The bill to confiscate property used for insurrectionary
purposes, reported by Mr. Trumbull from the Judiciary
Committee, came up in regular order in the Senate, Monday,
July 22, when, on his motion, the following amendment was
adopted, every Republican voting for it: “That whenever any
person, claiming to be entitled to the service or labor of any
other person under the laws of any State, shall employ such
person in aiding or promoting any insurrection, or in resisting
the laws of the United States, or shall permit him to be so
employed, he shall forfeit all right to such service or labor,
and the person whose labor or service is thus claimed shall
be thenceforth discharged therefrom, any law to the contrary
notwithstanding.”[237] This very moderate proposition was the
beginning of Emancipation. In the House of Representatives it
was changed in form, but not in substance, and the Bill was
approved by the President August 6, 1861.[238]
* * * * *
This address appeared in numerous journals, and also in the
_Rebellion Record_, besides being circulated extensively in
pamphlet form at home and abroad. Evidently the hostility to
Emancipation was softening, although the old spirit found
utterance in some of the newspapers.
* * * * *
The _New York Herald_ thus declared itself.
“The Hon. Charles Sumner, the famous orator of the Satanic
Abolition school, which first introduced into our happy
republic the elements of dismemberment and dissolution, as
the Old Serpent introduced sin and death into the Garden
of Eden, held forth last evening at the Cooper Institute
before the Young Men’s Republican Union of New York. His
audience were Abolitionists of the true-blue stamp, and
the design of his harangue was to stir up in this city
mutiny and rebellion against the Government in the interest
of General Fremont, around whom the revolutionary forces
of fanatical Puritanism have been gathering ever since
he issued his proclamation emancipating the negroes of
Missouri.…
“Till the head of the serpent of Abolitionism is crushed by
the heel of Abe Lincoln, there can be no salvation for the
South, and no hope of redeeming its rebels from the fatal
error and delusion into which they have been led by the
Antislavery propagandists and sympathizers with John Brown.”
But this same journal spoke otherwise of the auditory.
“Rarely has there been such a large audience assembled in
the Cooper Institute,--never one of such general reputation
and intelligence. Several hundred ladies were present. As
Mr. Sumner made his appearance on the platform, he was
hailed with enthusiastic applause.”
The New York _Journal of Commerce_ followed the _Herald_.
“_It was a labored, but concealed, attack on the
Constitution and its framers._ Mr. Sumner did not dare
speak his sentiments fully, and boldly attack Washington
and the illustrious Fathers. He preferred the insidious
course of instilling into the minds of his audience
sentiments of hatred to the Constitution, so that they
might look complacently hereafter on the Abolition
revolution which he contemplates.”
An extract from the _Principia_, at New York, the
organ of Abolitionists insisting always upon the utter
unconstitutionality of Slavery, will suffice on the other side.
“Our readers at a distance will be interested and
encouraged to know that the most radical portions of it
received the most enthusiastic applause from the immense
assemblage, on that occasion, without eliciting the
slightest expression of dissent. This was remarkably true,
even of that portion of it which defended the Abolitionists
from the charge of having caused our present national
troubles, and, on the contrary, gave them ample and due
credit for keeping alive the flame of Freedom by their
opposition to Slavery, and forewarning the country of the
evils it was bringing upon us. To ourselves and a remnant
of our old associates, on the platform and in the meeting,
who remembered the scenes of mob violence in this city in
1833-34, and the attempted renewal of the same riots in
the same Cooper Institute only about two years since, when
Cheever and Phillips were interrupted and threatened, the
contrast was most striking and cheering.”
Correspondents expressed themselves warmly.