Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, April 1, 1862

New YorK, April 1, 1862.

. . . Regarding slavery, I repeat, let us compress it as much as we can. Let us free, in actual war, as many negroes that come to us as we can; let us emancipate the District; let us keep free every Territory; let us contrive and adopt some bonus for emancipation; let us distinctly emancipate the negroes of the open, avowed traitors; and what with increased cotton culture elsewhere, and the blow which the institution must receive from our victory, after having proclaimed itself a divine institution, it will dwindle and die out, — not perhaps without asking us to pay for the emancipation.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 326

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