The President on Emancipation

The Democrat in its issue of Saturday morning endorses the views of the President on emancipation; we are glad of it and hope it may continue to occupy the ground our Chief Magistrate has so wisely taken.  It will be a source of gratification to every truly loyal man, if the pro-slavery members of Congress will take the same view of it that our neighbor has done and give it to their unqualified approval.  If a system of emancipation be inaugurated at once in the border states it will be a death-blow not only to the rebellion, but to slavery itself.  The first step of the President is in the right direction and it is taken with that caution and deliberation which has ever marked his course.  More radical anti-slavery men no doubt would have been better pleased had he taken a longer stride, but in that case by asking too much he might have failed in all.  Surrounded as he is by a pro-slavery faction it is not only policy, but the very heighth [sic] of wisdom that he be very circumspect in his course in regard to the great evil that is afflicting our country, and which unfortunately finds so many upholders, for partisan purposes, at the North.

Though considerable has been said by the press in respect to the future status of the rebel States, it were no doubt better, in view of any effort to abolish slavery in the border States, which have not participated in the rebellion, to patiently await that action, before discussing this question.  It must come before the people sooner or later, but if the recommendation of the President be acted upon promptly and the boarder States set diligently to work to rid themselves of the stupendous evil which now paralyzes their energies, demoralizes their society and undermines their prosperity, we can well afford to wait – to suspend the consideration of the great issue, that must arise in all its force and with ten-fold more hope of righteous decision, if the first step be made in the right direction.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, March 10, 1862, p. 2