ceed to adopt an amendment to the Constitution that
shall leave no possibility of slaveholding treason hereafter? Surely
none but themselves. Let them, then, come back and vote against it; for
three fourths of all the States must concur in such an amendment before
it can become part of the Constitution. Ah, the leaders of the Southern
rebellion know full well how the great masses at the South would vote on
such a measure! Let us be ready, then, acting not for ourselves alone,
but also for our deluded brethren of the South, who are to-day the
victims of a military usurpation the most monstrous the world ever saw,
to put the finishing stroke to the scheme of this Confederate rebellion
by adopting the proposed amendment.

The fifth resolution commits us to the approval of two measures that
have aroused the most various and strenuous opposition, the Proclamation
of Emancipation and the use of negro troops. In reference to the first,
it is to be remembered that it is a war measure. The express language of
it is: 'By virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the
army and navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion
against the authority and Government of the United States, and as a _fit
and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion_.' Considered
thus, the Proclamation is not merely defensible, but it is more; it is a
proper and efficient means of weakening the rebellion which every person
desiring its speedy overthrow must zealously and perforce uphold.
Whether it is of any legal effect beyond the actual limits of our
military lines, is a question that need not agitate us. In due time the
supreme tribunal of the nation will be called to determine that, and to
its decision the country will yield with all respect and loyalty. But in
the mean time let the Proclamation go wherever the army goes, let it go
wherever the navy secures us a foothold on the outer border of the rebel
territory, and let it summon to our aid the negroes who are truer to the
Union than their disloyal masters; and when they have come to us and put
their lives in our keeping, let us protect and defend them with the
whole power of the nation. Is there anything unconstitutional in that?
Thank God, there is not. And he who is willing to give back to slavery a
single person who has heard the summons and come within our lines to
obtain his freedom, he who would give up a single man, woman, or child,
once thus actually free