To The Supporters Of The Government.

We have read without surprise, but not without indignation, the Proclamation of the President of the 8th of July, 1864.

The supporters of the Administration are responsible to the country for its conduct: and it is their right and duty to check the encroachments of the Executive on the authority of Congress, and to require it to confine itself to its proper sphere.

It is impossible to pass in silence this Proclamation without neglecting that duty; and, having taken as much responsibility as any others in supporting the Administration, we are not disposed to fail in the other duty of asserting the rights of Congress.

The President did not sign the bill “to guarantee to certain States whose Governments have been usurped, a Republican form of Government”—passed by the supporters of his Administration in both Houses of Congress after mature deliberation.

The bill did not therefore become a law: and it is therefore nothing.

The proclamation is neither an approval nor a veto of the bill; it is therefore a document unknown to the laws of the Constitution of the United States.

So far as it contains an apology for not signing the bill, it is a political manifesto against the friends of the Government.

So far as it proposes to execute the bill which is not a law, it is a grave Executive usurpation.

It is fitting that the facts necessary to enable the friends of the Administration to appreciate the apology and usurpation be spread before them.

The Proclamation says:

“And whereas the said bill was presented to the President of the United States for his approval less than an hour before the sine die adjournment of said session and was not signed by him—”

If that be accurate, still this bill was presented with other bills which were signed.

Within that hour, the time of the sine die adjournment was three times postponed by the votes of both Houses; and the least intimation of a desire for more time by the President to consider this bill would have secured a further postponement.

Yet the Committee sent to ascertain if the President had any further communication for the House of Representatives reported that he had none; and the friends of the bill, who had anxiously waited on him to ascertain its fate, had already been informed that the President had resolved not to sign it.

The time of presentation, therefore, had nothing to do with his failure to approve it.

The Bill had been discussed and considered for more than a month in the House of Representatives, which it passed on the 4th of May; it was reported to the Senate on the 27th of May without material amendment, and passed the senate absolutely as it came from the House on the 2nd of July.

Ignorance of its contents is out of the question.

Indeed, at his request, a draft of a bill substantially the same in all material points, and identical in the points objected to by the Proclamation, had been laid before him for his consideration in the Winter of 1862-63.

There is, therefore, no reason to suppose the provisions of the bill took the President by surprise.

On the contrary, we have reason to believe them to have been so well known that this method of preventing the bill from becoming a law without the constitutional responsibility of a veto, had been resolved on long before the bill passed the Senate.

We are informed by a gentleman entitled to the entire confidence, that before the 22d of June in New-Orleans it was stated by a member of Gen. Banks’s staff, in the presence of other gentlemen in official position, that Senator Doolittle had written a letter to the department that the House Reconstruction bill would be staved off in the Senate to a period too late in the session to require the President to veto it in order to defeat it, and that Mr. Lincoln would retained the bill, of necessary, and thereby defeat it.

The experience of Senator Wade, in his various efforts to get the bill considered in the Senate, was quite in accordance with that plan; and the fate of the bill was accurately predicted by letters received from New-Orleans before it passed the Senate.

Had the Proclamation stopped there, it would have been only one other defeat of the will of the people by an Executive perversion of the Constitution.

But it goes further.  The President says:

“And whereas the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for restoring the States in rebellion to their proper practical relation in the Union, which plan expresses the sense of Congress upon that subject, and which plan it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration—”

By what authority of the Constitution?  In what forms?  The result to be declared by whom?  With what effect when ascertained?

Is it to be a law by the approval of the people without the approval of Congress at the will of the President?

Will the President, on his opinion of the popular approval, execute it as law?

Or is this merely a device to avoid the serious responsibility of defeating a law on which so many loyal hearts reposed for security?

But the reasons now assigned for not approving the bill are full of ominous significance.

The President proceeds:

“Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known that, while I am (as I was in December last, when by proclamation I propounded a plan for restoration) unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration—”

That is to say, the President is resolved that the people shall not by law take any securities from the Rebel States against a renewal of the Rebellion, before restoring their power to govern us.

His wisdom and prudence are to be our sufficient Guarantees!

He further says:

“Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known that, while I am (as I was in December last, when by proclamation I propounded a plan for restoration) unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration—”

That is to say, the President persists in recognizing those shadows of Governments in Arkansas and Louisiana, which Congress formally declared should not be recognized—whose Representatives and Senators were repelled by formal votes of both Houses of Congress—which it was declared formally should have no electoral vote for President and Vice President.

They are more creatures of his will. They cannot live a day without his support.  They are mere oligarchies, imposed on the people by military orders under the forms of elections, at which generals, provost-marshals, soldiers and camp-followers where the chief actors, assisted by a handful of resident citizens, and urged on to premature action by private letters from the President.

In neither Louisiana nor Arkansas, before Banks’s defeat, did the United States control half the territory or half the population.  In Louisiana, Gen. Banks’s proclamation candidly declared: “the fundamental law of the State is martial law.”

On that foundation of freedom, he erected what the President calls “the free Constitution and Government of Louisiana.”

But of this State, whose fundamental law was martial law, only sixteen parishes of forty-eight parishes were held by the United States; and in five of the sixteen we held only our camps.

The eleven parishes we substantially held had 233,185 inhabitants; the residue of the State not held by us, 575,617.

At the farce called an election, the officers of Gen. Banks returned that 11,346 ballots were cast; but whether any or by whom the people of the United States have no legal assurance but it is probable that 4,000 were cast by soldiers or employees of the United States military or municipal, but none according to any law, State or National, and 7,000 ballots represent the State of Louisiana.

Such is the free Constitution and Government of Louisiana; and like it is that of Arkansas.  Nothing but the failure of a military expedition deprived as of a like once on the swamps of Florida; and before the Presidential election, like ones may be organized in ever Rebel State where the United states have a camp.

The President, by preventing this bill from becoming a law, holds the electoral votes of the Rebel States at the dictation of his personal ambition.

If those votes turn the balance in his favor, is it to be supposed that his competitor, defeated by such means, will acquiesce?

If the Rebel majority assert their supremacy in those States, and send votes which elect an enemy of the Government, will we not repel his claims?

And is not that civil war for the Presidency, inaugurated by the votes of the Rebel States.

Seriously impressed with these dangers, Congress, “the proper and constitutional authority,” formally declared that there are no State Governments in the Rebel States, and provided for their erection at a proper time; and both the Senate and the House of Representatives rejected the Senators and Representatives chosen under the authority of what the President calls the Free Constitution and Government of Arkansas.

The President’s Proclamation “holds for naught” this judgment, and discards the authority of the Supreme Court, and strides headlong toward the anarchy his Proclamation of the8th of December inaugurated.

If electors for President be allowed to be chosen in either of those States, a sinister light will be cast on the motives which induced the President to “hold for naught” the will of Congress rather than his Government in Louisiana and Arkansas.

The judgment of Congress which the President defies was the exercise of an authority exclusively vested in Congress by the Constitution to determine what is the established Government in a State, and in its own nature and by the highest judicial authority binding on all other departments of the Government.

The supreme Court has formally declared that under the 4th section of the IVth article of the Constitution, requiring the United States to guarantee to every State a republican form of government, “it rests with Congress to decide what Government is the established one in a State;” and “when Senators and Representatives of a State are admitted into the councils of the Union, the authority of the Government under which they are appointed, as well as its republican character is recognized by the proper constitutional authority, and its decision is binding on ever other department of the Government, and could not be questioned in a judicial tribunal.  It is true that the contest in this case did not last long enough to bring the matter to this issue; and, as no Senators or Representatives were elected under the authority of the Government of which Mr. Door was the head, Congress was not called upon to decide the controversy.  Yet the right to decide is placed there.”

