History of the Anti-Slavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth United States Congress, 1861-64
History of the Anti-Slavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth United Stales Congress, 1861—64. By . Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co. 12mo. pp. 384.
SENATOR WILSON is admirably qualified to record the anti-slavery legislation in which he has borne so prominent and honorable a part. Few but those engaged in debates can thoroughly understand their salient points, and fix upon the precise sentences in which the position, arguments, and animating spirit of opposite parties are stated and condensed. The present volume is a labor-saving machine of great power to all who desire or need a clear view of the course of Congressional legislation on measures of emancipation, but who prefer to rest in ignorance rather than wade through the debates as reported in the “ Congressional Globe,” striving to catch, amid the waste of words, the leading ideas or passions on which questions turn.
The first thing which strikes the reader in Mr. Wilson’s well-executed epitome is the gradual character of this anti-slavery legislation, and the general subordination of philanthropic to military considerations in its conduct. The questions were not taken up in the order of their abstract importance, but as they pressed on the practical judgment for settlement in exigencies of the Government. When Slavery became an obstruction to the progress of the national arms, opposition to it was the dictate of prudence as well as of conscience, and its defenders at once placed themselves in the position of being more interested in the preservation of slavery than in the preservation of the nation. The Republicans, charged heretofore with sacrificing the expedient to the right, could now retort that their opponents were sacrificing the expedient to the wrong.
Senator Wilson’s volume gives the history of twenty-three anti-slavery measures, in the order of their inception and discussion. Among these are the emancipation of slaves used for insurrectionary purposes, — the forbidding of persons in the army to return fugitive slaves, — the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,— the President’s proposition to aid States in the abolition of slavery, — the prohibition of slavery in the Territories,—the confiscation and emancipation bill of Senator Clark,— the appointment of diplomatic representatives to Hayti and Liberia,—the bill for the suppression of the African slave-trade,— the enrolment and pay of colored soldiers, — the anti-slavery Amendment to the Constitution,— the bill to aid the States to emancipate their slaves, — and the reconstruction of Rebel States. The account of the introduction of these and other measures, and the debates on them, are given by Mr. Wilson with brevity, fairness, and skill. A great deal of-the animation of the discussion, and of the clash and conflict of individual opinions and passions, is preserved in the epitome, so that the book has the interest which clings to all accounts of verbal battles on whose issue great principles are staked. As the words as well as the arguments of the debates are given, and as the sentences chosen are those in which the characters of the speakers find expression, the effect is often dramatic. It cannot fail to be observed, in reading these reports, that there is a prevailing vulgarity of tone in the declarations of the champions of Slavery. They boldly avow the lowest and most selfish views in the coarsest language, and scout and deride all elevation of feeling and thought in matters affecting the rights of the poor and oppressed. Their opinions outrage civility as well as Christianity; and while they make a boast of being gentlemen, they hardly rise above the prejudices of boors. Principles which have become truisms, and which it is a disgrace for an educated man not to admit, they boldly denounce as pestilent paradoxes; and in reading Mr. Wilson’s book an occasional shock of Shame must be felt by the most imperturbable politician, at the spectacle of the legislature of “ a model republic ” experiencing a fierce resistance in the attempt to establish indisputable truths.
Most of the questions here vehemently discussed should, it might be supposed, be settled without discussion by the plain average sense and conscience of any body of men deserving to live in the nineteenth century; but so completely have the defenders of Slavery substituted will and passion for reason and morality, and so long have they been accustomed to have their insolent absurdities rule the politics of the nation, that the passage of the bills whose varying fortunes Mr. Wilson records must be considered the greatest triumph of liberty and justice which our legislative annals afford. And in that triumph the historian of the Anti-Slavery Measures may justly claim to have had a distinguished part. Honest, able, industrious, intelligent, indefatigable, zealous for his cause, yet flexible to events, gifted at once with practical sagacity and strong convictions, and with his whole heart and mind absorbed in the business of politics and legislation, he has proved himself an excellent workman in that difficult task by which facts are made to take the impress of ideas, and the principles of equity are embodied in the laws of the land.