death of all those who have fallen in this war. It has 
 dug the half million of graves for patriots and rebels made by this war; and those 
 who sleep there would, but for this cursed institution, to-day be living in peace 
 and fraternity. 
 
 In the name, then, of these dead, in the name of the widows and orphans thus * 
 created, in the name of our country which it has desolated, in the name of the Con¬ 
 stitution which it has sought to overthrow, I demand the abolition of American slavery. 
 
 YOU CAN HAVE NO PEACE WHILE SLAVERY EXISTS. 
 
 You can have no permanent peace while slavery lives. A truce } 7 ou might have, 
 possibly, until it could recover its power; but peace, never. Your contest with it 
 is to the death. Your implacable enemy now reels and staggers. Strike the de¬ 
 cisive blow. You could not if you would, and you ought not if you could, make 
 terms of compromise with slavery. You have abolished it at this capital. You have 
 forever prohibited it in all your Territories. Your Government has hung a man 
 for participating in the slave trade. You have admitted West Virginia free. You 
 have acknowledged the independence of Hayti.' You have enlisted, and are enlist¬ 
 ing, African soldiers; they have carried your banner bravely and triumphantly on 
 many hard-fought fields. You have pledged your faith to them, to the world, and 
 to God, that they shall be free. Tou have crowned the dome of your Capitol with 
 Liberty. At your call Missouri is throwing off the incubus of slavery. Maryland 
 shouts back, through the ballot-box, her joyous answer that she, too, is to be free. 
 Delaware, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana will not linger. Your Presi¬ 
 dent, in a proclamation of emancipation, which, while it has revolutionized the 
 public sentiment and the action of Europe, has secured victory to our arms, has pro¬ 
 claimed liberty and emancipation throughout the territory in rebellion. 
 
 Here, then, we are on the eve of universal emancipation. We cannot go back, and we 
 must not halt. Slavery must die. The sooner it dies, the sooner we shall have peace. 
 
 HOW SHALL SLAVERY BE EXTERMINATED? 
 
 First, I reply, in the border States, by the action of the States themselves. This 
 action will be speedy and decisive. 
 
 Second. In all the territory in rebellion, slavery has been already substantially 
 abolished by the proclamation of emancipation. Confirm by Congress this pro¬ 
 clamation, prohibit the re-establishment, of slavery and abolish it in that part of the 
 rebel States not included in the proclamation. 
 
 Third. Slavery being thus everywhere abolished, amend the Constitution, prohibit¬ 
 ing its re-establishment or existence in every part of the United States. 
 
 Has Congress the power to confirm, sanction, and carry out the proclamation of 
 emancipation, and prohibit slavery in all that portion of the United States desig¬ 
 nated therein? 
 
 WHAT POWER HAS CONGRESS OVER SLAVERY IN TIME OF WAR? 
 
 I claim that the Government has the power in time of war, as a war measure, to 
 abolish slavery wherever and whenever it may be necessary to secure the success 
 of the war. 
 
5 
 
 It is a principle in the interpretation of statutes and constitutions, familiar to 
 lawyers, that, to determine their meaning, you may look into and consider their 
 preamide. This is, indeed, usually the key to the instrument. It states the object 
 sought to be attained by the statute ; and it would be strange, if the preamble re¬ 
 cites that the Constitution was ordained to accomplish a certain specified purpose, 
 if the power to accomplish that purpose is not found in the Constitution. Now, the 
 preamble to the Constitution recites that the people, “ in order to form a more perfect 
 Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 
 promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, «tc., ordain and 
 establish this Constitution,” &c. 
 
 For the purpose of securing these objects a Government was established, clothed 
 with powers adequate, as was supposed, to accomplish these purposes. Now, if a 
 permanent and perfect union between free and slave States has been demonstrated 
 to be impossible, may not the obstacle to such union be removed? If justice cannot 
 be established while slavery exists, shall not slavery cease? Has Congress the con¬ 
 stitutional power to insure domestic tranquility? I submit to the candid and 
 thoughtful men of all parties whether, in the light of the history of the past, the 
 endless controversies and dissensions, from the Missouri question down to the civil 
 war in Kansas, the riots and outrages caused by slavery, culminating in this terrible 
 rebellion and bloody war, whether domestic tranquility is attainable while slavery 
 exists? If not, may not this domestic tranquility be insured by removing the dis¬ 
 turbing cause? If, indeed, there is no medicine for this evil, if this vicious element 
 may not be removed, then the founders of the Government established the Constitu¬ 
 tion to insure tranquility without the power to accomplish the object. 
 
