Note (return) — THE CLAIMS TO SERVICE OR LABOR.

Those who demur to the passage of an act which meets the great difficulty before us broadly, effectually, honestly, and in accordance with the dictates of Christianity and civilization, would do well to consider whether, in the progress of this insurrectionary upheaval, we have not reached a point at which there is no prudent alternative left. By the President's Proclamation some three millions of slaves have been already declared free. Sundry laws of Congress have emancipated several hundred thousands more. There remain legally enslaved probably less than three quarters of a million,—chiefly scattered along a narrow border-strip that is coterminous, North and South, with Freedom or Emancipation,—partly dotted in isolated parishes or counties, surrounded by enfranchised slaves. Can we maintain in perpetuity so anomalous a condition of things? Clearly not. At every step embarrassments innumerable obstruct our progress. No industry, no human sagacity, would suffice to determine the ten thousand conflicting questions that must arise out of such a chaos. Must the history of each negro be followed back, so as to determine his status, whether slave or free? If negroes emancipated in insurrectionary States are sold as slaves into Border States, or into excepted parishes or counties, can we expect to trace the transaction? If slaves owned in Border States, or in excepted parishes or counties, are sold to loyal men in insurrectionary States, are they still slaves? or do they become free? Are we to admit, or to deny, the constitutionality of Border-State laws, which arrest, and imprison as vagrants, and sell into slavery to pay expenses of arrest and imprisonment, free negro emigrants from insurrectionary States?11 But why multiply instances? The longer this twilight of groping transition lasts, it will be only confusion the worse confounded.