be repealed. The bill passed the House by a very large majority. It passed the Senate on the 23d, and received the approval of Mr. Lincoln on the 28th of June, 1864.

Thus passed away forever this relic of barbarism. A law which by its inhuman provisions, its violations of the great principles of English and American justice as secured by Magna Charta and the common law, and still more perfectly by the Constitution of the United States, and the cruelty and inhumanity which marked its execution, had done more to arouse hatred of slavery than almost any other agency.

In discussing a bill providing that colored soldiers should receive the same pay and bounty as white, full testimony in addition to that contained in the President's message was borne to their merits as soldiers, and it was established that the negroes when organized as troops were industrious and obedient; that they made the best scouts, knowing the country well, and that in every particular they performed their duty faithfully; and why should they not? They fought for the elevation and emancipation of their race, as well as for our country. The bill after much discussion finally became a law.

In the debate upon the bill to make free the wives and children of colored soldiers, Senator Johnson made these very remarkable statements in regard to the morality and christianity of slavery. It will be remembered that Senator Johnson represented the slave State of Maryland; himself a slaveholder, speaking of what he personally knew to be true-his testimony proving as will be seen that the family relation was not recognized among four millions of human beings living in this Christian land! That among the colored people, the mothers had no husbands, and the children no legal fathers; and not only this, but that as to slavery in Maryland, where the institution existed perhaps in its mildest form, there was many a slave in South Carolina and the Gulf States, who might well claim to have a wife, perhaps wives and children in the State of Maryland. Let the Christian world remember that the slaveholders' rebellion was designed to establish, secure, and perpetuate this institution! For this cause men violated oaths and deserted their flag, and yet prayed for the blessing of Almighty God!

In this work the author has honestly endeavored not so much to make (in the language of Vice President Johnson) "treason odious," as to make its cause (slavery) odious. He has sought to impress the American people with the unchristian and barbarous character of the institution, and to show that its tendency has been to debase and degrade the noble type of white men which inhabit the lately rebellious slave States.

His justification will be found, he thinks, in the following statements of the eminent senator from Maryland. He says:

"I doubt very much if any member of the Senate is more anxious to have the country composed of free men and free women than I am. I understand the bill to provide that upon the enlistment as a soldier of any man of African descent, his wife and children are at once to be free. No provision is made to compensate the owner of the wife and children if they happen to be slaves, and it of course only applies to such wives and children as are slaves, those who are to be set free, and not those who are now free.

"The bill provides that a slave enlisted anywhere, no matter where he may be, whether he be within Maryland or out of Maryland, whether he be within any other of the loyal States or out of the loyal States altogether, is at once to work the emancipation of his wife and his children. He may be in South Carolina; and many a slave in South Carolina, I am sorry to say it, can well claim to have a wife, and perhaps wives and children, within the limits of Maryland. It is one of the vices, and the horrible vices of the institution, one that has shocked me from infancy to the present hour-the whole marital relation is disregarded. They are made to be practically and by education, forgetful or ignorant of that relation. When I say they are educated, I mean to say they are kept in absolute ignorance, and out of that, immorality of every description arises, and among the other immoralities is that the connubial relation does not exist."*

The war thus made to perpetuate slavery, he hoped through the justice of God would strike down the institution forever. He said:

"The men who were here preaching their treason from these desks, telegraphing from these desks-I saw it, though I was not a member, and my heart burned within me-for their minions, or the deluded

⚫ Vol. 50 Congressional Globe, 38th Congress, page 396.

masses at home, to sieze upon the public property of the United States, its forts, its means, its treasure, its material of war, and who were seeking to seduce from their allegiance officers of the army and navy of the United States; they have done it; and they were told that such would be the result. They did not believe it. They believed that your representatives would not have the firmness to try the wager of battle. They believed, I have heard them say so, that a southern regiment could march without resistance, successfully from Washington to Boston, and challenge for themselves independence in Faneuil Hall. Sad delusion! Gross ignorance of the character of your people! You were free and you knew its value. You are free, and you are brave because you are free; and as I have told them over and over again, let the day come when in their madness they should throw down the gage of battle to the free States of the Union, and the day of their domestic institution will have ended. They have done it. I have said it was, as against them, retributive justice. Hoping and believing that their effort will be fruitless, that their treason will fail in its object, that the authority of the government will be sustained, and the Union be preserved, I thank God that as a compensation for the blood, the treasure, and the agony which have been brought into our households, and into yours, it has stricken now and forever this institution from its place among our states."

