Public opinion was being rapidly educated; the Republican majority in Congress was pledged to the doctrine of emancipation; the slave-holders in the border States were being led gradually to realize the inevitable, and if they had been wise they would promptly have accepted the generosity of the President's proposition and thus have escaped the enormous pecuniary losses which they suffered by the Emancipation Proclamation a little later. Before Congress adjourned, laws were passed which materially altered the situation. The army was prohibited from surrendering fugitive slaves; the confiscation act was greatly enlarged; all slaves actually employed in military service by the Confederacy were declared free; the President was authorized to enlist negro regiments for the war; the Missouri Compromise was restored; slavery was forbidden in all Territories of the United States; appropriations were made for carrying into effect the treaty with Great Britain to suppress the slave-trade; the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Liberia, two black republics, were formally recognized, and two nations of negroes, with negro Presidents, negro officials, and negro ambassadors, were admitted on an equality into the sisterhood of civilized nations. Any one who would have predicted such legislation a year previous would have been considered insane, even six months previous it would have been declared impossible. The next sensation was an emancipation proclamation issued by General David Hunter, who commanded the Department of the South, which declared free all persons held as slaves in the States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Lincoln promptly vetoed Hunter's order and declared it unauthorized and void, saying that he reserved to himself, "as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free" when "it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government." This announcement should have satisfied the North and have been a sufficient warning to the South, because as we read it now we can see Lincoln's purposes between the lines. The President could not permit the Congressional delegations from the border States to return to their constituents without one more admonition and one more appeal to their patriotism and their sense of justice and wisdom. He called them to the White House and read to them a carefully prepared argument in support of his plan to sell their slaves to the government. Two-thirds of them united in an explanation of their reasons for rejecting the scheme on account of its impracticability, and the remainder promised to submit it to their constituents. The reception of this last appeal convinced Lincoln that he could do nothing by moral suasion, and he immediately determined to try the use of force.