The Abolition of Slavery | Page 9

and their own
judgment, unless when otherwise ordered...If he is acting on his own
responsibility, he is only carrying out the Confiscation Act, so far as the
slaves are concerned...We have no fear of the result.--N. Y. Herald,
Sept. 3.

BUT ONE WAY OUT.
To our apprehension, God is fast closing every avenue to settled peace
but by emancipation. And one of the most encouraging facts is that the
eyes of the nation are becoming turned in that direction quite as rapidly
as could have been anticipated. Some men of conservative antecedents,
like Dickinson of New York, saw this necessity from the first. But it
takes time to accustom a whole people to the thought, and to make
them see the necessity. It was impossible for Northern men to fathom
the spirit and the desperate exigencies of the slave system and its
outbreak, and consequently to comprehend the desperate nature of the
struggle. We were like a policeman endeavoring to arrest a boy-ruffian,
and, for the sake of his friends and for old acquaintance sake, doing it

with all possible tenderness for his person and his feelings--till all of a
sudden he feels the grip on his throat and the dagger's point at his breast,
and knows that it is a life-and-death grapple.
Slaveholding is simply piracy continued. Our people are beginning to
spell out that short and easy lesson in the light of perjury, robbery,
assassination, poisoning, and all the more than Algerine atrocities of
this rebellion. It cannot require many more months of schooling like the
last eight, to convince the dullest of us what are its essence and spirit.
Our people also are rapidly finding out that no peaceful termination of
this war will be permitted now by the Slave Power, except by its
thorough overthrow. The robber has thrown off the mask, and says now
to the nation, "Your life or mine!" Even the compromising Everett has
boldly told the South, "To be let alone is not all you ask--but you
demand a great deal more." And in his late oration, he has most
powerfully portrayed the impossibility of a peaceful disunion. Many
men, some anti-slavery, were at first inclined to yield to the idea of a
separation. But every day's experience is scattering that notion to the
winds. The ferocious spirit exhibited from the first by the Secessionists
towards all dissentients, the invasion of Western Virginia by Eastern,
the threats to put down loyal Kentucky, the foray in Missouri, the plan
for capturing Washington, which was part of the original scheme, are
convincing proofs, that if by any pacification whatever our troops were
disbanded to-day, to-morrow a Southern army would be on the march
for Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and perhaps Chicago.
The South has sufficiently declared the cause of this trouble to be the
irreconcilable conflict between their institutions and the fundamental
principles of this government. While the cause remains in full strength,
and after it has once burst forth in bloody and final collision, nothing
will ever check that strife, whether in or out of the Union. The cause
must be eradicated. Meanwhile, our own position, both before the
world and in our own struggle at home, is a false one, so long as we
blink the real issue.
Many indications are hopeful. Gen. Butler's letter to the Secretary of
War, and the Secretary's reply, look in the right direction. The

Confiscation Act is pregnant with great consequences, and may yet be
so used as to become an emancipation act in all the rebel States. It is
high time it were so used. We have serious doubts whether the
rebellion will ever be suppressed till that trenchant weapon is wielded.
We reverently doubt whether the Lord means it shall be. The quiet
passage of the Confiscation Act was an immense step of governmental
progress. Perhaps it was all that the nation as a whole and the
government were ready for. It may answer as a keen wedge. But we
trust that, in December, Congress will make clean work by the full
emancipation of all slaves in the rebel States, and by provision in some
way for the speedy and certain extinction of slavery in the loyal States.
To accomplish the latter event, we would ourselves willingly submit to
any proper amount of pecuniary burden, provided it could be so
arranged as not to recognize a right of property in man.--Chicago
Congregational Herald.

PROCLAMATION OF GEN. FREMONT.
HEADQUARTERS, WESTERN DIVISION, St. Louis, Aug. 30, 1861.
Circumstances; in my judgment, are of sufficient urgency to render it
necessary that the Commanding General of this Department should
assume administrative powers of the State. Its disorganized condition,
helplessness of civil authority, and the total insecurity of life and
devastation of property by bands of murderers and marauders,