History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth United States Congresses, 1861-65, by Henry Wilson, 1865.

CHAPTER XVI.

TO MAKE FREE THE WIVES AND CHILDREN OF COLORED SOLDIERS.

MR. WILSON'S BILL TO PROMOTE ENLISTMENTS. —  MR. POWELL'S MOTION TO STRIKE OUT THE SECTION TO MAKE FREE THE MOTHERS, WIVES, AND CHILDREN OF COLORED SOLDIERS, — MR. HENDERSON'S AMENDMENT, — REMARKS OF MR. GRIMES, — MR. WILKINSON. — REMARKS OF MR. JOHNSON, — MR. SHERMAN'S SPEECH, — MR. CARLILE'S SPEECH. — REMARKS OF MR. DOOLITTLE, — MR. BROWN'S AMENDMENT, — MR. WILSON'S AMENDMENT, — MR. WILKINSON'S AMENDMENT, — REMARKS OF MR. SHERMAN, MR. GRIMES, MR. CONNESS'S MOTION TO REFER THE BILL. — REMARKS OF MR. CLARK, — MR. HOWARD, — MR. FESSENDEN. MR. DAVIS'S AMENDMENT. — MR. WILKINSON.'S SPEECH. — MR. WILSON'S JOINT RESOLUTION.

THE third action of the bill to promote enlistments, introduced into the Senate on the 8th of January, 1864, by Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts, declared that when any man or boy of African descent, owing service or labor in any State, under its laws, shall be mustered into the military or naval service of the United States, he, and his mother, wife, and children, shall be for ever free. On the 27th of January, the Senate proceeded to the consideration of the bill to promote enlistments. Mr. Powell (Dem.) of Kentucky moved to strike out the third section giving freedom to the mother, wife, and children of the colored soldier. Mr. Powell pronounced the section " clearly and palpably unconstitutional. There is certainly no power in this Congress to pass any such law. It is depriving loyal men of loyal Page 314 States of their property, by the legislative enactment of this Congress." Mr. Henderson moved to strike out the words, "his mother, and his wife and children," and inert, " and his mother, his wife and children, shall also be free, provided that, by the laws of any State, they owe service or labor to any person or persons who have given aid or comfort to the existing Rebellion against the Government, since the 17th of July, 1862." Mr. Grimes said, " That is substantially the law now. The reason why I shall vote for this section is, that I am exceedingly anxious to pass a law by which it shall be declared, that if a man who has perilled his life for me and for the institutions of my country at Port Hudson — I care not what kind of a claim may be set up to his service, or who may set it up — is claimed by any one, that claim shall not be regarded. I am unwilling that after he has thus perilled his life, and been wounded in my defence, he shall be taken off to slavery by any per son, or under any sort of institution. I think that such a proposition as this will meet the approval and commendation of the country ; and I rejoice that the senator from Massachusetts, and the Committee on Military Affaire, have given us an opportunity to record our votes in favor of it." Mr. Wilkinson said, " That is the law as it now stands ; and if the senator from Missouri wishes to carry out the purpose, or to retain this provision of the existing law, all he has to do is to oppose this section entirely. I think that law is the most disgraceful legislation of the Congress which passed it. It is a disgrace to the nation to pass such a law ; and I am very much rejoiced that the Committee on Military Affairs have introduced this bill wiping it out." Mr. Henderson Page 315 did not offer the amendment, to protect slavery. " I have not been engaged," he said, " very recently in the protection of that Institution ; and, so far as I can go constitutionally to abolish the institution throughout the country, I most unhesitatingly would do so. My impression is, that, when you put this Rebellion down, slavery for ever dice, because of the fact that they have organized this Rebellion on the existence of the institution ; and. If the Rebellion goes by the board, the institution itself goes. I can further state to three gentlemen, that I believe no State will again take its place in the Union, without first, by the action of its own people, abolishing slavery."

