"
Senator McDougall, of California, said: "I regard this as a Confiscation
for Treason, and I am for the proposition."
Mr. Ten Eyck, said: "No longer ago than Saturday last I voted in the
Judiciary Committee against this amendment, for two reasons: First, I
did not believe that persons in Rebellion against this Government would
make use of such means as the employment of Persons held to Labor or
Service, in their Armies; secondly, because I did not know what was to
become of these poor wretches if they were discharged. God knows we do
not want them in our Section of the Union. But, Sir, having learned and
believing that these persons have been employed with arms in their hands
to shed the blood of the Union-loving men of this Country, I shall now
vote in favor of that amendment with less regard to what may become of
these people than I had on Saturday. I will merely instance that there
is a precedent for this. If I recollect history aright, General
Jackson, in the Seminole War, declared that every Slave who was taken in
arms against the United States should be set Free,"
So, too, in the House of Representatives, the retrograde of a badly
demoralized Army, its routed fragments still coming in with alarming
stories of a pursuing Enemy almost at the gates of the city, had no
terrors for our legislators; and there was something of Roman dignity,
patriotism, and courage, in the adoption, on that painfully memorable
Blue Monday, (the first--[Offered by Mr.
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