 Among the enumerated objects of the Constitution was to provide for the public 
 defense. Assuming the fact that slavery is a source of weakness and danger to us, and 
 would afford aid and strength to a foreign or domestic enemy, can we provide for the 
 common defense by removing the danger? If a cit}" charter vested in the corporate 
 body the power to provide for the common defense, and a magazine of powder 
 should be established in a populous district, would any lawyer doubt the power of 
 the corporation to cause its removal? If a dangerous and contagious disease should 
 spring up, would the power to cause its removal be questioned ? If a pestilence¬ 
 breeding nuisance existed, could it be removed and its cause be prohibited ? 
 
 Again, the Constitution was ordained to promote the general welfare, and to secure 
 to us and to our posterity the blessings of liberty. Suppose experience has demon¬ 
 strated that we canuot have prosperity, nor the blessings of liberty, without extirpat¬ 
 ing slavery. Suppose the census tables demonstrate that slavery is the great obstacle 
 to our progress; that free labor will produce double that of slave labor; that with 
 free labor 3 'ou will have national prosperity, wealth, every element of greatness ; that 
 with freedom 3*011 will have education, arts,, science, civilization, religion ; while with 
 slavery } 7 ou have ignorance, brutality, vice, barbarism : can we, under a Constitution 
 formed with the avowed object of promoting the general welfare, promote it by 
 abolishing slavery? Suppose it to be demonstrated that liberty and slavery are in¬ 
 compatible, and that unless you destroy slavery, slavery will destroy freedom and 
 republican government, can you secure the blessings of liberty to )’ourselves and 
 your posterity by destroying slavery ? 
 
 THE POWER TO GOVERN THAT PORTION OF THE UNION IN REBELLION MtJST BE IN THE NATIONAL 
 
 GOVERNMENT SO LONG AS REBELLION EXISTS. 
 
 There is to-day no government in that portion of the United States in rebellion, 
 except the national Government. Until it is restored to the Union, the power to gov¬ 
 ern it must exist somewhere. Where is it? I sav, in the President and in Congress. 
 
 That is a part of our country. The United States—the nation—has guarantied to it 
 a republican form of government. None exists there to-day. Jefferson Davis has 
 established a despotism there. That despotism must be crushed, and a republican 
 government established. Everything needful to that end the President and Congress 
 may rightfully do. The power to establish all needful rules and regulations, and 
 make all laws necessary to the restoration of a government republican in form, must 
 exist in the national Government. 
 
 I do not choose to theorize about State suicide, nor whether the rebel States are in 
 the condition, in every respect, of Territories. I call attention to the fact that 
 there is no government in this rebel territory, except the despotism of Jefferson Davis. 
 There is no State government there. There is no republican government there. The 
 loyal cit izens of that part of the Union call upon us to fulfill the constitutional gua¬ 
 rantee of giving them a republican form of government. 
 
 Whatever it is necessary to do, to execute in their favor this constitutional guaran¬ 
 tee, Congress and the President may rightfully do. The right to crush armed resis¬ 
 tance to the Constitution and laws, and for Congress to make and the President to 
 execute such laws as will result in the establishment of a republican government, is 
 then clear. But this right to coerce into subjection,and govern until obedience and 
 
6 
 
 loyalty shall resume their sway, all territory and States in rebellion, is notleft to in¬ 
 ference, nor is it dependent only on those parts of the Constitution to which attention 
 has already been called. The Constitution also provides that “ Congress shall have 
 power to provide for the common defense and the general welfare.” 
 
 Congress also has power “ to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper 
 for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by 
 this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or 
 officer thereof.” 
 
 Now, the President is an officer of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of its 
 armies, and it is his duty to suppress rebellion, repel invasion, and maintain the 
 Constitution everywhere in the Union, and carry out the guarantee to each State of 
 a republican form of government; and this he is to do, when necessary, by force, 
 by war, subject to the laws of war; and Congress has full power to make all laws 
 necessary and proper to carry out, and into full execution, these war powers of 
 the Government, including the well-established 
 
 BELLIGERENT RIGHT OF EMANCIPATING SLAVES. 
 