The Senate on the 28th resumed, on motion of Mr. Wilson, the consideration of the bill. Mr. Wilkinson demanded the yeas and nays on Mr. Henderson's motion to strike out " his rather, and his wife and children ; " and they were ordered. Mr. Johnson should vote in favor of the amendment. " I doubt very much," he said, " if any member of the Senate is more anxious to have the country composed entirely of free men and free women than I am. Sir, the bill provided that a slave enlisted anywhere, no matter where he may be, whether he be within Maryland or out of Maryland, whether he be within any other of the loyal States, or out of the loyal States altogether, is at once to work the emancipation of his wife and children. He may be in South Carolina ; and many a slave in South Carolina, I am sorry to say it, can well claim to have a wife, or perhaps wives and children, within the limits of Mary land. It is one of the vices and the horrible vices of the institution, one that has shocked me from infancy to Page 316 the present hour, that the whole marital relation is dis regarded. They are made to be, practically and by education, forgetful or ignorant of that relation. When I say they are educated, I mean to say they are kept in absolute Ignorance ; and, out of that, immorality of every description arises ; and among other immoralities is that the connubial relation does not exist."

On the 2d of February, Mr. Sherman addressed the Senate upon the general questions of employing colored men as soldiers, and of emancipation. " On the subject of emancipation," he declared, " I am ready now to go as far as any one. Like all others, I hesitated at first, because I could not see the effect of the general project of emancipation. I think the time has now arrived when we must meet this question of emancipation boldly and fearlessly. There is no other way. Slavery is destroyed, not by your act, sir, or mine, but by the act of this Rebellion. I think, therefore, the better way would be to wipe out all that is left of the whole trouble, — the dead and buried and wounded of this system of slavery. It is obnoxious to every manly and generous sentiment. From the beginning, we should have armed the slaves ; but before doing so, in my judgment, we ought to secure them by law, by a great guaranty, in which you and I, and all branches of- the Government, would unite in pledging the faith of the United States, that, for ever thereafter, they should hold their freedom against their old masters." Mr. Carlile followed Mr. Sherman, on the 8th, in opposition to the bill. He emphatically declared, that, "if it shall become necessary in this struggle for the confederates to arm their slaves, they will arm and emancipate them too; and I will say further, if Page 317 their confederacy never crumbles into dust until it does so from the arming and emancipating their slaves, it will last until —

' Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below.'

The slaves know that their owners have the legal right to emancipate them. Many of them know that you have not."

On the 9th, the Senate resumed the consideration of the bill ; the pending question being Mr. Henderson's amendment to strike out " his mother, wife, and children." Mr. Doolittle (Rep.) of Wisconsin opposed the bill, but fevered an amendment of the Constitution. " Slavery," he said, " is dying, dying, all around us. It is dying as a suicide dies. It is dying in the House, and at the hands of its own professed friends. The sword which it would have driven into the vitals of this Republic is parried, and thrust back into its own. And, sir, let it die ; let it die. Without any sympathy of mine, slavery with all its abominations may die, and go into everlasting perdition." Mr. Richardson (Dem.) of Illinois asserted, that, "while senators are struggling for the rights of the negro, they forget the white race, — the race that has made this country so great and so glorious ; that has upheld your flag in triumph on every ocean, and has carried your commerce to all the civilized porta of the earth." On the 8th of March, Mr. Brown (Rep.) of Missouri moved to amend the bill by striking put the third section, making the " mother, wife, and children " of the colored soldier free, and inserting an amendment re-affirming the President's proclamation of emancipation, and abolishing slavery throughout the United Page 318 States. He affirmed, in an elaborate speech of rare beauty and force, " that slavery yet liveth, the discussion which has attended every measure introduced here trenching upon it sufficiently attests. Neither dead, nor willing to die, but struggling for being, by joint and ligature and tissue and nerve, that some centre of future growth may lurk under proviso or exception, its vitality s upheld in this hour by appeal to the same constitutionalisms and local countenance that will be swift to maintain it hereafter if this epoch shall pass without its utter extinction. The soldier who has worn our uniform and served under our flag must not hereafter labor as a slave. Nor would It be tolerable that his wife, his mother, or his child, should be the property of another. The instinctive feeling of every man of generous impulse would revolt at such a spectacle. The guaranty of freedom for himself, his mother, his wife, and his child, is the inevitable incident of the employment of a slave as a soldier. If you have not the power, or do not mean, to emancipate him, and these with whom he is connect ed by domestic ties, then, in the name of God and humanity, do not employ him as a soldier ! "

