Political Recollections: 1840 to 1872Julian, George Washington
History
Political Recollections: 1840 to 1872
Julian, George Washington
Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ) -- History; United States -- Politics and government
The Confiscation Act of this session, which was approved by the
President on the seventeenth day of July, providing that slaves of
rebels coming into our lines should be made free, and that the
property of their owners, both real and personal, should be
confiscated, would have given great and wide-spread satisfaction;
but the President refused to sign the bill without a modification
first made exempting the fee of rebel land-owners from its operation,
thus powerfully aiding them in their deadly struggle against us.
This action was inexpressibly provoking; but Congress was obliged
to make the modification required, as the only means of securing
the important advantages of other features of the measure. This
anti-republican discrimination between real and personal property
when the nation was struggling for its life against a rebellious
aristocracy founded on the monopoly of land and the ownership of
negroes, roused a popular opposition which thus far was altogether
unprecedented. The feeling in Congress, however, was far more
intense than throughout the country. No one at a distance could
have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of Republican
members toward Mr. Lincoln at the final adjournment, while it was
the belief of many that our last session of Congress had been held
in Washington. Mr. Wade said the country was going to hell, and
that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in
comparison with what we should see here.
Just before leaving Washington I called on the President again,
and told him I was going to take the stump, and to tell the people
that he would co-operate with Congress in vigorously carrying out
the measures we had inaugurated for the purpose of crushing the
rebellion, and that now the quickest and hardest blows were to be
dealt. He told me I was authorized to say so, but said that more
than half the popular clamor against the management of the war was
unwarranted; and when I referred to the movements of General
McClellan he made no committal in any way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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