This was not the end of it, however. Provision had been made in the bill for the forfeiture, by judicial process, of the property, both real and personal, of rebels, regardless of the clause of the Constitution which declares that "no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted." No such exception was made in the bill. The President considered it unconstitutional in this particular, and he wrote a short message giving his reasons for withholding his approval of the measure. A rumor of his intention reached Senator Fessenden, who called at the White House to inquire whether it was true. He had a frank conversation with the President, the result of which was that both houses passed a joint resolution providing that no punishment or proceedings under the Confiscation Act should be so construed as to work a forfeiture of the real estate of the offender beyond his natural life. Lincoln's intended veto of the Confiscation Bill is printed on page 3406 of the _Congressional Globe_. Touching confiscation in general he expressed the golden opinion that "the severest justice may not always be the best policy." But he would not have vetoed the bill on grounds of expediency merely. The forfeiture of real estate in perpetuity was the insuperable objection in his mind. And he here seems to me to have been entirely right. Yet Trumbull had the support of Judge Harris, Seward's successor in the Senate, than whom nobody stood higher as a lawyer at that day. The President then signed both the bill and the joint resolution. The Confiscation Act remained, however, practically a dead letter, except as to the freeing of the slaves. In the latter particular it was the first great step toward complete emancipation, since it took effect upon slaves within our lines, who could be reached and made free _de facto_. It provided that all slaves of persons who should be thereafter engaged in rebellion, escaping and taking refuge in the lines of the Union forces, and all such slaves found in places captured by such forces, should be declared free; that no slaves escaping should be delivered up unless the owner should swear that he had not aided the rebellion; that no officer of the United States should assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to an escaping slave; that the President should be authorized to employ negroes for the suppression of the rebellion in any capacity he saw fit; and that he might colonize negroes with their own consent and the consent of the foreign Government receiving them. According to a report of the Solicitor of the Treasury dated Dec. 27, 1867, the total proceeds of confiscation actually paid into the Treasury up to that time amounted to the insignificant sum of $129,680.