Washington Correspondence

WASHINGTON, May 23, 1862

The answer of the President to the proclamation of Gen. Hunter contained a solemn and emphatic reiteration of his warning to the Boarder States.  The country is doubtless awaiting with some interest the response that will be made. – It is, I presume, awaiting with much hope and expectation also.  But if so, I think it is wasting its confidence and indulging a hope substantially fallacious.  The Millerites are preaching the immediate personal coming of Christ.  They declare the world so dead to spiritual things that nothing but the trump of Gabriel himself and the appearance of the savior in the skies can awake it to a sense of its condition and the immense importance of impending changes.  I don’t know much about Millerism, and I believe less.  But I do know, from long study and observation something of the character of slavery and its influences over the judgment and conduct of men.  And I do not believe that this preliminary note of the last trump of Abe Lincoln will answer the purpose of arousing the slaveholders of the Border States to a sense of the condition and the tendency of things.  The President was mistaken when he told them they could not be ignorant of the signs of the times.  They are ignorant.  They have a faint and glimmering vision of them, but they have no clear and lively understanding of the matter.  They do not realize that their institution is in actual and immediate peril.  Nothing but the full blast of the Emancipation bugle, nothing but the flame in the heavens and the shout that shall be heard over sea and land will rouse them to a just comprehension of existing circumstances and the irresistible march of events.  Not until the heavens of slavery are visibly rolling up and passing away.  I apprehend, will any wide spread, practical response be made to the earnest appeal and solemn warning of the President.

I may be too fast.  I am speaking of the subject from a public point of view.  In that aspect of the case, I am correct.  But there is a private argument that is quietly producing an effect, and if it proves extensive enough it will open the eyes of the sleepers sufficiently wide for them to take in the real dimensions of the subject and rouse them to action.  It is the spontaneous dissolution of the institute of slavery on its own motion.  There is not much reason however, to believe that this will prove adequate to the emergency.  It is not probable that its influence can be more than local and partial.  But in some localities it is all sufficient.  If the experience of the counties of Maryland and Virginia that border upon the District were likely to extend into the interior of those States from every free border, and the experience of those states were the immediate experience of all the Border States no executive proclamation under startling auspices would be necessary to awaken sensibility or deal summarily and finally with the institution.  In the adjoining counties of Maryland and Virginia slavery is already almost extinguished.  There is no existing sign of what it was one year ago.  There will, in three months more be but a vestige of it remaining.  In Virginia it is not singular, for the country has been in possession of the military and the homesteads have been deserted.  But in Maryland all the households have remained together and the domestic authority has existed intact.  Yet where are the negroes.  They are not at home.  The hearths about which they were lately so “contented and happy” wear the aspect of desolation. – They are vanishing from sight like dew before the morning sun.  As they vanish, the institution vanishes with them, for no slaveholder is so dull and foolish as to supply their places with more of the same class and so assume a new assurance of loss.  The rapidity of this hegira within a limited scope is astonishing.  A gentleman, twenty five miles from here in Prince George’s county one morning last week waked up to find that all his slaves, thirty four in number, had left during the night without any previous suspicion on his part that they were likely to desert him.  Another, twelve miles distant last week, waked up to find all his two legged possessions, thirteen of them, had left his hospitable board without notice or suspicion.  These families were thus suddenly left without means of carrying on either household or field operations.  In one instance a little girl of twelve, unused to labor, prepared the breakfast, on the other, the men of the house prepared it in their clumsy way.  These instances are but illustrations of an extensive state of things in the district mentioned.  Mean time the season is getting on.  The crops must be attended to or the planters will have no income.  Consequently they are now busy [by] employing other labor.  Very many are telling their remaining negroes to leave, if they want to.  They cannot while the season is progressing afford to lean upon a species of labor that is periling their crop and, under the present depreciated value of negro property, is periling them more than the negroes themselves are worth.  It is the argument of dollars and cents, brought pressingly home to them.  It may not be effectual enough for general public purposes but within a limited scope it is complete, and to an observer now at Washington it is a very interesting one.  Let me wander away from the general point far enough to close my article by citing the case of a slaveholder and a personal friend who is known to some portion of the people of Iowa, Frank Wootton, some time a citizen of Keokuk, late Secretary and acting Governor of Utah, was yesterday in town.  He is at present living on his family homestead in Prince George’s.  A few days ago half the slaves of his family skedaddled and Frank was here yesterday trying to hire Irishmen to go and take their places and save his tobacco crop.

IOWA

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 31, 1862, p. 1