Cleared off
moderately cold; quiet and beautiful weather. Remarkable season. Rode with
Colonel Scammon about the works. Major Comly reports finding about one hundred
and twenty muskets, etc., concealed in and about Raleigh; also twelve or
fifteen contrabands arrived. What to do with them is not so troublesome yet as
at the East. Officers and soldiers employ them as cooks and servants. Some go
on to Ohio.
Nobody in this army
thinks of giving up to Rebels their fugitive slaves. Union men might perhaps be
differently dealt with — probably would be. If no doubt of their loyalty, I
suppose they would again get their slaves. The man who repudiates all
obligations under the Constitution and laws of the United States is to be
treated as having forfeited those rights which depend solely on the laws and
Constitution. I don't want to see Congress meddling with the slavery question.
Time and the progress of events are solving all the questions arising out of
slavery in a way consistent with eternal principles of justice. Slavery is getting
death-blows. As an “institution,” it perishes in this war. It will take years
to get rid of its debris, but the “sacred” is gone.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 173-4
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