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ouri and Maryland, largely believed in Slavery, or at least were averse to any interference with it. These, would not see that the right to destroy that unholy Institution could pertain to any authority, or be justified by any exigency; much less that, as held by some authorities, its existence ceased at the moment when its hands, or those of the State in which it had existed, were used to assail the General Government. They looked with especial suspicion and distrust upon the guarded utterances of the President upon all questions touching the future of the Colored Race. [At Faneuil Hall, Edward Everett is reported to have said, in October of 1864: "It is very doubtful whether any act of the Government of the United States was necessary to liberate the Slaves in a State which is in Rebellion. There is much reason for the opinion that, by the simple act of levying War against the United States, the relation of Slavery was terminated; certainly, so far as concerns the duty of the United States to recognize it, or to refrain from interfering with it. "Not being founded on the Law of Nature, and resting solely on positive Local Law--and that, not of the United States--as soon as it becomes either the motive or pretext of an unjust War against the Union--an efficient instrument in the hands of the Rebels for carrying on the War--source of Military strength to the Rebellion, and of danger to the Government at home and abroad, with the additional certainty that, in any event but its abandonment, it will continue, in all future time to work these mischiefs, who can suppose it is the duty of the United States to continue to recognize it. "To maintain this would be a contradiction in terms. It would be two recognize a right in a Rebel master to employ his Slave in acts of Rebellion and Treason, and the duty of the Slave to aid and abet his master in the commission of the greatest crime known to the Law. No such absurdity can be admitted; and any citizen of the United States, from thee President down, who should, by any overt act, recognize the duty of a Slave to obey a Rebel master in a hostile operation, would himself be giving aid and comfort to the Enemy."] They believed that when Fremont issued the General Order-heretofore given in full--in which that General declared th
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