Even the President’s proclamation of the 8th of December, formally declares that “Whether members sent to Congress from any State shall be admitted to seats, constitutionally rests exclusively with the respective Houses, and not to any extent with the Executive.”

And that is not the less true because wholly inconsistent with the President’s assumption in that proclamation of a right to institute and recognize State Governments in the Rebels States, nor because the President is unable to perceive that his recognition is a nullity if it be not conclusive on Congress.

Under the Constitution, the right to Senators and Representatives is inseparable from a State Government.

If there be a State Government, the right is absolute.

If there be no State Government, there can be no Senators or Representatives chosen.

The two Houses of Congress are expressly declared to be the sole judges of their own members.

When, therefore, Senators and Representatives are admitted, the State Government, under whose authority they were chosen, is conclusively established; when they are rejected, its existence is as conclusively rejected and denied; and to this [judgment] the President is bound to submit.

The President proceeds to express his unwillingness “to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish Slavery in States” as another reason for not signing the bill.

But the bill nowhere proposes to abolish Slavery in States.

The bill did provide that all slaves in the Rebel states should be manumitted.

But as the President had already signed three bills manumitting several classes of slaves in States, it is not conceived possible that he entertained any scruples touching that provision of the bill which he is silent.

He had already himself assumed a right by proclamation to free much the larger number of slaves in the Rebel States, under the authority given him a discretion it could not exercise itself.

It is more unintelligible from the fact that, except in respect to a small part of Virginia and Louisiana, the bill covered only what the Proclamation covered—added a Congressional title and judicial remedies by law to the disputed title under the Proclamation, and perfected the work the President professed to be so anxious to accomplish.

Slavery as an institution can be abolished only by a charge of the Constitution of the United States or of the law of the State; and this is the principle of the bill.

It required the new Constitution of the State to provide for that prohibition; and the President, in the face of his own proclamation, does not venture to object to insisting on that condition.  Nor will the country tolerate its abandonment—yet he defeated the only provision imposing it!!

But when he describes himself, in spite of this great blow at emancipation, as “sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment abolishing Slavery throughout the nation may be adopted, we curiously inquire on what his expectation rests, after the vote of the House of Representatives at the recent session, and in the face of the political complexion of more than enough of the States to prevent the possibility of its adoption within any reasonable time; and why he did not indulge his sincere hopes with so large an installment of the blessing as his approval of the bill would have secured.

After this assignment of his reasons for preventing the bill from becoming a law, the President proceeds to declare his purpose to execute it as a law by his plenary dictatorial power.

He says:

“Nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the system for restoration contained in the bill as one very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and that I am, and at all times shall be, prepared to give the executive aid and assistance to any such people, so soon as the military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, in which cases military Governors will be appointed, with directions to proceed according to the bill.”

A more studied outrage on the legislative authority of the people has never been perpetrated.

Congress passed a bill; the President refused to approve it, and then by a proclamation puts as much of it in force as he sees fit, and proposes to execute those parts by officers unknown to the laws of the United States and not subject to the confirmation of the Senate!

The bill directed the appointment of Provisional Governors by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.

The President, after defeating the law, proposes to appoint without law, and without the advice and consent of the Senate, Military Governors for the Rebel States!

He has already exercised this dictatorial usurpation in Louisiana, and he defeated the bill to prevent its limitation.

Henceforth we must regard the following precedent as the Presidential law of the Rebel States:

EXECUTIVE MANSION,               

WASHINGTON, March 15, 1864

His Excellency MICHAEL HAHN, Governor of Louisiana,

Until further orders you are hereby invested with the power expressed hitherto by the Military Governor of Louisiana.

Yours,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

This Michael Hahn is no officer of the United States; the President, without law, without the advice and consent of the Senate, by a private note not even countersigned by the Secretary of State, makes him dictator of Louisiana!

The bill provided for the civil administration of the laws of the State—till it should be in a fit of temper to govern itself—repealing all laws recognizing Slavery, and making all men equal before the law.

These beneficent provisions the President has annulled.  People will die, and marry and transfer property, and buy and sell; and to these acts of civil life courts and officers of the law are necessary, Congress legislated for these necessary things, and the President deprives them of the protection of the law!

The President’s purpose to instruct his Military Governors “to proceed according to the bill”—a makeshift to calm the disappointment its defeat has occasional—if not merely a grave usurpation but a transparent delusion.

He cannot “proceed according to the bill” after preventing it from becoming a law.

Whatever is done will be at his will and pleasure, but persons responsible to no law, and more interested to secure the interests and execute the will of the President than of the people; and the will of Congress is to be “held for naught,” “unless the loyal people of the Rebel States choose to adopt it.”

If they should graciously prefer the stringent bill to the easy proclamation, still the registration will be made under no legal sanction; it will give no assurance that a majority of the people of the States have taken the oath; if administered, it will be without legal authority, and void; no indictment will lie for false swearing at the election, or for admitting bad or rejecting good votes; it will be a farce of Louisiana and Arkansas acted over again, under the forms of this bill, but not by authority of law.

But when we come to the guarantees of future peace which Congress meant to enact, the forms, as well as the substance of the bill, must yield to the President’s will that none should be imposed.

It was the solemn resolve of Congress to protect the loyal men of the nation against three great dangers, (1) the return to power of the guilty leaders of the Rebellion, (2) the continuance of Slavery, and (3) the burden of the Rebel debt.

Congress required assent to those provision by the convention of the State; and if refused it was to be dissolved.

The President “holds for naught” that resolve of Congress, because he is unwilling “to be inflexibly committed to any one plan of restoration,” and the people of the United States are not to be allowed to protect themselves unless their enemies agree to it.

The order to proceed according to the bill is therefore merely at the bill of the Rebel States; and they have the option to reject it, accept the proclamations of the 8th of December, and demand the President’s recognition!

Mark the Contrast!  The bill requires a majority, the proclamation is satisfied with one-tenth; the bill requires one oath, the proclamation another; the bill ascertains voters by registering; the proclamation by guess; the bill exacts adherence to existing territorial limits, the proclamation admits of others; the bill governs the Rebel States by law, equalizing all before it, the proclamation commits them to the lawless discretion of military Governors and Provost-Marshals; the bill forbids electors for President, the Proclamation and defeat of the bill threatens us with civil war for the admission or exclusion of such votes; the bill exacted exclusion of dangerous enemies from power and the relief of the nation from the Rebel debt, and the prohibition of Slavery forever, so that the suppression of the Rebellion will double our resources to bear or pay the national debt, free the masses from the old domination of the Rebel leaders, and eradicate the cause of the war; the proclamation secures neither of these guaranties.

It is silent respecting the Rebel debt and the political exclusion of rebel leaders; leaving Slavery exactly where it was by law at the outbreak of the Rebellion, and adds no guaranty even of the freedom of the slaves he undertook to manumit.

It is summed up in an illegal oath, without a sanction, and therefore void.

The oath is to support all proclamations of the President during the Rebellion having reference to slaves.

Any Government is to be accepted at the hands of one-tenth of the people not contravening that oath.

Now that oath neither secures the abolition of Slavery, nor adds any security to the freedom of the slaves the President declared free.

It does not secure the abolition of Slavery; for the proclamation of freedom merely professed to free certain slaves while it recognized the institution.

Every Constitution of the Rebel States at the outbreak of the Rebellion may be adopted without the change of a letter, for none of them contravene that Proclamation, none of them establish slavery.

It adds no security to the freedom of the slaves.

For their title is the Proclamation of Freedom.

If it be unconstitutional, an oath to support it is void.  Whether constitutional or not, the oath is without authority of law, and therefore void.

If it be valid and observed, it exacts no enactment by the State, either in law or Constitution, to add a State guaranty to the proclamation title and the right of a slave to freedom is an open question before the State courts on the relative authority of the State law and the Proclamation.

