14 foundation of a stronger form of civil government, it looked to me as though, slavery was making war against civil liberty. Those who begun the war by firing on our flag at Sumter have made it what it is. They alone are responsible for the issues which they have tendered, and we, the American people, have accepted. By an Act of our Congress their property is forfeited, and their slaves are declared free. Would you have them made slaves again ? Is there any power granted by our Constitution to Congress to make slaves of them again ? I recognize and respect that Act as an accomplished fact, and will do all in my power to enforce it as well as every other law of the land. So far as making soldiers of the negroes, if they choose to volunteer, I see no objection to it. General Washington employed negroes as soldiers. So did General Jackson (who, when living, was my political chief), at the battle of New Orleans. Even the rebel Governor Moore, of Louisiana, set us a recent precedent for doing so by raising what he called his native guards, who were nothing but negroes and mulattoes. * You say you will support no unconstitutional measures. In this I fully agree with you, though I probably differ from you as to what those measures may be. * How could the rebels exhibit greater effrontery than by crying out against our employing negroes as volunteers after Gov. Moore had set us the example and after Albert Pike had recruited Indians? Cop.—That, I think, is hardly possible. You don’t mean to say that you intend to support all the measures of Lincoln’s administration ? Dem.—I do. The United States Government, no matter who for the time being is elected to administer it, is my government. Mr. Jefferson Davis, and his fellow rebels, and their dupes, are in arms against the Constitution, and have no right to claim that any measures resorted to to maintain that Constitution are unconstitutional. They have voluntarily declared themselves not under the protection of the Constitution. Their friends, if any they have in this country, even though they have not openly avowed themselves such, have no right to do for them what they will not do for themselves. Traitors in
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