A much more serious trouble than that of European indifference soon arose in the negro question. There were in the rebel states nearly 4,000,000 slaves. In Mr. Lincoln’s party, the Republican, were two classes of men--the Abolitionists, who advocated immediate enfranchisement of all slaves by any means; and the much larger number of men who, while they were opposed to the extension of slavery, and would have liked to see it _legally_ abolished, still remembered that it was constitutional. Slave property had become such a sacred thing, and had been legislated about and quarrelled over to such an extent, that, even among slavery-haters, it was a proof of honest citizenship to recognise it. Thus, for a long time after the war had begun, General M‘Clellan, and many other officers like him, made it a point of returning fugitive slaves to their rebel masters. These slaves believed “the Yankees” had come to deliver them from bondage. “They were ready to act as guides, to dig, to work, to fight for liberty,” and they were welcomed, on coming to help their country in its need, by being handed back to the enemy to be tortured or put to death. So great were the atrocities perpetrated in this way, and so much did certain Federal officers disgrace themselves by hunting negroes and truckling to the enemy, that a bill was soon passed in Congress, declaring it was no part of the duty of the soldiers of the United States to capture and return fugitive slaves. About the same time, General B. F. Butler, of the Federal forces, shrewdly declared that slaves were legally property, but that, as they were employed by their masters against the Government, they might be seized as _contraband of war_, which was accordingly done; nor is it recorded that any of the slaves who were by this ingenious application of law confined within the limits of freedom ever found any fault with it. From this time, during the war, slaves became popularly known as contrabands.