On the 18th of March, Mr. Brown withdrew his amendment ; and Mr. Wilson moved to strike out the entire bill, and insert, " That when any person of African descent, whose service or labor is claimed in any State under the laws thereof, shall be mustered into the military or naval service of the United States, his wife and children, if any he have, shall for ever thereafter be free, any law, usage, or custom whatsoever, to the contrary notwithstanding ; that it shall be the duty of the commission appointed in each of the slave States represented Page 319 in Congress under the provisions of the twenty-fourth section of the ' Act to amend an act entitled " An act for enrolling and calling out the national forces, and for other purposes," approved March 3, 1863,' approved Feb. 24, 1864, to award to each loyal person, to whom the wife and children aforesaid may owe service, a just compensation, to be paid out of any moneys which may be appropriated by Congress for that purpose." " I propose," he said, " in this amendment, to make the soldier's wife and children free, no matter to whom they belong. We have provided in the Enrolment Act, that a slave enlisted into the military Service of the United States is free when he is mustered into the service. We have exercised that great power to strengthen the Government in putting down the Rebellion. We have enlisted about eighty thousand colored men, and we are continuing to enlist colored men, in all parts of the country. But, sir, the enlistment of colored men causes a vast deal of suffering ; for a great-wrong is done to their families, and especially is that so in the State of Missouri. Those wives and children who are left behind, may be sold, may be abused ; and how can a soldier fight the battles of our country when he receives the intelligence that the wife he left at home, and the little ones he left around his hearth, were sold into perpetual slavery, — sold where he would never see them more? Sir, if there be a crime on earth that should be promptly punished, it is the crime of selling into slavery, in a distant section of the country, the wives and children of the soldiers who are fighting the battles of our bleeding country. Now wife and children plead to the husband and father not to enlist, — to remain at Page 320 home for their protection. Pass this bill, and the wife and children will beseech that husband and father to fight for the country, for his liberty, and for their freedom." Mr. Wilkinson moved to strike out the second section of the amendment, which proposed to pay the estimated value of wives and children of colored soldiers. Mr. Pomeroy would amend that section. " I should like," he said, " to have that section amended in the eighth line by striking out the words, ' to award to each loyal person to whom the wife and children afore said may owe service a just compensation,' and inserting, ' to settle the account between each such person made free and his or her owner, and award to each party such just compensation as may be found due.' "

Mr. Sherman moved to postpone the bill until Thursday next, with a view that we may act upon the main proposition, the amendment to the Constitution to abolish slavery in the United States. Mr. Sumner said the main question was to hit slavery wherever and whenever It could be found. " I think it is a measure to fill up our armies," said Mr. Wilson ; " and it ought not to be postponed an hour. Then, as a matter of justice, how can you go to a man, and ask him to enlist to fight the battles of his country, when he knows, that, the moment his back is turned, his wife and children will be sold to strangers ? " Mr. Wilkinson believed the vote to be a most important one, and the proposition of Mr. Sherman would allow it to be more fully considered. Mr. Lane of Kansas differed with Mr. Wilkinson "as to the question of time. This is a bill, that, in my opinion, should be voted upon at the very earliest day, or else we should stop enlisting black men." Mr. Grimes said, " Here is a Page 321 bill, which, it seems to me, it is very important that we should pass at an early day in some shape or other, either in the shape in which the senator" from Massachusetts (Mr. Wilson) presents it to us, and which I do not really approve, or as proposed to be amended by the senator from Minnesota (Mr. Wilkinson), or as proposed to be amended by the senator from Missouri (Mr. Brown.) ; and I do not know of any bill that is before us, or that is likely to be before us to-day, which deserves the careful and the immediate attention of Congress more than this bill does." — "I suggested," said Mr. Sherman, "in its discussion, a long time ago, practical difficulties which the senator from Massachusetts has not met. Who is the wife of a slave? Who is the child of a slave? What is the use of passing this bill, without employing some definite and distinctive language that will embrace the persons whom it is designed to embrace ? " Mr. Brown said, " You have the fact before you, that these colored soldiers are going into the army of the United States. You have the further fact before you, that slave-owners are hounding on a persecution in the Border States, and selling the wives and children of those soldiers, making merchandise of their flesh and blood, and doing it as a punishment for their entry into our army as volunteers for our defence. Shall we tolerate that scene? Shall we legislate here, sending men day after day to sacrifice their lives for our protection, and yet sit quietly by, with no legislation to prevent, and see others sending the wives and children of those men day after day into further and harsher bond age because they have done so ? " — "I do not," said Page 322 Mr. Grimes, " apprehend that there Is going to be any great trouble in ascertaining who are the wives and children of these men, As has been well said by the senator from Missouri, we all know that the laws of the slave States do not recognize the relation of husband and wife, or parent and child ; but we recognize the fact that such relations do de facto exist, and that is enough for our purpose : it ought to be enough ; and we shall be justified by the people of the country who sent us here in regarding it as enough for all the purposes of this bill,"

