Volume II Part 35 (1/2)
A severe winter had set in. The rebels had shown the kind-hearted President no disposition to accept the mild terms of his proclamation.
On the contrary, it was received with gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth and bitter imprecations. On the 12th of January, 1863, the t.i.tular President of the Confederate States, in his third Annual Message, gave attention to the proclamation of the President of the United States. Mr. Davis said:
”It has established a state of things which can lead to but one of three possible consequences--the extermination of the slaves, the exile of the whole white population of the Confederacy, or absolute and total separation of these States from the United States. This proclamation is also an authentic statement by the Government of the United States of its inability to subjugate the South by force of arms, and, as such, must be accepted by neutral nations, which can no longer find any justification in withholding our just claims to formal recognition. It is also, in effect, an intimation to the people of the North that they must prepare to submit to a separation now become inevitable; for that people are too acute not to understand that a rest.i.tution of the Union has been rendered forever impossible by the adoption of a measure which, from its very nature, neither admits of retraction nor can coexist with union.
”We may well leave it to the instincts of that common humanity which a beneficent Creator has implanted in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of our fellow-men of all countries to pa.s.s judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race--peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere--are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general a.s.sa.s.sination of their masters by the insidious recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary self-defense. Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measures recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this Government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself to informing you that I shall--unless in your wisdom you deem some other course more expedient--deliver to the several State authorities all commissioned officers of the United States that may hereafter be captured by our forces in any of the States embraced in the proclamation, that they may be dealt with in accordance with the laws of those States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in exciting servile insurrection.
The enlisted soldiers I shall continue to treat as unwilling instruments in the commission of these crimes, and shall direct their discharge and return to their homes on the proper and usual parole.”
And although the President and his supporters had not reaped the blessings their hopes had sown, they were, nevertheless, not without hope. For when the sober second thought of the nation took the place of prejudice and undue excitement, the proclamation had more friends.
And so, in keeping with his promise, the President issued the following proclamation on the first of January, 1863.
”_Whereas_, on the 22d day of September, in the year of our Lord 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
”'That on the 1st day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
”'That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members, chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have partic.i.p.ated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.'
”Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and Government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:
”Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemine, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, a.s.sumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St.
Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
”And, by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States, are and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
”And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
”And I further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
”And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Const.i.tution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty G.o.d.
”In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
”Done at the City of Was.h.i.+ngton, this 1st day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, and of the independence of the United States the 87th.
[L. S.]
”By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
”WILLIAM H. SEWARD, _Secretary of State_.”
Even this proclamation--not a measure of humanity--to save the Union, not the slave--left slaves in many counties and States at the South.
It was a war measure, pure and simple. It was a blow aimed at the most vulnerable part of the Confederacy. It was destroying its corner-stone, and the ponderous fabric was doomed to a speedy and complete destruction. It discovered that the strength of this Sampson of rebellion lay in its vast slave population. To the slave the proclamation came as the song of the rejoicing angels to the shepherds upon the plains of Bethlehem. It was like music at night, mellowed by the distance, that rouses slumbering hopes, gives wings to fancy, and peoples the brain with blissful thoughts. The notes of freedom came careering to them across the red, billowy waves of battle and thrilled their souls with ecstatic peace. Old men who, like Samuel the prophet, believing the ark of G.o.d in the hands of the Philistines, and were ready to give up the ghost, felt that it was just the time to begin to live. Husbands were transported with the thought of gathering to their bosoms the wife that had been sold to the ”n.i.g.g.e.r traders”; mothers swooned under the tender touch of the thought of holding in loving embrace the children who pined for their care; and young men and maidens could only ”think thanksgiving and weep gladness.”
The slave-holder saw in this proclamation the handwriting upon the walls of the inst.i.tution of slavery. The brightness and revelry of his banqueting halls were to be succeeded by gloom and sorrow. His riches, consisting in human beings, were to disappear under the magic touch of the instrument of freedom. The chattel was to be transformed into a person, the person into a soldier, the soldier into a citizen--and thus the Negro slave, like the crawling caterpillar, was to leave his grovelling situation, and in new form, wing himself to the sublime heights of free American citizens.h.i.+p!
The Negroes had a marvellous facility of communicating news to each other. The proclamation, in spite of the precautions of the rebel authorities, took to itself wings. It came to the plantation of weary slaves as the glorious light of a new-born day. It flooded the hovels of slaves with its golden light and rich promise of ”_forever free_.”
Like St. Paul the poor slaves could exclaim: