Emancipation in the District of Columbia

The President has signed the bill. Those who importuned him not to do so should read over the record here unveiled, and cover their faces to hid the confusion produced by their own consciences. The abolition of slavery here will not cause it to be removed elsewhere – This was not the design nor the desire of the majority of those who voted for it. But it will be productive of good consequences. It will call into use and culture our now deserted lots and suburbs. It will employ our unsurpassed water powers. It will build factories and machine shops along our wharves. It will prevent men from speculating in slaves; women from rejoicing over the birth of slaves as so much more money in their own pockets, and will cleanse the community of those sympathizers with treason who have infested this ten miles square for so many years. I wish my Northern readers, especially those who have allowed these objections to the removal of slavery from the capital of their country to effect their minds, could see for themselves what slavery has done in this single spot.

There has been no prosperous middle class in Washington. Society here has been divided, or rather separated, by the partition between the very rich and the very poor. Property is not held here by mechanics who have earned their money and worked their way to wealth in their own avocations, but by successful operators, slaveholders, place-men and lobby-agents. The slave traffic, though prohibited by law, has been successfully carried on in various ways. The business of slave-breeding has enriched more than one pious and praying Secessionist, and the youth of both sexes have in many cases been reared to rely on the profits of slavery, directly and indirectly, and not upon their own talents or labor. The product has been an haughty, overbearing and dictatorial spirit, a contempt for all industry and economy, and a readiness to accept secession as an escape from contact with the undaunted and go-ahead masses of the free States. If those who read these letters could see these things for themselves, the scales would fall from their eyes, and in spite of party feelings, they would thank God that Washington at last, was purged from a blot which has long been a cancer at the heart of the Republic, and a stain upon our country among the nations of the earth. – {Wash. Cor. Philadelphia Press

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 26, 1862, p. 2

The Great Event of the Session

Mr. Forney, in his letter to the Philadelphia Press, says:

The passage of the bill by the senate, yesterday evening, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, is the great event of the session. You must not be misled by the fact that, because none but Republicans voted for it, therefore it is obnoxious to those who did not go for it on the final vote. With about four exceptions, nearly all the opposition favored emancipation in some shape. This is certainly true of Senator Wright of Indiana, Senator McDougal of California; Senator Henderson, of Missouri, and Senator Willey of Virginia. The colonization policy, originating with the able Senator, Mr. Doolittle of Wisconsin, was engrafted on the bill by a decisive vote – an amendment that will be most satisfactory to the President, who is known to favor this course, by having suggested it in his annual message. The fate of the bill in the house is easy to predict, but the sooner it is passed into law the better for all concerned. The effect of this great act of deliverance will be most healthy in this country and in the Old World. It shows that the statesmen of our day are not afraid to meet the issue of the political campaign, and the war campaigns; and also that while there is every determination to strike at slavery wherever this can be done, there is no purpose to exercise doubtful powers to ignore the constitutional rights of any portion of the people.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Wednesday Morning, April 16, 1862, p. 2