"There are," said Mr. Sherman, "grave questions of constitutional power involved in this proposition. The general object proposed to be accomplished, I desire as much as any one ; but I want to do it in an effective way : and I think It is much wiser for us to defer all . these propositions in regard to slavery, until we can, by a general plan based upon a constitutional amendment proposed by Congress, and submitted to the people, aided by auxiliary legislation, wipe out the whole system in the mode provided by the Constitution." — " The senator from Ohio," said Mr. Wilson, " takes the position, that, because there is a proposition pending' to amend the Constitution of the United States to abolish slavery, we are to do nothing else against slavery. Sir, I say it is sound policy to strike this system of slavery whenever and wherever you can get a blow at it. It is to perish, if it perish at all, by hedging it around by every enactment, breaking down every barrier that surrounds it, and defeating the three hundred thousand bayonets behind which it is intrenched." Mr. Conness moved to refer the bill to the Committee on Slavery and Page 323 Freedmen. Mr. Wilson objected to the recommitment of the bill, and modified his amendment by withdrawing the second section. Mr. Conness said it was not in a condition that he could vote for it. He hoped the Senate would come to a vote on the motion to recommit. Mr. Carlile would refer it to the Judiciary Committee. He thought the difficulties that had been suggested as to ascertaining who are the wife and children of the party will not be found to be great in practical operation. "The great question," he said, "which stands in my way in support of this bill, is the question of power." Mr. Clark opposed recommitment. It would return from the Judiciary Committee with the same question embarrassing it. He would discuss the question in the Senate. He said, " Here you desire to put soldiers in your array, and those soldiers have their wives and their children. You are desirous of putting those soldiers in the service at the earliest moment ; and the people who want to prevent those soldiers from going into the army take these very means to torment the soldier, as that he shall not go in. The master says to him, in effect, ' If you go into the armies of the United States, and fight the battles of the country, I will sell your wife ; I -will abuse your children.' That is very much worse than the rendition of a fugitive slave ; and an amendment of the Constitution which would take place months hence does not cure or remedy the evil." Mr. Doolittle asked Mr. Clark if he had evidence that loyal masters " abused their women and children." — " We know," re plied Mr. Clark, " that everywhere in these loyal States there are men who are in sympathy with the Rebellion. We know that men in the loyal States are opposed to Page 324 the negroes going into the service. Many of those men — I will not say all — would be willing to punish the negro if he went in, if they are in sympathy with the Rebellion, by the abuse of his wife and children. They wish to deter him from going into the service if they can ; and they say to him, ' Not only shall your wife and children have no care, no food, no protection, but they shall be sold into slavery; and, when you return from fighting the battles of the Union, you shall find your home desolate, your wife gone no one knows where in slavery, and your children all sent away.'" Mr. Howard hoped this bill would not be referred to the Judiciary Committee. He said, " There may be some difficulty in the apprehension of some gentlemen, perhaps, as to who can claim to be the wife or the child of a slave ; inasmuch as the laws of the slaveholding States do not recognize the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child, in that class. I know of no other mode of applying this difficulty than this : that that person shall be held to be the wife of the slave who recognizes the slave to be her husband, and whose husband recognizes the woman to be his wife ; accepting the same principle of the common law that applies in other cases, — a simple recognition of the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child." Mr. Fessenden said, "My doubt of course was, in the beginning, whether, in taking persons of this description, and initiating that they should render military service, we could go so far ae to liberate other persons connected with them. That was a very serious difficulty ; but, sir, I have been convinced that we can do any thing that is necessary to be done in order to accomplish the Page 325 purpose that we have in view, and which is not only a legal, but a necessary purpose, — the salvation and perpetuation of the Republic."