If the oath binds the one-tenth who take it, it is not exacted of the other nine-tenths who succeed to the control of the State Government; so that it is annulled instantly by the act of recognition.

What the State courts would say of the Proclamation, who can doubt?

But the master would not go into court—he would seize his slave.

What the Supreme Court would say, who can tell?

When and how is the question to get there?

No habeas corpus lies for him in a United States Court; and the President defeated with this bill its extension of that writ to this case.

Such are the fruits of this rash and fatal act of the President—a blow at the friends of his Administration, at the rights of humanity, and at the principles of republican government.

The President has greatly presumed on the forbearance which the supports of his Administration have so long practiced, in view of the arduous conflict in which we are engaged, and the reckless ferocity of our political opponents.

But he must understand that our support is of a cause and not of a man; that the authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected; that the whole body of the Union men of Congress will not submit to be impeached by him of rash and unconstitutional legislation; and if he wishers our support, he must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws—to suppress by arms armed Rebellion, and leave political rëorganization to Congress.

If the supporters of the Government fail to insist on this, they become responsible for the usurpations which they fail to rebuke, and are justly liable to the indignation of the people whose rights and security committed to their keeping, they sacrifice.

Let them consider the remedy for these usurpations, and having found it, fearlessly execute it.

B. F. WADE, Chairman Senate Committee.

H. WINTER DAVIS, Chairman Committee House

of Representatives on the Rebellious States.

SOURCE: New York Daily Tribune, New York, New York, Friday August 5, 1864, p. 5

Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, December 8, 1863

By the President of the United States of America:

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas, in and by the Constitution of the United States it is provided that the President “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment;” and

Whereas, a rebellion now exists, whereby the loyal State governments of several States have for a long time been subverted and many persons have committed and are now guilty of treason against the United States; and

Whereas, with reference to said rebellion and treason laws have been enacted by Congress declaring forfeitures and confiscations of property and liberation of slaves, all upon terms and conditions therein stated, and also declaring that the President was thereby authorized at any time thereafter, by proclamation, to extend to persons who may have participated in the existing rebellion, in any State or part thereof, pardon and amnesty, with such exceptions and at such times and on such conditions as he may deem expedient for the public welfare; and

Whereas, the Congressional declaration for limited and conditional pardon accords with the well-established judicial exposition of the pardoning power; and

Whereas, with reference to said rebellion the President of the United States has issued several proclamations with provisions in regard to the liberation of slaves; and

Whereas, it is now desired by some persons heretofore engaged in said rebellion to resume their allegiance to the United States and to reinaugurate loyal State governments within and for their respective States: Therefore,

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known to all persons who have, directly or by implication, participated in the existing rebellion, except as hereinafter excepted, that a full pardon is hereby granted to them and each of them, with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves, and in property cases where rights of third parties shall have intervened, and upon the condition that every such person shall take and subscribe an oath, and thenceforward keep and maintain said oath inviolate; and which oath shall be registered for permanent preservation and shall be of the tenor and effect following, to wit:

"I, —— ——, do solemnly swear, in presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the union of the States thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congress passed during the existing rebellion with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court. So help me God."

The persons excepted from the benefits of the foregoing provisions are all who are, or shall have been, civil or diplomatic officers or agents of the so-called Confederate Government; all who have left judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; all who are, or shall have been, military or naval officers of said so-called Confederate Government above the rank of colonel in the Army or of lieutenant in the Navy; all who left seats in the U.S. Congress to aid the rebellion; all who resigned commissions in the Army or Navy of the United States and afterward aided the rebellion, and all who have engaged in any way in treating colored persons, or white persons in charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war, and which persons may have been found in the U.S. service as soldiers, seamen, or in any other capacity.

And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that whenever, in any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, a number of persons not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast in such State at the Presidential election of the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty, each having taken the oath aforesaid and not having since violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election law of the State existing immediately before the so-called act of secession, and excluding all others, shall re-establish a State government which shall be republican and in nowise contravening said oath, such shall be recognized as the true government of the State, and the State shall receive thereunder the benefits of the constitutional provision which declares that: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the Legislature, or the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.”

And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that any provision which may be adopted by such State government in relation to the freed people of such State, which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent as a temporary arrangement with their present condition, as a laboring, landless, and homeless class, will not be objected to by the national Executive.

And it is suggested as not improper that, in constructing a loyal State government in any State, the name of the State, the boundary, the subdivisions, the constitution, and the general code of laws, as before the rebellion, be maintained, subject only to the modifications made necessary by the conditions hereinbefore stated, and such others, if any, not contravening said conditions, and which may be deemed expedient by those framing the nosy State government.

To avoid misunderstanding, it may be proper to say that this proclamation, so far as it relates to State governments, has no reference to States wherein loyal State governments have all the while been maintained. And for the same reason it may be proper to further say, that whether members sent to Congress from any State shall be admitted to seats constitutionally rests exclusively with the respective Houses, and not to any extent with the Executive, and still further, that this proclamation is intended to present the people of the States wherein the national authority has been suspended, and loyal State governments have been subverted, a mode in and by which the national authority and loyal State governments may be re-established within said States or in any of them; and while the mode presented is the best the Executive can suggest, with his present impressions, it must not be understood that no other possible mode would be acceptable.

Given under my hand at the city of Washington, the 8th day of December, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,                 

Secretary of State.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series II, Volume 6 (Serial No. 119), p. 680-2

Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, July 8, 1864

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas, at the late session Congress passed a bill to "guarantee certain States, whose governments have been usurped or overthrown, a republican form of government," a copy of which is hereunto annexed;

And whereas, the said bill was presented to the President of the United States for his approval less than one hour before the sine die adjournment of said session, and was not signed by him;

And whereas, the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for restoring the States in rebellion to their proper practical relation in the Union, which plan expresses the sense of Congress upon that subject, and which plan it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known that, while I am (as I was in December last, when by proclamation I propounded a plan for restoration) unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration; and while I am also unprepared to declare that the free State constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort, or to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in States, but am at the same time sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery throughout the Nation may be adopted, nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the system for restoration contained in the bill as one very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and that I am, and at all times shall be, prepared to give the executive aid and assistance to any such people, so soon as the military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, in which cases military Governors will be appointed, with directions to proceed according to the bill.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this eighth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

[L. S.]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

 Secretary of State.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series III, Volume 4 (Serial No. 125), p. 477-8

Horace Greeley to Abraham Lincoln, July 7, 1864

New York, July 7th, 1864.

My Dear Sir:

I venture to inclose you a letter and telegraphic dispatch that I received yesterday from our irrepressible friend, Colorado Jewett, at Niagara Falls. I think they deserve attention. Of course, I do no indorse Jewett's positive averment that his friends at the Falls have “full powers” from J. D., though I do not doubt that he thinks they have. I let that statement stand as simply evidencing the anxiety of the Confederates everywhere for peace. So much is beyond doubt.

And thereupon I venture to remind you that our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace — shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood. And a wide-spread conviction that the Government and its prominent supporters are not anxious for Peace, and do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it, is doing great harm now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to do far greater in the approaching Elections.

It is not enough that we anxiously desire a true and lasting peace; we ought to demonstrate and establish the truth beyond cavil. The fact that A. H. Stephens was not permitted, a year ago, to visit and confer with the authorities at Washington, has done harms, which the tone of the late National Convention at Baltimore is not calculated to counteract.

I entreat you, in your own time and manner, to submit overtures for pacification to the Southern insurgents which the impartial must pronounce frank and generous. If only with a view to the momentous Election soon to occur in North Carolina, and of the Draft to be enforced in the Free States, this should be done at once.

