In
a speech I made upon the subject I enlarged upon this consideration
and said:

"I see no reason why Washington, with a free population and as a
free city, situated here at the head of the Potomac, with remarkable
facilities of navigation, with great conveniences of communication,
reaching to the west by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the
political capital of the country, might not be a great free city,
illustrating by its progress the operation of free institutions.
But it can only be done by the active, interested labor of free
people. Simply as a municipal regulation it would be wise to
abolish slavery in this district, because slavery is opposed to
the moral convictions of the great mass of the people of this
country, and the existence of slavery here keeps out of this District
an active, loyal, true, manly, generous body of laborers, who will
never compete in their labor with the labor of slaves."

There was another reason why the experiment of emancipation could
be best tried in the District of Columbia. Emancipation was
evidently the ultimate end of this question. We had the power to
try the experiment. It would be an example likely to be followed
at the close of the war by many of the border states. I therefore
made up my mind in favor of the measure, made a long speech for
the bill and voted for it. It became a law on April 10, 1862.

At that early day, I believed that it was the duty of Congress to
confiscate the slaves in the seceding states as the natural result
of the war. These states had placed themselves in a position by
rebellion where they had no constitutional rights which we were
bound to observe. The war being open and flagrant to break up the
Union, they were not entitled to the benefit of any stipulation
made in their favor as states in the Union. I also favored the
granting of aid to any policy of emancipation that might be adopted
in the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, but Congress
was indisposed to extend the provisions of the then pending measure
beyond the District of Columbia.

The President of the United States, on September 22, 1862, issued
his proclamation containing the following declaration:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves
within any state of designated part of a state, the people whereof
shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then,