March 2014

March 19.—The correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette, at Washington, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, (“Agate,”) wrote as follows concerning the Emancipation Proclamation: “A recent allusion to the fact that Mr. Secretary Chase’s pen supplied the concluding sentence of the Emancipation Proclamation, has been received with a surprise that indicates a less general knowledge on the subject than might have been expected.

“When the final draft of the Proclamation was presented by the President to the Cabinet, it closed with the paragraph stating that the slaves if liberated would be received into the armed service of the United States. Mr. Chase objected to the appearance of a document of such momentous importance without one word beyond the dry phrases necessary to convey its meaning; and finally proposed that there be added to the President’s draft the following sentence:

“‘And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.'”

“Mr. Lincoln adopted the sentence as Mr. Chase wrote it, only interlining after the word ‘Constitution’ the words, ‘upon military necessity;’ and in that form the Proclamation went to the world, and history.

“The President originally resolved upon the policy of issuing this Proclamation in the summer of 1862. As he has expressed it himself, every thing was going wrong; we seemed to have put forth about our utmost efforts, and he really didn’t know what more to do, unless he did this. Accordingly, he prepared the preliminary Proclamation, nearly in the form in which it subsequently appeared, called the Cabinet together, and read it to them.

“Mr. Montgomery Blair was startled. ‘If you issue that proclamation, Mr. President,’ he exclaimed, ‘you will lose every one of the fall elections.’

“Mr. Seward, on the other hand, said: ‘I approve of it, Mr. President, just as it stands. I approve of it in principle, and I approve the policy of issuing it I only object to the time. Send it out now, on the heels of our late disasters, and it will be construed as the convulsive struggle of a drowning man. To give it proper weight, you should reserve it until after some victory.’

“The President assented to Mr. Seward’s view, and it was withheld till the fall, when it was issued almost precisely as originally prepared. The one to which Mr. Chase supplied the concluding sentence was the final Proclamation, issued on the subsequent first of January”

—The Legislature of Georgia in both branches to-day adopted Linton Stephens’s peace resolutions, earnestly “recommending that our government, immediately after every signal success of our arms, when none can impute its action to alarm instead of a sincere desire for peace, shall make to the government of our enemy an official offer of peace, on the basis of the great principle declared by our common fathers in 1776, accompanied by the distinct expression of a willingness, on our part, to follow that principle to its true logical consequences, by agreeing that any Border State whose preference for our association may be doubted, (doubts having been expressed as to the wishes of the Border States,) shall settle the question for herself, by a convention to be elected for that purpose, after the withdrawal of all military forces on both sides from her limits.”

They also adopted his resolution declaring that “the recent act of Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in cases of arrests, ordered by the President, Secretary of War, or general officer commanding the Trans-Mississippi military department, is an attempt to maintain the military in the usurpation of the constitutional judicial functions of issuing warrants, and to give validity to unconstitutional seizures of the persons of the people; and the said act, by its express terms, confines its operation to the upholding of the class of unconstitutional seizures, the whole suspension attempted to be authorized by it, and the whole act itself, are utterly void.”

“That in the judgment of this General Assembly, the said act is an alarming assault upon the liberty of the people, without any existing necessity to excuse it, and beyond the power of any possible necessity to justify it; and our Senators and Representatives in Congress are earnestly urged to take the first possible opportunity to have it blotted from the record of our laws.”

Both houses also adopted a resolution turning over to the confederate government all persons between the ages of seventeen and eighteen, and forty-five and fifty years.

They also unanimously adopted a resolution expressive of confidence in the President, and thanks to the confederate armies for reenlisting for the war.—Mobile Papers.