Here I assume, as a cardinal principle of Constitutional Law, that, whatever may be the condition of slaves in the States and under State laws, they are, under the Constitution of the United States, _persons_, and not property; so that, in declaring their emancipation, Congress is not constrained by any constitutional requirements with regard to property. Whatever the claims of property, slaves are men; and I but repeat an unquestionable truth of morals, confirmed by the Declaration of Independence, when I say that there can be no property in men. Mr. Winter Davis,[84] of Baltimore, has reminded the country, that Congress, on the motion of Mr. Clay, once undertook to declare the freedom of slaves without any “due process of law”; and the present Congress, by a bill of the last session, setting free slaves actually employed in the Rebellion,[85] has done the same thing; so that the principle is completely established. Even if the bills seemed obnoxious to certain constitutional provisions,--as they clearly are not,--this objection and every other objection will disappear, when it is understood that they are _war measures_, derived from the capacious War Powers of Congress, applicable only to public enemies, and limited in duration to the war. Considered in these aspects and with these qualifications, these bills are only an agency in the prosecution of the war, and the power to enact them is as clear as the power to raise armies or to levy taxes. An ancient historian, in words adopted by the greatest modern publicist, has told us that “war has its laws, no less than peace.”[86] These words are placed by Grotius at the head of his great work, and they embody a fundamental principle. The Rights of War are not less peculiar than the victories of war, which are so widely different from the victories of peace. Pray, Sir, where in the Constitution is any limitation of the War Powers? Let Senators who would limit them mention a single section, line, or phrase, which even hints at any limitation. If it be constitutional to make war, to set armies in the field, to launch navies, to occupy fields and houses, to bombard cities, to kill in battle,--all without trial by jury, or any process of law, or judicial proceeding of any kind,--it is equally constitutional, as a war measure, to confiscate the property of the enemy and to liberate his slaves. Nor can it be doubted on principle, that, if the latter be unconstitutional, then are all other acts of war unconstitutional. You may condemn confiscation and liberation as impolitic, but you cannot condemn them as unconstitutional, unless, in the same breath, you condemn all other agencies of war, and resolve our present proceeding into the process of a criminal court, guarded at each step by the technicalities of the Common Law.