Gen. Hunter’s Proclamation

The proclamation of Gen. Hunter, freeing the slaves of his military district, has created excitement more intense than any document issued during the war, with the single exception of President Lincoln’s emancipation message.  Gen. Fremont’s order on the one hand and Gen. Halleck’s on the other did not strike the public mind with that force which Gen. Hunter’s proclamation has done; simply from the fact that they were not so sweeping in their effects.  A proclamation like Hunter’s, fulminated at the time Fremont’s order was issued would have thrown our nation on its beam ends, and nothing but the prompt counteraction of our President, would have prevented the entire slave party of the North from uniting in a body with the rebels.

But “the world moves,” and notwithstanding the general demoralizing effects of war, it moves in the right direction.  The blasting effect of slavery on the minds of those who practice it, and the cursedness of the institution on the peace and prosperity of the country, have been developed by the war, until every right-thinking man in the nation seeks the propriety of the abolition of slavery, and unless he be a demagogue with stronger attachments for the ashes of the old Democratic party than for the throbbing heart of the great Republic, he will use his best endeavors to accomplish that object.

In this condition of affairs, the proclamation of Gen. Hunter falls upon the North with the startling detonation of a bombshell, but it finds an echo in the many hearts, that the old ship of State does not feel the concussion.  Whether the President takes any action in the matter we care not, it is simply a question of time, and with his superior means of judging of the consequences, he thinks the act premature, we, for one, shall defer to his better judgment, and bide the time when we can unite with the loyal men of the North, in ascriptions of praise to God, for being ride of an ulcer that even now threatens the vitals of our great nation.  In the meantime, to the “noblest Roman of them all,” brave old General Hunter, we say in the language of Longfellow:

“Go on, until this land revokes,

The old and chartered lie,

The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes

Insult humanity.”

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, May 20, 1862, p. 2