I would give the safe conduct required by the Rebel envoys at Niagara, upon their parole to avoid observation and to refrain from all communication with their sympathizers in the loyal States; but you may see reasons for declining it. But, whether through them or otherwise, do not, I entreat you, fail to make the Southern people comprehend that you and all of us are anxious for peace, and prepared to grant liberal terms. I venture to suggest the following

Plan of Adjustment.

1. The Union is restored and declared perpetual.

2. Slavery is utterly and forever abolished throughout the same.

3. A complete Amnesty for all political offenses, with a restoration of all the inhabitants of each State to all the privileges of citizens of the United States.

4. The Union to pay $400,000,000 in five per cent. U. S. Stock to the late Slave States, loyal and Secession alike, to be apportioned pro rata according to their Slave population respectively, by the Census of 1860, in compensation for the losses of their loyal citizens by the Abolition of Slavery. Each State to be entitled to its quota upon the ratification, by its Legislature, of this adjustment. The bonds to be at the absolute disposal of the Legislature aforesaid.

5. The said Slaves States to be entitled henceforth to representation in the House on the basis of their total instead of their Federal population — the whole being now Free.

6. A National Convention, to be assembled so soon as may be, to ratify this adjustment and make such changes in the Constitution as shall be deemed advisable.

Mr. President, I fear you do not realize how intently the People desire any Peace consistent with the National integrity and honor, and how joyously they would hail its achievement and bless its authors. With U. S. Stocks worth but forty cents, in gold, per dollars, and drafting about to commence on the third million of Union soldiers, can this be wondered at?

I do not say that a just Peace is now attainable, though I believe it to be so. But I do say that a frank offer by you to the insurgents of terms which the impartial will say ought to be accepted, will, at the worst, prove an immense and sorely-needed advantage to the National cause: it may save us from a Northern insurrection.

Yours truly,

Horace Greeley

P. S. Even though it should be deemed unadvisable to make an offer of terms to the Rebels, I insist that, in any possible way it is desirable that any offer they may be disposed to make should be received and either accepted or rejected. I beg you to write those now at Niagara to exhibit their credentials and submit their ultimatum.

H. G.

SOURCE: Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress: Lincoln, Abraham. Abraham Lincoln papers: Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833 to 1916: Horace Greeley to Abraham Lincoln, Thursday,Negotiations at Niagara Falls. July 7, 1864. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mal3431600/.

A New Sensation—Talk of Peace—Unofficial Commissioners to Richmond—Unofficial Rebel Commissioners—The War to be Carried on for Abolition Purposes Only.

WASHINGTON, July 21, 1864.

Editors of the Enquirer:

Since I closed my letter at noon, a new sensation has appeared on the political board.  The word Peace has been uttered this afternoon as if had some insignificance.  We find that two prominent friends of the Administration have, with the direct approval and aid of Mr. Lincoln, visited Richmond, held conferences with Jeff. Davis and his Secretary of War, and returned highly pleased with the courtesy with which they were received and treated at the Confederate Capital.  Then on the other side, we have the correspondence between certain Confederate gentlemen, Horace Greely and the President in relation to a restoration of the Union by means of peace.  No other talk has been heard this afternoon, except about these two missions.  Though neither of the quasi commissioners—those from the North to Richmond, nor those at Niagara had official authority, yet each acted with the consent of its respective government; and that is a mode often resorted to by belligerent parties, to ascertain the sentiments of the other preliminary to regulate authorized negotiations.

The Commissioners to Richmond were Colonel Jos. F. Jaques, of the 73rd Illinois volunteers, and Mr. Edward Kirke, a gentleman of some literary pretentions and merit.  They have returned to the city, and it is well understood they went to Richmond to ascertain, if the war could not be stopped by a return of the seceded states on terms alike honorable to both parties.  They were in Richmond three days, had free Conference with Mr. Davis and his Secretary, Mr. Benjamin, on the subject of their visit, were treated like gentleman, and returned in good spirits.

You have doubtless read the result of the attempt made by the Southern Commissioners, at Niagara, to obtain an interview with Mr. Lincoln. It was a failure.  The contrast between the conduct of the authorities, at Richmond, towards Messrs. Jaques and Kirke, and that of Lincoln to Messers. Clay and Holcomb, is a painful one to the people of the North.  It shows there are gentleman at the head of the government at Richmond, and a boor at the head of the government at Washington.  The former are not afraid to be talked to on the subject of our difficulties by even unofficial visitors, while the latter seems to think that not only his own dignity, but the cause of the North itself, would be compromised by a conference with gentlemen from the Confederacy.  Humanity and civilization will  accord to the authorities at Richmond the mood of the praise for their willingness to listen to any within their lines, by permission of the President of the United States.

Mr. Lincoln lays down a finality, which, will preclude any conference for a settlement.  That finality is the unconditional abolishment of slavery.  He will not listen to peace on any other terms.  He will not hear what the South may have to say.  He closes all avenues of conciliation except through that one door.  He says the war shall not stop until the blacks are all freed.  He says that this is not a war for the Union, but a war for the negro.  He says that he orders conscriptions, that men are torn from their families, their relatives and friends not to restore the Union, but to free the negro.  He admits that we are making an enormous public debt, that will bring untold sorrow upon toil and labor, not for our liberty or the protections of our government, or the preservation of our national life, but to make the negro like the white man.  He sets up a condition precedent, which must be performed before the seceded States can return to the union, and which he has no authority to impose.  This war is to be continued for no other object than the abolition of slavery. Mr. Lincoln gives that to be distinctly understood.  The country will know hereafter precisely, what the war is continued for.  Every solder will know what he is fighting for, and every one that is killed will lose his life not for the Union, the Stars and Stripes, but for the negro.

CLEVELAND.

SOURCE: The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, Monday, July 25, 1864, p. 2; Maysville Weekly Bulletin, Maysville, Kentucky, Thursday, July 28, 1864, p. 2.

Major-General George B. McClellan to Abraham Lincoln, July 7, 1862

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,            

Camp near Harrison's Landing, Va., July 7, 1862.

Mr. PRESIDENT: You have been fully informed that the rebel army is in our front with the purpose of overwhelming us by attacking our positions or reducing us by blocking our river communications. I cannot but regard our condition as critical, and I earnestly desire, in view of possible contingencies, to lay before Your Excellency for your private consideration my general views concerning the existing state of the rebellion, although they do not strictly relate to the situation of this army or strictly come within the scope of my official duties. These views amount to convictions, and are deeply impressed upon my mind and heart. Our cause must never be abandoned; it is the cause of free institutions and self-government. The Constitution and the Union must be preserved, whatever may be the cost in time, treasure, and blood. If secession is successful, other dissolution’s are clearly to be seen in the future. Let neither military disaster, political faction, nor foreign war shake your settled purpose to enforce the equal operation of the laws of the United States upon the people of every State.

The time has come when the Government must determine upon a civil and military policy covering the whole ground of our national trouble. The responsibility of determining, declaring, and supporting such civil and military policy, and of directing the whole course of national affairs in regard to the rebellion, must now be assumed and exercised by you, or our cause will be lost. The Constitution gives you power sufficient even for the present terrible exigency.

This rebellion has assumed the character of a war. As such it should be regarded, and it should be conducted upon the highest principles known to Christian civilization. It should not be a war looking to the subjugation of the people of any State  in any event. It should not be at all a war upon population, but against armed forces and political organizations. Neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of States, or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.

