The [facetous] editor of the Dubuque Herald says . . .

. . . that if the President approve[s] of the act to emancipate the slaves in the District of Columbia, it will be “inconsistent with every declaration of his life on the subject of which this act treats!” Father Mahony seems to have had an idea that ‘Old Abe’ was something of a secessionist. We refer him to the President’s message we published yesterday. Mahony is alarmed; he says if the president sign[s] this “entering wedge,” there is “no hope for the preservation of the Union, except it be by the direct intervention of the people for its salvation. For “Union” in this sentence, read “Slavery,” and you have our pro-slavery contemporary right on the record.

– Published in Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, April 19, 1862, p. 2