Franklin Repository

We do not close our eyes to the fact that there are thousands of men whose honest aspirations are for the safety of the Republic, who voted against Mr. Lincoln at the late election because they feared that under his administration, the slavery issue may subordinate the preservation of our Nationality. That those apprehensions are imaginary and not in any sense real, and that they are measurably or wholly the natural fears of past born prejudice insensibly asserting its supremacy, we do not doubt; but let us deal with men and prejudice as they are for in the preservation of our imperiled government there is enough to demand, the energies and cordial co-operation of every faithful citizen. None can be spared by mere abstractions enough must be spared of positive hostility to our country's cause. For those who have [illegible] institutions whose beneficence they have enjoyed, and who would espouse any side of any cause to weaken the loyal power of the Nation, we have no words of explanation, for none could make them faithful; but we would not thrust from our side in the great battle for Liberty and Law those who, however mistakenly, desire to secure enduring Peace and an honored Union for ourselves and posterity.

"Recall your Emancipation Proclamation" is the stereotyped objection of many honest men who but for long cherished and lingering prejudices would be foremost among the faithful in this momentous struggle. To them it is a stumbling clock because their habits of thought and the affiliation of years with the devotees of Slavery, have left convictions which stubbornly resists the light of truth and progress. They will concede that Slavery is dead; in many instances sincerely and in all cases effect to rejoice that it cannot survive the war; but with the same breath they will insist that it must die some peaceable, calm and honored death, rather than pass away I the midst of the convulsive throes of revolution. They forget that Slavery is the parent of this cruel war and its wide-spread mourning and desolation; that the unnatural strife that has made a continent tremble from centre to circumference and dotted our fair land with unnumbered hecatombs of untimely dead, is but the bitter stream the ever disturbed and disturbing fountain of Human Bondage; and having hung the dark pall of fratricidal war upon a people with a common language, a common history and a common glory in the record of National greatness, it is not within the province of diplomacy to dictate how the terrible sword of retributive justice shall fall.

We are not of those who believe that precedents or adopted policies must be perpetual. We hold that change in obedience to enlightened progress is more wise than the pride that yields not to the ever shifting canvass of the present. We do not care how slavery shall die, nor does the honored author of the Emancipation Proclamation. He aims at the great end; the disenthralment of a great people from the gigantic element of disorder and death in their midst, and step by step as the people and the interests of the Nation have demanded, he has steadily but surely advanced toward the crowning consummation of deliverance. That the Emancipation Proclamation was an imperious necessity at the time it was issued we cannot doubt. It was just then as essential to our national safety as has ever been a victory in the field, and its beneficent aim was confessedly but a reflex of the settled convictions of an earnest people involved in a death struggle with a relentless foe. That it was regret[t]ed by many is but the truth of history. Those who counseled with their tears looked for increased desperation on the part of the insurgents, and many who blessed its universal proffer of Freedom trembled lest it should fail in crowning its own proposed deliverance with success. That the wounded, writhing monster itself should greet such a deadly thrust at its vitals with curses loud and deep, was but natural; but each day strengthened the right and weakened the power of crime, until nearly four years of war brings us to a great national verdict teaching in unmistakable terms, that Treason and Slavery must die, and that to that great end the whole Moral, Physical and Financial power of the People is pledged.

What we would have honest but doubting men understand is that the extinction of Slavery is now conceded by friend and foe. Loyal men of every shade demand that it shall die as the colossal suicide of the world's history; that it shall not survive the unholy strife it senselessly [illegible] in the midst of peace and prosperity. They have no fixed form by which it must pass from existence, but that it must henceforth be a thing, a blot, a blistering stain of the past, is as firmly settled as the stars in their spheres. And with their voices are now mingled the voices of the leaders of crime themselves. the cause they revolted to maintain has strewn their paths thickly with the fruits of humiliation and shame, and they, in their desperation, now counsel how they can make slavery deluge itself in the final overthrow of treason. Its abandonment is gravely [illegible] by the usurpers who claim to be the Executive of the revolted States; and his Congress is distracted with the same restless, ever disturbing issue. They now proclaim to us and to the civilized world that Slavery is not an issue in this struggle; that it may die and the contest survive and they are about to yield to the last resort of crime and cast from them the giant parent of disorder and woe, to enable them, as a last refuge, to elicit the sympathies of christian nations in their mad perfidy and wanton war.

When the traitors themselves who seized upon slavery as a pretext for armed revolt insist the government abandon it to its late and [illegible] that it has the [illegible], what is there to divide loyal men on the issue. As to how it may die, when all agree that it has already suffered its death blow, and must not survive, the bloody struggle is [illegible] hard, is not a question of moment. The Emancipation proclamation cannot be in the way of peace. It is the offspring of the war power of the organic laws and the exercise of those powers must cease when [illegible] to the laws cease. The channels of adjustment known to [illegible] and the civil power of the government, must then resume their supremacy, and whatever may have been the success of the measure growing out of the exercise of the extraordinary powers for the [illegible] it cannot survive the restoration of the government to the laws and [illegible]. By the [illegible] law of the civilized world, the Emancipation proclamation was [illegible] judge. So long as it is in force its powers are supreme. No slave [illegible] command can by any known law [illegible] become a slave. But should [illegible] and a measure of military necessity could not survive to complete its work. Slaves not actually made free by the operation of such a measure could not, after a return to peace, be liberated by its power. What means shall be adopted to adjust the issues growing out of the war, we cannot now foresee; but the steps taken will be in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution, vesting the peace making powers in the President and Congress. They, with the courts, may hold that the act of rebellion destroyed Slavery. It being the creature of our organic law, and that protecting power having been spurned, rejected and defied by armed resistance, has been forfeited and cannot be revived--or Congress may prefer, as is now warmly urged by the friends of the administration, that an amendment of the Constitution abolishing Slavery shall be adopted by the States. These and the additional resort of a convention of the States for their revision of our organic law, are all in harmony with the purposes of the administration and the people, who demand that Slavery shall cease to be a disturbing element in our midst.

Agreeing as do the people without distinction of party and the administration that Slavery must not survive the war, let no man permit his partizan prejudices to cloud his devotion to the great cause of saving our government from armed rebellion. Let us unite its brethern [sic] to destroy the military power of the foe, and when resistance ceases, as in time it must, we full well assured that no mere abstraction will be allowed for a moment to retard a just and honorable peace that gives promised enduring tranquil[l]ity by the removal of the crowning cause of our discord and desolation.