In prosecuting the war all private property and unarmed persons should be strictly protected, subject only to the necessity of military operations; all private property taken for military use should be paid or receipted for; pillage and waste should be treated as high crimes, all unnecessary trespass sternly prohibited, and offensive demeanor by the military toward citizens promptly rebuked. Military arrests should not be tolerated, except in places where active hostilities exist, and oaths not required by enactment’s constitutionally made should be neither demanded nor received. Military government should be confined to the preservation of public order and the protection of political rights. Military power should not be allowed to interfere with the relations of servitude, either by supporting or impairing the authority of the master, except for repressing disorder, as in other cases. Slaves, contraband under the act of Congress, seeking military protection, should receive it. The right of the Government to appropriate permanently to its own service claims to slave labor should be asserted, and the right of the owner to compensation therefor should be recognized. This principle might be extended, upon grounds of military necessity and security, to all the slaves of a particular State, thus working manumission in such State; and in Missouri, perhaps in Western Virginia also, and possibly even in Maryland, the expediency of such a measure is only a question of time. A system of policy thus constitutional, and pervaded by the influences of Christianity and freedom, would receive the support of almost all truly loyal men, would deeply impress the rebel masses and all foreign nations, and it might be humbly hoped that it would commend itself to the favor of the Almighty.

Unless the principles governing the future conduct of our struggle shall be made known and approved the effort to obtain requisite forces will be almost hopeless. A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our present armies. The policy of the Government must be supported by concentrations of military power. The national forces should not be dispersed in expeditions, posts of occupation, and numerous armies, but should be mainly collected into masses, and brought to bear upon the armies of the Confederate States. Those armies thoroughly defeated, the political structure which they support would soon cease to exist.

In carrying out any system of policy which you may form you will require a Commander-in-Chief of the Army-one who possesses your confidence, understands your views, and who is competent to execute your orders by directing the military forces of the nation to the accomplishment of the objects by you proposed. I do not ask that place for myself. I am willing to serve you in such position as you may assign me, and I will do so as faithfully as ever subordinate served superior.

I may be on the brink of eternity, and as I hope forgiveness from my Maker I have written this letter with sincerity toward you and from love for my country.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

GEO. B. McCLELLAN,                   

Major-General, Commanding.

His Excellency ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

President.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 11, Part 1 (Serial No. 12), p. 73-4

Major-General Howell Cobb to James A. Seddon, January 8, 1865

HDQRS. GEORGIA RESERVES AND MIL. DIST. OF GEORGIA,     

Macon, Ga., January 8, 1865.

Hon. JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War, Richmond, Va.:

SIR: Your letter of the 30th of December received by yesterday's mail. I beg to assure you that I have spared no efforts or pains to prosecute vigorously the recruiting of our Army through the conscript camp. It is true, as you say, there are many liable to conscription who have not been reached, and for reasons I have heretofore given I fear never will be reached. Rest assured, however, that I will not cease my efforts in that regard. In response to your inquiries, how our Army is to be recruited, I refer with strength and confidence to the policy of opening the door for volunteers. I have so long and so urgently pressed this matter that I feel reluctant even to allude to it, and yet I should not be true to my strong convictions of duty if I permitted any opportunity to pass without urging and pressing it upon the proper authorities. It is in my opinion not only the best but the only mode of saving the Army, and every day it is postponed weakens its strength and diminishes the number that could be had by it. The freest, broadest, and most unrestricted system of volunteering is the true policy, and cannot be too soon resorted to. I think that the proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. It is to me a source of deep mortification and regret to see the name of that good and great man and soldier, General R. E. Lee, given as authority for such a policy. My first hour of despondency will be the one in which that policy shall be adopted. You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers. The moment you resort to negro soldiers your white soldiers will be lost to you; and one secret of the favor with which the proposition is received in portions of the Army is the hope that when negroes go into the Army they will be permitted to retire. It is simply a proposition to fight the balance of the war with negro troops. You can't keep white and black troops together, and you can't trust negroes by themselves. It is difficult to get negroes enough for the purpose indicated in the President's message, much less enough for an Army. Use all the negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong—but they won't make soldiers. As a class they are wanting in every qualification of a soldier. Better by far to yield to the demands of England and France and abolish slavery, and thereby purchase their aid, than to resort to this policy, which leads as certainly to ruin and subjugation as it is adopted; you want more soldiers, and hence the proposition to take negroes into the Army. Before resorting to it, at least try every reasonable mode of getting white soldiers. I do not entertain a doubt that you can by the volunteering policy get more men into the service than you can arm. I have more fears about arms than about men. For heaven's sake try it before you fill with gloom and despondency the hearts of many of our truest and most devoted men by resorting to the suicidal policy of arming our slaves.

Having answered the inquiries of your letter, let me volunteer in a few words a suggestion. Popularize your administration by some just concessions to the strong convictions of public opinion. Mark you, I do not say yield to popular clamor, but concede something to the earnest convictions of an overwhelming, and, I will say, an enlightened public opinion. First, yield your opposition to volunteering in the form and manner which I have heretofore urged; second, restore General Johnston to the command of the Army of Tennessee, and return General Beauregard to South Carolina.

With Lee in Virginia, Johnston here, and Beauregard in South Carolina you restore confidence and at once revive the hopes of the people. At present I regret to say that gloom and despondency rule the hour, and bitter opposition to the Administration, mingled with disaffection and disloyalty, is manifesting itself. With a dash of the pen the President can revolutionize this state of things, and I earnestly beseech him to do it.

Sincerely, yours,

HOWELL COBB,     

Major-general.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series IV, Volume 3 (Serial No. 129), p. 1009-10

John L. Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, December 16, 1863

Vienna,           

December 16, 1863.

My Dearest Mother: I received your letter of 25th November a few days ago, and am delighted to find you giving a good account of your health. As you say that you can find satisfaction in my stupid letters, I send you to-day another little note. Pray don't think it affected on my part when I say that I have literally nothing to write about.

We had the pleasure of a brief visit last week of a couple of charming bridal pairs — Irving Grinnell (son of my excellent friend Moses Grinnell) and his pretty, sweet little wife, who was, I believe, a Howland; and Fred d'Hauteville and his bride, a daughter of Hamilton Fish of New York — very elegant, high-bred, and handsome.

It was almost a painful pleasure to us to see Fred, for it brought more vividly to our memories his beautiful and most interesting mother, whose life was ended so sadly, just as it might have been gladdened by such a daughter. Still, although our regrets for his mother were reawakened, we were most happy to see the son, and to find how manly and high-spirited, and at the same time modest and agreeable, he seemed to be. Ah, this war is a tremendous schoolmistress, but she does turn our boys into men. And if all this campaigning has caused many tears to flow, it seems to me I had rather my son had died in the field, fighting for the loftiest and purest cause, than that he had remained in the sloth and the frivolity which form the life of too many who stay at home. I am determined to say nothing of political matters save to repeat my conviction, firm as the everlasting hills, that the only possible issue of the war is the reconstruction of the Union and the entire abolition of slavery, and such a glorious consummation is as sure as that the sun will rise to-morrow. We are all well, and send much love to the governor and yourself and all the family. The little Schleswig-Holstein fuss is in a fair way of being settled.

Ever your most affectionate son,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 350-1

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: Dr. Francis Wayland, October 20, 1838

We wonder if this learned divine has ever undertaken to convince men that their “responsibilities were limited” in regard to the removal of any other nuisance than slavery. We have not seen any portion of his "limitations," except that relating to slavery. Whether he has treated on them as to any other sin, we do not know. But what possessed him to think men needed reminding of the limitations of their obligations? Are they prone to works of supererogation? Are they apt to be rampant in the exercise of that “charity,” which “seeketh not her own,” to transcend the bounds of their duty? Is it necessary, in order to a proper husbanding of their sympathies, that they be warned and admonished against their too prodigal lavishment upon their fellow-men? Is it to be predicated of fallen, depraved men, that they will be likely to overrun their obligations? Need they be guarded against an extravagance like this? Need ministers of the gospel tax their ingenuity in a behalf like this? Generally this class of men have been engaged, on what they call in court “the other side;” in enforcing human obligations, and in setting forth and urging on men's consciences their terrible responsibilities—to remove from their minds and hearts erroneous notions of their limitation?. and of their own freedom from obligation.