Thus spoke a loyal Senator, though a southern slaveholder. On the 3d of February, 1863, Mr. Sherman, the distinguished Senator from Ohio, announced his conversion to emancipation. He said:

"I believe that the employment of negro slaves in the Southern States will result in emancipation in all those States, and as the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts proposes to employ negro slaves in the army and navy, and to invite them by bounties, by high pay, by uniform, by all the inducements now held out to our own soldiers and sailors, the result will be universal emancipation in this country.*

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"The most eloquent, the most gifted, the wise, the learned, each and all of the great names that have adorned American history in convention and in either House of Congress, have expended their eloquence, their learning, all the artillery of excited debate on the slavery question, as it effected a single slave or an unpopulated territory. It devolves upon us now to pass upon a guarantee, a pledge, which, if made, honor and public faith will never hereafter allow the Nation to withdraw; a Volume 50, Congressional Globe, page 438.

pledge, which, if redeemed, will directly emancipate a majority of the slaves in this country, and in its logical consequences, within a short time, will make every human being within our limits free, unless he forfeits his freedom by his crime.

"The race whose military service we require, has yielded forced labor, unrequited toil, to ours, for generations. If we induce them to incur the risk of death and wounds in war, upon the promise of emancipation, and do not redeem that promise, we add perfidy to wrong. The soldier who has worn our uniform, and served under our flag, must not hereafter labor as a slave. Nor would it be tolerable that his wife, his mother, or his child should be the property of another. The instinctive feeling of every man of generous impulse would revolt at such a spectacle. The guarantee of freedom for himself, his mother, his wife and his child, is the inevitable incident of the employment of a slave as a soldier. If you have not the power, or do not mean to emancipate him, and those with whom he is connected by domestic ties, then in the name of God and humanity, do not employ him as a soldier. Let him, in his servitude at least, be free from the danger incident to a free man. If I had doubts about the power to emancipate the slave for military service, I certainly would not vote to employ him as a soldier. '*

After an elaborate and exhaustive review of the action of the United States and other nations in regard to the employment of slaves, he said:

"I have thus Mr. President, perhaps at the risk of being wearisome, shown that in ancient and in modern times, by all civilized nations, by our own country and by our enemies in all of our wars, negro soldiers, both free and slave, have been used in the military service, and in every case where slaves have been so used, they have been secured their liberty. It would be an intolerable injustice to which no people would ever submit; to serve in the military service without securing that greatest of boons. My answer then, to the main question, whether the employment of negroes, free or slave, is justified by the laws of war, is, that by the practice of all nations it is justified."

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"I believe the war has been protracted so long, because we have feared, through prejudice, and probably on account of old party relations, to exercise the great powers that are invested in us. I believe that from the beginning, when the rebels assumed the position of enemies, we should have armed against them the whole negro population • Volume 50, Congressional Globe, page 439

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of their country. They need not tell me that if we arm the negroes, they will arm them. They cannot arm their negroes unless they prom ise them their freedom. If they promise them their freedom, their whole confederacy crumbles into dust. Their whole confederacy is built, as Mr. Stephens said, on the idea that man should own property in man; that the negro is inferior and must be held subordinate to the white race; that he must be held a slave. "To all the slaves in all the rebel States, I would secure freedom to the last man, woman and child. I never would allow the men who have rebelled against the best government God ever gave to man, to own a slave, or, I was about to say, to own any other property. They are outcasts. They have rebelled. Their rebellion was causeless. I have no pity for them in all the suffering that may be heaped upon them, in their own generation. For those men who domineered in this Senate, who domineered in the other House, who converted our political bodies into arenas for the defense of slavery, for those men who, when fairly beaten in a political contest, took up arms to overthrow the Government, I have not the slightest sympathy or respect. They are not only enemies but they are traitors, and I will enforce against them not only the laws of war, but the municipal laws of our own country as to treason.*

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"On the subject of emancipation, I am ready now to go as far as any Like all others, I hesitated at first, because I could not see the effect of the general project of emancipation. I think the time has now arrived when we must meet this question of emancipation boldly and fearlessly. There is no other way. Slavery is destroyed, not by your act, sir, or mine, but by the act of this rebellion. I think, therefore, the better way would be to wipe out all that is left of the whole trouble, the dead and buried and wounded of this system of slavery. It is obnoxious to every manly and generous sentiment. The idea that one man may hold property in the life of another, may sell him like cattle, is obnoxious to the common sentiment of all. Now, when the power is in our hands, when these rebels have broken down the barriers of the Constitution, when they must be treated by the laws of war, when we dictate those laws, not the President, let us by law meet this question of emancipation boldly and fearlessly. I am prepared to do it, and to vote to-day, to-morrow, or any day for a broad and general system of emancipation."t

On the 8th of March, the young and brilliant Senator from

⚫ Vol. 50 Congressional Globe, page 444. † Vol. 50, Congressional Globe, page 445.