The "influence almost if not quite controlling" meant Seward. Secretary Cameron went to St. Louis to investigate Frémont and found him guilty. Two months later he followed Frémont's example.[54] In his report as Secretary of War he inserted an argument in favor of the emancipation and arming of slaves. This he sent to the newspapers in advance of its delivery to the President and without his knowledge. The latter discovered it in time to expunge the objectionable part and to prevent its delivery to Congress, but not soon enough to recall it from the press. The expunged part was published by some of the newspapers that had received it and was reproduced in the _Congressional Globe_ (December 12), by Representative Eliot, of Massachusetts. The next man to take upon himself the responsibility of declaring the nation's policy on this momentous question was General David Hunter, who then held sway over a small strip of ground on the coast of South Carolina. In the month of May, 1862, he issued an order granting freedom to all slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Hunter's order was promptly revoked by the President. Trumbull had been the pioneer, at the July session, in the way of legislation for freeing the slaves. On the first day of the regular session he took another step forward, by introducing a bill for the confiscation of the property of the rebels and for giving freedom to persons held as slaves by them. This came to be known as the Confiscation Act. On the 5th of December, 1861, he reported the bill from the Committee on the Judiciary and made a brief speech on it. It provided that all the property, real and personal, situated within the limits of the United States, belonging to persons who should bear arms against the Government, or give aid and comfort to those in rebellion, which persons should not be reachable by the ordinary process of law, should be forfeited and confiscated to the United States and that the forfeiture should take immediate effect; and that the slaves of all such persons should be free. Also that no slaves escaping from servitude should be delivered up unless the person claiming them should prove that he had been at all times loyal to the Government. Also that no officer in the military or naval service should assume to decide whether a claim made by a master to an escaping slave was valid or not.