We take it nothing can be clearer and more reasonable than the universal obligation to do to others as we would that they should do to us — and to do likewise for others. If we were slaves, does any doctor doubt we should desire our neighbors, if we had any, to try to rescue us? If our house was a-fire, should not we want our neighbors to help put the fire out? If we were in the water, going to the bottom, could we bear it that neighbors should go indifferently by, and let us sink — that they should merely pity us — in the abstract? The slavery case is exceedingly plain. Slavery is the creature of tolerance — of public sufferance. Southern slavery exists in northern sufferance. The North is the seat of American sufferance. It is the theatre of moral influence for this nation. There is no such influence in the South — that is, no reforming influence except by negative operation. What is the moral influence of New Orleans on the nation? What of Charleston, or Mobile, or St. Louis, or Richmond, or any of the states or people of which these are the capitals? What religious or moral enterprise ever originated, or advanced in any of these places or people? They no more influence the country, than gamblers, drunkards, thieves, religiously influence the church. The church influences them for good or for evil, according to her faithfulness or unfaithfulness in her Master's service. The North influences the South in the matter of slavery. Yea, the North acts with the South in slaveholding. They directly and professedly uphold the system wherever they have occasion. They tolerate it in the District of Columbia. They directly sustain it in the territories. They allow the slave trade between the states. They conspired with the South in the constitution, that the foreign trade in slaves should not be interrupted by Congress for twenty years. They voted that Arkansas should come into the Union, with a constitution guarding slavery with a two-edged sword, giving the slaveholder a veto upon an emancipating legislature, and the legislature a check upon the repentant slaveholder. They have voted to admit a system that forbids and discourages repentance of the sin of slaveholding, and makes it desperate. All this has been done solemnly and with deliberation, and in legislative form — and the whole nation has tacitly allowed those of its people who chose, to hold slaves. It has never been disreputable, but highly the contrary, to hold slaves in this country. Is not a nation answerable for the vices and crimes which are reputable and popular within its borders? If a nation has any moral influence, any moral standard, is it not responsible for what that standard does not condemn? Has not this nation cast all its presidential votes for two men, guilty at the very moment of the election and all their days before and since, of the crime of slaveholding — Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder and a slave driver, and voted for twice by a majority of the electoral suffrage of this nation, north and south — and Henry Clay, a slaveholder and a notorious compromiser in the service of the infernal system, voted for by the rest of the nation. Jackson chosen by northern men against Adams a northern man. And then a northern man abandoned by northern men, one and the same party, in favor of Clay, a southern slaveholder[.]

We have nothing to do with abolishing slavery, says the Doctor Wayland, either as citizens of the United States, or as men. Our responsibilities for its removal are all limited away. On the very face of our case, it is palpable and grossly evident, we say, that the northern people have at least as much to do with its abolition as the people of the south. They have at least as much to do with its continuation. They are as directly engaged in it. They have the control of it in the national councils wherever it exists within congressional jurisdiction. It is the North, and not the South, that prevents a legislative abolition of it in the District of Columbia. Slavery in the national district is a northern institution, and not a southern. It is the “peculiar institution” there of the North, and not of the South. Is it not so? We declare then, that, as citizens and as men, we at the North have something to do with the abolition of American slavery — ay, that we have every thing to do with it. We can abolish it, and we alone can. We ought to abolish it, and we alone ought to do it, as appears at first impartial glance.

“I think it evident,” says Dr. Wayland, “that as citizens of the United States, we have no power whatever either to abolish slavery in the southern states, or to do any thing of which the direct intention is to abolish it.” We do not perceive the propriety of the Doctor's language when he talks of a thing having an intention. Slaves have intentions, and the Doctor and his friends call them things—but how a thing to be done can have an intention — a “direct intention,” as the Doctcr says, is beyond our slight learning. Perhaps the Doctor meant tendency by intention — and meant to say that we could not do any thing the direct tendency of which is the abolition of southern slavery. That is to say, we, as citizens of the United States, may not vote in Congress against slaveholding in the District of Columbia, or in the territories, or against the slave trade between the states. We may not receive petitions in behalf of those objects — we may not petition Congress — we may not talk against slaveholding — or write against it — or pray against it — or sympathize with our fellow-men in slavery; because each and every one of these acts has a direct tendency to abolish slavery in the southern states. Slavery in the land is a system, a whole system, a custom, a crime, and but one crime wherever committed. It is not warrantable in one place, and not in another. It is not lawful in one state, and not in another. It is one entire, individual, undivided matter of fact every where in the land, as much as murder is —  and if it is denounced and condemned in the District of Columbia by Congress, it is as fatal to it, in the whole country, as if denounced in South Carolina by Congress, or any where else — more fatal to it. A blow struck against it, as existing in that district, would be a blow at the head of it, and it would be mortal, — not one having a direct tendency to kill the system — or a direct intention, as the Doctor hath it, — but a blow destructive in itself. It would fix the brand of infamy on every slaveholder's front throughout the nation. It would render him infamous even in the eyes of Americans. Dr. Wayland could set no limits to his infamy. It would seal him a criminal with the broad seal of the nation, the E pluribus unum. Who would vote for him for President then — who would send him ambassador to London — who put him in Speaker of the House — President of the Senate — Chief Justice of the United States? Who would shake hands with him at the capitol? Now he is first in office, first in honor. Slaveholding is passport to every distinction. We ask Dr. Wayland and his aid-de-camp Major Mordecai Noachus, if a vote by Congress on our petitions, abolishing slavery in the district, and making it capital to enslave a man there, as they would do if they made it penal at all, would not give the system the death blow in the South, even if abolitionists had done nothing to kill it elsewhere. Would not that single enactment do it? Self-evidently it would. Have we not a right, as citizens of the United States, to do this? The Doctor says no. We say, ay.

But not to follow this self-immolated man any farther now, we will say that we need not get a vote from Congress against slavery in order to its abolition there and every where. Congress! what is it? The mere dregs and precipitations, the settlings and sediments of the nation. It is as soulless as a corporation. It has no soul, no mind, no principle, no opinion. It is an echo, and that not always a true one. It is a mere catastrophe—an upshot. It will only mutter the word abolition, after it has become an old story through the country. We have struck slavery its death blow already. We need not contend with the Doctor about the power. “One thing you have done,” said an eminent judge to us, “you have driven the South to come out and declare directly in favor of slavery. Heretofore they have pretended to lament it, as an evil. Now they declare it is a blessing, and a righteous institution.” Have we not, said we, driven them to join the issue, before the world, in favor of slaveholding? “You have,” said the judge. Must they not maintain it before the world, said we, to save the institution from going down? “They must,” he replied. Can they maintain it? said we. “No,” said he, — and yet the judge is not an abolitionist.

We need not contend with this Wayland and wayward President for the power, as citizens or as men, to beat down southern slaveholding. We have exercised the power already, and the South knows it. We have waked the nation to discuss the demerits of the system and the question of the negro man's humanity; and they are discussing it, and amid the flash and fervor of the agitation the foul system dies. It can no more endure it, than owls can noon, or bats sunshine, or ghosts day-break. While Wayland is groping about in his metaphysics to get hold of some puzzle to embarrass us about the power, we will have exercised it to the full, and cleared the land of slavery. Then where will the Doctor find a market for his “limitations?” Slavery is a dead man already, unless Orator Rhett, and Professor Dew, and Colonel McDuffie, and General Hamilton, and doctor this, that and the other one, can maintain the precious creature in the argument, and get the verdict of an enlightened and purged christianity in its favor. To this conclusion it has already come. The question is stated — the issue joined — the pleadings closed — all demurring and abating and delaying past by. And now for the trial. Now, Slavery, hold thine own. The Doctor's question of our having the power comes too late.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 39-44 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of October 20, 1838.