 If slavery is the corner-stone of the rebellion, can not that corner-stone be con¬ 
 stitutionally knocked out? If slavery is the cause of the war, giving strength 
 to our enemies; if it feeds and clothes their armies, and keeps them in the field, and 
 enables them to keep up their power; and if the President, or Congress, or both 
 acting together, by freeing them, can deprive the rebels of this power, and bring % 
 
 their freed slaves to cur side, and thus provide for the common defense, and thus 
 restore the Union and a republican government to the loyal men of the rebel States, 
 is not the right to do this clear and indisputable ? If we have not this right, then 
 is the Government without the means of self-preservation. 
 
 The Constitution provides that “ the United States shall guaranty to every State 
 in this Union a republican form of government.” Congress has the power to do 
 everything necessary to make good that guarantee. If the emancipation of slaves 
 in the rebel States will tend to the establishment of a republican form of government 
 in the States in rebellion, who can deny the power to emancipate ? The govern¬ 
 ment, so called, existing de facto, in the States in rebellion, is in antagonism to the 
 | republican government the Constitution requires the nation to guaranty. It is the 
 right and the duty of the Government to destroy that usurped and rebellious de facto 
 government, and establish a republican government in its place. In accomplishing 
 this, if slavery stands in the way, may it not be removed out of the way? Con¬ 
 gress, under this constitutional provision, has the power, and it is its duty, to make 
 war upon the anti-republican government now usurping power in the rebel States. 
 
 It has all the power to make that war effective. Has the Government the right to 
 make war, without the right to use the means to make the war Effective ? Can 
 the Government declare war, and is this a mere barren right? No, this 
 Government, having the right to carry on the war, possesses all the powers known 
 to civilized nations to make war effective, and among these powers is the right 
 to emancipate slaves. 
 
 I ask gentlemen this question. Jeff. Davis has made war upon our country, at¬ 
 tempted to set up upon our soil a rebellious government, attacked our capital, and 
 now holds a portion of these States under a despotic tyranny. In making war upon 
 him to subdue him, to re establish our authority, and fulfill the guarantee of a repub¬ 
 lican form of goverument, can our Government do all that one nation can do when 
 at war with another under the rules of war? Surely this will not be denied. This 
 brings us to the inquiry whether the emancipation of the slaves of the enemy is or 
 is not a recognized mode of carrying on modern warfare. Let us see. The end we 
 are seeking to accomplish is to crush the rebellion. The abolition of slavery tends 
 • directly to the accomplishment of that end, and as effectually as to subdue the rebel 
 armies in the field. Without their slaves- the rebel aimies could not long exist. 
 Emancipation not only deprives the rebels of the means of supporting their armies, 
 but it is the most efficient means of bringing the force and power of four millions 
 of people to our side. 
 
 Now, the end we are seeking, to wit, the destruction of the rebel power, being 
 legitimate, and “within the scope of the Constitution,” to use the language of 
 Chief Justice Marshall, all means which are appropriate and plainly adapted to the 
 end, and which are not prohibited by the Constitution, are lawful. [4 Wheaton’s 
 Hep., 421.] I assert, without fear of contradiction, that the emancipation of the 
 slaves of an enemy is a well-recognized belligerent right, and would not be ques¬ 
 tioned by any well-informed person if we were at war with Spain, Brazil, or any 
 other nation holding slaves. Has not our Government the same belligerent rights 
 against the infamous traitor Davis as it would have against a recognized nation ? 
 
 Are the rebels less public enemies because they are traitors also? Can we do that 
 to a public enemy which we cannot do to a public enemy and a traitor? In the 
 case of the Hiawatha, it has been distinctly decided by the Supreme Court that the 
 
7 
 
 United States have all the belligerent rights against the rebels. If, then, the 
 emancipation of slaves is a belligerent right, that right exists in the Government; 
 it may be exercised by the President, as it has been by the proclamation of emanci¬ 
 pation. It exists in Congress, to be exercised, if expedient, by emancipating slaves 
 and prohibiting slavery in all the territory in rebellion. The right to emancipate 
 slaves has been so generally recognized as a belligerent right that it will scarcely be 
 questioned. This power was exercised by Great Britain in the revolutionary war, 
 and in the war of 1812; and the right to exercise it was admitted by General 
 Washington, and Mr. Jefferson, and not controverted by any. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson says Virginia lost t hirty thousand slaves under Cornwallis, and if the 
 slaves had been taken “ to give them freedom it would have been right.” The state¬ 
 ment and argument of John Quincy Adamson this subject hUve never been suc¬ 
 cessfully answered: 
 