The Senate, on the 21st, resumed the consideration of the bill. Mr. Wilson said, " I desire, after, consulting with some senators, to modify the amendment that I offered to the bill, by adding, after the word ' wife,' the words, ' meaning thereby the woman regarded and treat ed by him as such.' " — "I move," said Mr. Davis, "to amend the amendment by adding to it, ' and the loyal owner or owners of the wife or children of all slaves taken into the military service of the United States shall be entitled to a just compensation for such wife and children of said slaves.'" He maintained that slaves were property ; that, as such, they could only be taken for public use by paying a just compensation. " The party in power are grinding us to the duet by the weight and tyrannies of an organized military despotism. These usurpers and oppressors are seizing upon our able-bodied negro slaves, and organizing them into a standing army already numbering nearly one hundred thousand men, and to be augmented far beyond those figures, to hold us in hapless and hopeless political, social, and commercial servitude to themselves. Belshazzar and his host are now drunk and feasting ; but Cyrus and the Persians will soon be upon them. The aroused American freemen will effect their own deliverance at the ides of next November." — "This bill," said Mr. Wilkinson, " is to give freedom to the wives and children of the soldiers who fight our battles for the Government and for freedom. It has been claimed, that, if this bill shall pass, it will work the emancipation of the whole Page 326 negro race within the United States. While the noblest and the best sons of the loyal States were reddening every rivulet in Virginia with their blood, and almost every sod of the Old Dominion was pressing upon the grave of a blue-eyed soldier of the North, we turned our backs coldly upon the only friends we had in the rebellious States, and said to them, 'You are black, and are not worthy to suffer and die for freedom : we would rather lose our own liberties than to give freedom to a nation of slaves.' I do not know but that it was the design of Providence to blind the eyes of the people of the North to their true interests, until they had paid the full penalty for their participation in the giant crime of human slavery in this Government. There is a retributive justice in this war, as the senator from Maryland said, and it is visited alike upon the North and the South ; for the North as well as the South has been a guilty participator in the foulest crime that ever blackened the character of a nation."

On the 22d, the Senate resumed the consideration of the bill ; and Mr. Willey (Union) of West Virginia addressed the Senate. He said he was disposed to believe the cases of vindictive cruelty to which allusions had been made were "more justly attributable to the impending universal emancipation of slavery in Missouri than to any exasperation of the master growing out of the enlistment of his slave." He thought the passage of the bill would " lead to very distressing difficulties in the States where these slaves live. There can be," he declared, "In Virginia, between slaves, no legal marriage ; there Can be no wife in the eye of the law ; there can be np children of slaves in the eyes of the Page 327 law." The bill was not brought to a vote in the Senate.

In the Senate, on the 18th of May, Mr. Wilson introduced a joint resolution to encourage enlistments, and to promote the efficiency of the military forces of the United States. This resolution provided that the wife and children of any person that has been or may be mustered into the military or naval service of the United States shall be for ever free, any law, usage, or curators whatsoever, to the contrary notwithstanding ; that, in determining who is the wife and who are the children of the enlisted person, evidence that he and the woman claimed to be his wife have lived together, associated as husband and wife, and so continued to live or associate at the time of the enlistment, or that a form of marriage, whether the same was or was not authorized or recognized by law, has been celebrated between them, and that the parties thereto thereafter lived together or associated as husband and wife, and so continued to live or associate at the time of the enlistment, shall be deemed sufficient proof of a marriage ; and the children of any such marriages born while the same continued, although it had ceased at the time of enlistment, shall be deemed and taken to be the children mentioned in this resolution. The provisions of this resolution were reported, moved as amendments to several bills, but. failed to be brought to the teat of the vote of the Senate. The joint resolution to make free the wives and children of colored soldiers is pending in the Senate, and will doubtless be pressed at the next session.

Source: Wilson, Henry. History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth United States Congresses, 1861-1865, Boston: Walker, Fuller, & Co., 1865.