George Thompson Speech at New York, At the Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, published May 23, 1835

[From the rapid and impassioned style of Mr. T’s delivery, it becomes difficult, indeed impossible to give a very close report of all he said.  We attempt only a sketch touching on the leading points, and giving enough of his language to enable the reader to form some idea of his very fervid mode of address.  He was heard with profound attention by all, but with very different feelings by different portions of his auditory, as they abundantly manifested on more occasions than one.]

He commenced his address by declaring that the feelings of his heart were too deep for utterance. When he thought where he stood, of the topic on which he was called to speak, upon the mighty interests which were involved — upon his own responsibility to God-upon the destinies of thousands which might hinge upon the results of the present meeting — and when he reflected upon the ignorance, the wickedness, and the mighty prejudices he had to encounter; on the two and a half million of clients, whose cause was committed to his feeble advocacy, with all their rights, eternal and irreversible, he trembled, and felt almost disposed to retire. And when, in addition to all, he remembered that there were at this moment, in this land, in perfect health, in full vigor of mind and body, countrymen of his own, once pledged to the very lips in behalf of this cause, and with an authority which must command a wide and powerful influence, who had yet left it to the care of youth and ignorance, he felt scarce able to proceed, and almost willing to leave another blank in the history of this day's proceedings.

He had said that he had prejudices to overcome; and they met him with this rebuff — “you are a foreigner.” I am, said Mr. T. I plead guilty to the charge: where is the sentence? Yet I am not a foreigner. I am no foreigner to the language of this country. I am not a foreigner to the religion of this country. I am not a foreigner to the God of this country. Nor to her interests — nor to her religious and political institutions. Yet I was not born here. Will those who urge this objection tell me how I could help it? If my crime is the having been born in another country, have I not made the best reparation in my power, by removing away from it, and coming as soon as I could to where 1 should have been born? (Much laughter.) I have come over the waves of the mighty deep, to look upon your land and to visit you. Has not one God made us all? Who shall dare to split the human family asunder? who shall presume to cut the link which binds all its members to mutual amity? I am no foreigner to your hopes or your fears, and I stand where there is no discriminating hue but the color of the soul. I am not a foreigner, I am a man: and nothing which affects human nature is foreign to me, (I speak the language of a slave.)

“But what have you known about our country? How have you been prepared to unravel the perplexities of our policy and of our party interests? How did you get an intimate acquaintance with our customs, our manners, our habits of thought and of action, and all the peculiarities of our national condition and character, the moment you set your foot upon our shores?” And is it necessary I should know all this before I can be able or fit to enunciate the truths of the Bible! to declare the mind and will of God as he has revealed it in his word

“But you do not care about us or our welfare.” Then why did I leave my own country to visit yours? It was not certainly to better my circumstances: for they have not been bettered. I never did, and I never will, better them by advocating this cause. I may enlarge my heart by it: I may make an infinite number of friends among the wretched by it: but I never can or will fill my purse by it. “But you are a foreigner — and have no right to speak here.” I dismiss this — I am weary of it. I have an interest in America, and in all that pertains to her. And let my right hand forget its cunning, and let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I am ever capable of maligning her, or sowing the seeds of animosity among her inhabitants. He might truly say, though in the words of another,

I love thee, witness heaven above,

That I this land, — this people love;

Nor love thee less, when I do tell

Of crimes that in thy bosom dwell.

There is oppression in thy hand—

A sin, corrupting all the land; —

There is within thy gates a pest—

Gold—and a Babylonish vest.

Repent thee, then, and swiftly bring

Forth from the camp th’ accursed thing;

Consign it to remorseless fire—

Watch, till the latest spark expire;

Then strew its ashes on the wind,

Nor leave an atom wreck behind!

Yet while he said this, he would also add, if possible, with still stronger emphasis, Let my right hand forget her cunning, and let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I desert the cause of American abjects — or cease to plead, so long as the clanking of chains shall be heard in the very porch of the temple, and beneath the walls of your capitol. If any shall still say, I have no right to speak, I will agree to quit the assembly, on condition that that objecter will furnish to me a plea which shall avail in the day of judgment, when my Maker shall ask me why I did not do, in America, that which all the feelings of my heart, and all the dictates of my judgment, and all the principles too, of God's own gospel, so powerfully prompted me to do? If the great Judge shall say to me “When human misery claimed you, why did you not plead the cause of suffering humanity?’ will any one give me an excuse that will avail as a reply to such a question? Is there any such excuse? [Here he paused.] Shall it be because the misery for which I should have pleaded was across the water? If this is the principle, then cease your splendid embassies of mercy to China and Hindoostan: abandon the glorious missionary cause: and let us read in your papers and periodicals no more of those eloquent and high toned predictions about the speedy conversion of the world.

“But you are a monarchist, you were born the subject of a king, and we are republicans.” Yes, and because I loved the latter best, I left the dominions of a monarch, and came to the shores of a free Republic. I gave up the tinsel and the trappings of a king, for the plain coat and the simple manners of your President. But granting me to be a monarchist, will that do as an excuse before the King of kings, the Lord of lords?

“But, we quarrelled once. You taxed us, and we would not be taxed: and now we will have nothing more to do with you.” Indeed; and may our artizans construct your machinery, and our Irishmen feed your furnaces, and dig your canals; may our advocates come to your bar, and our ministers to your pulpits, and shall all, all be made welcome but the advocate of the Slave? Should I be welcome to you all, if I had but renounced the cause of humanity?

“But the newspapers abuse you — they are all against you; and therefore you had better go back to where you came from.” Yes: if I fear the newspapers. But supposing I care nothing about the newspapers, and am heartily willing that every shaft that can fly from all the presses of the land shall be launched against me, is it a good reason then? Leave me, I pray you, to take care of the newspapers, and the newspapers to take care of me: I am entirely easy on that score.

But now as to the question before us. The gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. Birney,] has gone very fully into its civil and political bearings: that aspect of it I shall not touch: I have nothing to do with it. I shall treat it on religious ground exclusively; on principles which cannot be impugned, and by arguments which cannot be refuted. I ask the abolition of slavery from among you, not because it dooms its victims to hard labor, nor because it compels them to a crouching servility, and deprives them of the exercise of civil rights: though all these are true. No: I ask for the illumination of the minds of immortal beings of our species; I seek to deliver woman from the lash, and from all that pollutes and that degrades her; I plead for the ordinances of religion; for the diffusion of knowledge; for the sanctification of marriage; for the participation of the gospel. And If you ask my authority, I answer there it is (pointing to the Bible) and let him that refutes me, refute me from that volume.

The resolution I offer has respect to the moral and spiritual condition of your colored population, and I do say that while one sixth of your entire population are left to perish without the word of God, or the ministry of the gospel, that your splendid missionary operations abroad, justly expose you before the whole world, to the charge of inconsistency. Your boast is, that your missionaries have gone into all the world; that you are consulting with the other christian nations for the illumination of the whole earth; and you have your missionary stations in all climes visited by the sun, from the frosts of Lapland to the sunny isles of Greece, and the scorching plains of Hindoostan; amidst the Christless literature of Persia, and the revolting vices of Constantinople. God grant that they may multiply a thousand fold — and continue to spread, till not a spot shall be left on the surface of our ruined world, where the ensign of the cross shall not have been set up. But will you, at the same time, refuse this gospel to one sixth of your own home-born population? And will you not hear me, when I ask that that word of life, which you are sending to the nations of New Holland and all the islands of the farthest sea, may be given to your slaves? When I plead for two millions and a half of human beings in the midst of your own land, left nearly, if not wholly, destitute of the blessings of God's truth? What spiritual wants have the heathen which the poor slaves have not? And what obligation binds you to the one, which does not equally bind you to the other? You own your responsibility to the heathen of other parts of the world, why not the heathen of this continent? And if to the heathen of one portion of the continent, why not to the no less heathen in another portion of it?