 “ I lay this down as the law of nations. I say that military authority takes, for the time, the 
 place of all municipal institutions, and slavery among the rest; and that, under that state of 
 things, so far from its being true that the States where slavery exists have the exclusive manage¬ 
 ment of the subject, not only the President of the United states, -but the Commander of the 
 Army has row er to order the universal emancipation of the slaves.” * * * 
 
 “From the instant that the slaveholding States become the theater of a war. civil, servile, or 
 foreign, from that instant the war powers of Congress extend to interference with the institution 
 of slavery, in every way in which it can he interfered toith, from a claim of indemnity for slaves 
 taken or destroyed, to the cession of Mates burdened with slavery to a foreign Power.” * 
 
 * * * “ It is a war power. I say it is a war power; and when your country is 
 
 actually in war, whether it be a war of invasion or a war of insurrection. Congress has power to 
 carry on the war, and must carry it on , according to the laws of war ; and by the laws of war an 
 invaded country has all its laws and municipal institutions swept by the board, and martial power 
 takes the place of them. When two hostils armies are set in martial array, the commanders of 
 both armies have power to emancipate all the slaves in the invaded territory.” 
 
 The great error in the public mind on this subject arises from applying the provi¬ 
 sions designed to protect citizens in times of peace to traitors in time of war. 
 
 The provision that no person shall be deprived of life "without due process of law 
 does not make it illegal or unconstitutional to kill rebels on the field of battle, 
 Neither do the provisions in regard to the security of property, or claim to service, 
 make it unconstitutional, under the war power, to deprive rebels of their slaves. 
 A claim to service for years, as an apprentice, is discharged by the apprentice’s 
 entering the Army. Congressmay discharge from thisservicein order to raise troops. 
 Congress niay emancipate all slaves to raise troops. If it can discharge a claim to 
 service for years under the war power, can it not discharge a claim for service for 
 life? If t.he nation is entitled to the military service of all able-bodied men, includ¬ 
 ing apprentices held to service for years, is it not entitled to the service of all black 
 or white men held for life? 
 
 Can Congress, by law, discharge one and not the other ? 
 
 As against the right to military service, is the claim of the master to the service 
 of a slave better or more sacred than that of a master to the service of an apprentice, 
 or of a father to the service of his child ? The Government can take my son and your 
 apprentice; can it not take your slave? in case of a foreign war, could not the 
 Government conscript every able-bodied slave ? Can if not do the same in a domes¬ 
 tic war against traitors? Then it seems clear to demonstration that the Government 
 may emancipate slaves. 
 
 The power, then, being clear, in the name of liberty and of justice and humanity, Jet 
 it be exercised. Proclaim “liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof.” 
 
 Let us build upon this rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. 
 
 1 cannot close without offering my tribute of homage to that great man who 
 has given to the institution of slavery ihe hardest blows it has evei received. Let 
 Abraham Lincoln finish the great work he has begun. 
 
 The ureat objects of his life are to crush the rebellion and eradicate slaver}’. His 
 ambition is to live%»n the page of history as the restorer of the Union,the emancipator 
 of his country. For these great ends lie has labored and toiled through difficulties 
 and obstacles fully known only to himself and to God. 
 
 '1’he year that has just closed will live as the year of the proclamation of eman¬ 
 cipation. This act the President declared was sincerely believed to bean act of 
 justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity ; and he invoked for 
 it the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. It 
 will maik an era in modern civilization as clearly as the Declaration of Indepen¬ 
 dence. or the acquisition of Magna Chaita By history it will beregauled as a great 
 act of humanity and jus'ice. As a matter of State policy, its wisdom has ulready 
 been vindicated. Tiffs proclamation, by presenting our national struggle as a 
 dearly-defined contest between liberty and slavery, changed the attitude of Europe 
 towards us. Under its influence and the victories achieved under its auspices, all 
 fear of foreign intervention has disappeared. Since the day of its issue no more 
 florid os have tailed from British waters England’s broad arrow arrests the rebel 
 rams being fined out in her harbors. Louis .Napoleon, following the example of 
 
8 
 
 Great Britain arrests the rebel gunboats in the waters of France. Lord Lyons now 
 rises with alacrity to warn Mr. Seward of a rebel plot in Canada. 
 
 With liberty and union thus written by the President’s own hand upon our national 
 banner we have had Gettysburg, Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Knoxville and Chattanooga. 
 
 It has been the fortune of the President to have his leading measures, however 
 severely censured at the time of their adoption, always approved within a twelve- 
 month afterwards. The emancipation proclamation and employment of negroes as 
 soldiers are striking examples. Let those who deny his statesmanship, or who ques¬ 
 tion his sagacity, note this fact. His magnanimity has no parallel. He has borne 
 censure and denunciation for acts for w-hich others were responsible, with a generosity 
 which has extorted from his rivals the declaration, “ Of all men, Mr. Lincoln is the 
 most unselfish.”, The great fault of his administration, the too tardy removal of 
 incompetent men, has arisen from a scrupulous care to be just. 
 
 1 ask the ardent and impatient friends of freedom to put implicit faith in Abraham 
 Lincoln. Remember he lives for the restoration of the Union and the abolition of 
 slavery. If you deem him slow, or if you think he has made mistakes, remember 
 how often time has vindicated his wisdom. 
 
 One of the most striking and gratifying vindications of the policy and character 
 of President Lincoln is to be found in the reply of Count Gar-par in and his associates 
 to the letter of the National Loyal League of New York. 
 
 These distinguished statesmen and scholars, calm and truthful observers, in their 
 letter exhibit by contrast the injustice which has been done the President by some of 
 the zealous abolitionists of America. They say: 
 
 “ "We, gentlemen, are abolitionists ; and we declare that we have never hoped nor wished for a 
 more steady, rapid, and resolute progress. We have understood the difficulties which surrounded 
 Mr. Lincoln. We have honored his scruples of conscience with regard to theCoustitution of his 
 country which stopped his path. We have admired the courageous good sense with which he moved 
 straight on, the instant he could so do without danger to hisdause or violation of the law.’’ 
 
 At the same time they say with a perfect conviction, that the destruction of sla¬ 
 very is the salvation of our country. 
 
 “We hold it to be of the first importance that the cause of the war shall not survive the war ; 
 that your real enemy, slavery, shall not remain upon the field.” 
 
 The masses of the people everywhere trust and love the President. They know his 
 hands are clean and his breast is pure. The people know that the devil lias no bribe big 
 enough, no temptation of gold, or place, or power, which can seduce the honest heart 
 of Abraham Lincoln. They know that while he is President there is no danger of 
 coup d'etat. Let lfim exercise whatever extraordinary powers the public safety may 
 require, the people instinctively feel that their liberties and laws are safe in his 
 hands. They sleep soundly, with no disturbing apprehensions, while he holds the 
 reins. Impetuous, eager, impatient men call him slow, over cautious, wanting in 
 energy. Remember the times in which we live ; remember the danger of reckless 
 energy, of unscrupulous will and passion. 
 
 You have a Chief Magistrate of clean hands and pure heart; sagacious, firm, up¬ 
 right, and true. Somewhat rude and rough, it may be, but under this rough exterior 
 you have the real and true hero. If he is a diamond in the rough, he is nevertheless 
 real, with no-false glitter or garish pretension. You have in him p, man of that 
 sobriety, of that self-command, of that freedom from passion, of that justice and truth, 
 of that soundness of judgment and perfect rectitude of intention, that has had, in all 
 these attributes, no parallel since the days of Washington. 
 
 Taking the last five eventful years, and Mr. Lincoln has exerted a greater influence 
 upon the popular heart and in forming public opinion than any otherman. If slavery 
 now reels and staggers in its last struggles, it is from wounds self-inflicted, and the 
 blows it has received at his hands. His speeches and writings plain, homely, and 
 unpolished as they sometimes are, have become the household vflbrds of the people, 
 and crystallized into the overwhelming public sentiment which demands the extinc¬ 
 tion of slavery. 
 
 He is a radical—a radical from conviction, not from passion, or hatred, or revenge. 
 In all great radical changes, in running round sharp curves is it hot better to put on 
 the brakes sometimes, rather than to run off the track and smash up the train? 
 
 There are always men who are loud, boisterous, furious, intolerant, proscriptive, 
 and cruel, whose hearts are filled with hatred and malice, and who, to eradicate one 
 evil, are willing to tear up the good which it has taken ages to secure. Such was 
 not the example set by the greatest reformer and most radical teacher who ever ap¬ 
 peared on earth, the Son of God. Mr. Lincoln’s whole theory as a reformer is to do 
 the greatest possible amount of good with the least possible evil. Were he more 
 violent, more carelessly destructive, did he use more violent w r ords, he might be 
 perhaps more the popular idol, but less the statesman and the Christian. This great 
 statesman, this simple, unpretending man, I believe to be the instrument raised up by 
 God to work out the regeneration of the nation by the death of American slavery. 
 
 L. Towers & Co., Printers, cor. Louisiana av. and 6th Bt.