The resolution has reference to the diffusion of the Bible: and here I am invulnerable. You have offered to give, within twenty years, a copy of the Scriptures to every family of the world; you are now translating the sacred volume into all the languages of the earth, and scattering its healing leaves wherever men are found; and may I not say a word for the more than two millions at your door? Men whom you will not allow so much as to look into that book? Whom you forbid to be taught to read it, under pain of death? Why shall not these have the lamp of life? Are these no portion of the families of the south, whom you are pledged to supply? Is it any wonder there should be darkness in your land, that there should be spiritual leanness in your churches, that there should be Popery among you, when you thus debar men of the Bible? Is it not a fact, that while you have said you will give a Bible to every family in the world, not one of the families of slaveholders in the Southern States is to be found included in the benefaction? Of all the four hundred and sixty thousand families of your slaves, show me one that is included in your purpose or your plan. There is not one. If it would be wicked to blot out the sun from the heavens; if it would be wicked to deprive the earth of its circumambient air, or to dry up its streams of water, is it less wicked to withhold the word of God from men? to shut them out from the means of saving knowledge? to annihilate the cross? to take away the corner stone of human hope? to legislate away from your fellow-beings the will of God as recorded in his own word.

In view of the retributions of the judgment, I plead for these men, disinherited of their birthright. And once for all, I say, that every enterprise to enlighten, convert, and bless the world, must be branded with the charge of base hypocrisy, while millions at home are formally and by law deprived of the gospel of life, of the very letter of the Bible. And what has been the result Christianity has been dethroned; she is gone: there is no weeping mercy to bless the land of the slave; it is banished forever, as far as human laws can effect it. Brethren, I know not how you feel, nor can I tell you how I feel, when I behold you urging, by every powerful argument, the conversion of the world, while such a state of things is at your door; when I see you all tenderness for men you never saw; and yet seeming destitute of all pity for those you see every day.

Suppose, now, that in China the efforts of your missionaries should make one of the dark heathen a convert to the peaceful doctrine of the cross. What would be the duty of such a convert? Learning that there was a country where millions of his fellow sinners were yet destitute of the treasure that had enriched him for eternity, would he not leave the loved parents of his childhood, and the place of his father's sepulchres, and tracing his way across the waters, would he not come to bestow the boon upon men in America? Would he not come here to enlighten our darkness? And would he not be acting reasonably? according to the principles and commands of the very Bible you gave him?

And now I ask, what is the christianity of the South ! Is it not a chain-forging christianity? a whip-platting christianity? a marriage denouncing, or, at best, a marriage discouraging christianity. Is it not, above all, a Bible withholding christianity? You know that the evidence is incontestible. I anticipate the objection. “We cannot do otherwise. It is true, there are in South Carolina not twelve slaveholders who instruct their slaves; but we can't help it; there is an impassible wall; we can't throw the Bible over it; and if we attempt to make our way through, there stands the gibbet on the other side. It is not to be helped.” Why? “SLAVERY is there.” Then away with slavery. “Ay, but how ! Do you want the slave to cut his master's throat?” By no means. God forbid. I would not have him hurt one hair of his head, even if it would secure him freedom for life. “How then are we to get rid of it? By carrying them home?” Home? where? Where is their home? Where, but where they were born? I say, let them live on the soil where they first saw the light and breathed the air. Here, here, in the midst of you, let justice be done. “What! release all our slaves? turn them loose? spread a lawless band of paupers, vagrants, and lawless depredators upon the country?” Not at all. We have no such thought. All we ask is, that the control of masters over their slaves may be subjected to supervision, and to legal responsibility. Cannot this be done? Surely it can. There is even now enough of energy in the land to annihilate the whole evil; but all we ask is permission to publish truth, and to set forth the claims of the great and eternal principles of justice and equal rights; and then let them work out their own results. Let the social principle operate. Leave man to work upon man, and church upon church, and one body of people upon another, until the slave States themselves shall voluntarily loose the bonds and break every yoke. All this is legitimate and fair proceeding. It is common sense. It is sound philosophy. Against this course slavery cannot stand long. How was it abolished in England? By the fiat of the legislature, you will say. True: but was there no preaching of the truth beforehand? Was there no waking up of the public mind? no appeals no investigations? no rousing of public feelings, and concentration of the public energy Had there been nothing of this, the glorious act would never have passed the Parliament; and the British dependencies would still have mourned under the shade of this moral Bohon Upas.

It was well said by one of the gentlemen who preceded me, that there is a conscience at the South; and that there is the word of God at the South; and they have fears and hopes like our own: and in penning the appeals of reason and religion we cannot be laboring in vain. I will therefore say, that the hope of this cause is in the churches of God. There are church members enough of themselves to decide the destinies of slavery, and I charge upon the 17,000 ministers in this land, that they do keep this evil within our country; that they do not remember them that are in bonds as bound with them; that they fatten on the plunder of God's poor, and enrich themselves by the price of their souls. Were these all to do their duty, this monster, which has so long been brooding over our land, would soon take his flight to the nethermost hell, where he was begotten. How can these refuse to hear me? They are bound to hear; Unitarians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, be their name or their sect's name what it may, are bound to hear — for a minister is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts: and if they shall withhold their aid when God calls for it, the Lord will make them contemptible in the eyes of all the people.

Finally: this Anti-Slavery Society is not opposing one evil only; it is setting its face against all the vices of the land. What friend of religion ought to revile it? Surely the minister of Christ least of all; for it is opening his path before him; and that over a high wall that he dare not pass. Can the friend of education be against us? A society that seeks to pour the light of science over minds long benighted: a society that aims to make the beast a man: and the man an angel? Ought the friend of the Bible to oppose it? Surely not. , Nor can any of these various interests of benevolence thrive until slavery is first removed out of the way.

Mr. T. in closing, observed that he had risen to-day under peculiar feelings. Two of his countrymen had been deputed to visit this country, one of them a member of the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, who had been appointed with the express object of extinguishing slavery throughout the world, and belonging to a christian denomination which had actually memorialized all their sister churches in this land on the subject. My heart leaped when I learned they were to be here: especially that one of them whose name stood before the blank which is to be left in the record of this day's proceedings. Where is he now? He is in this city: why is he not here? The reason I shall leave for himself to explain. Sir, said Mr. T., in this very fact I behold a new proof of the power of the omnipotence of slavery: by its torpedo power a man has been struck dumb, who was eloquent in England on the side of its open opposers. What! is it come to this? Shall he or shall I advocate the cause of emancipation, of immediate emancipation, only because we are Englishmen? Perish the thought ! before I can entertain such an idea I must be recreant to all the principles of the Bible, to all the claims of truth, of honor, of humanity. No sir: if man is not the same in every latitude; if he would advocate a cause with eloquence and ardor in Exeter Hall, in the midst of admiring thousands, but because he is in America can close his lips and desert the cause he once espoused, I denounce, I abjure him. Let him carry his philanthropy home again; there let him display it in the loftiest or the tenderest strains; but never let him step his foot abroad, until he is prepared to show to the world that he is the friend of his kind.

The following resolution was offered by Mr. Thompson, and adopted by the Society.

Resolved, That the practice of suffering a sixth portion of the population of this Christian land to perish, destitute of the volume of Revelation, and the ministry of the Gospel, is inconsistent with the profession of zeal for the conversion of the world.

SOURCE: Isaac Knapp, Publisher, Letters and Addresses by G. Thompson [on American Negro Slavery] During His Mission in the United States, From Oct. 1st, 1834, to Nov. 27, 1835, p. 66-74; The Liberator, Boston Massachusetts, Saturday, May 23, 1835, p. 2-3