PROCLAMATION OF GEN. FREMONT.
HEADQUARTERS, WESTERN DIVISION, St. Louis, Aug. 30, 1861.
Circ.u.mstances; in my judgment, are of sufficient urgency to render it necessary that the Commanding General of this Department should a.s.sume administrative powers of the State. Its disorganized condition, helplessness of civil authority, and the total insecurity of life and devastation of property by bands of murderers and marauders, who infest nearly every county in the State, and avail themselves of public misfortunes and the vicinity of a hostile force to gratify private and neighborhood vengeance, and who find an enemy wherever they find plunder, finally demand the severest measures to repress the daily increasing crimes and outrages which are driving off the inhabitants and ruining the State. In this condition, the public safety and the success of our arms require unity of purpose, without let or hindrance, to the prompt administration of affairs. In order, therefore, to suppress disorder, maintain the public peace, and give security to the persons and property of loyal citizens, I do hereby extend and declare martial law throughout the State of Missouri.
The lines of the army occupation in this State are, for the present, declared to extend from Leavenworth by way of posts to Jefferson City, Rolla and Ironton, to Cape Girardeau, on the Mississippi river.
All persons who shall be taken with arms in their hands, within these lines, shall be tried by court martial, and, if found guilty, shall be shot.
Real and personal property, owned by persons who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part with the enemy in the field, is declared confiscated to public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men. All persons who shall be proven to, have destroyed, after the publication of this order, railroad tracks, bridges or telegraph lines, shall suffer the extreme penalty of the law. All persons engaged in treasonable correspondence, in giving or procuring aid to the enemy, in fomenting turmoils and disturbing public tranquility by creating or circulating false reports or incendiary doc.u.ments, are warned that they are exposing themselves.
All persons who have been led away from allegiance are requested to return to their homes forthwith. Any such absence, without sufficient cause, will be held to be presumptive evidence against them.
The object of this declaration is to place in the hands of the military authorities power to give instantaneous effect to the existing laws, and to supply such deficiencies as the conditions of the war demand; but it is not intended to suspend the ordinary tribunals of the country where law will be administered by civil officers in the usual manner, and with their customary authority, while the same can be peaceably administered.
The Commanding General will labor vigilantly for the public welfare, and, by his efforts for their safety, hopes to obtain not only acquiescence, but the active support of the people of the country.
(Signed,)
J. C. FREMONT, Major General Commanding.
SLAVERY HAS DONE IT.
Let us not for one moment lose sight of this fact. We go into this war not merely to sustain the government and defend the Const.i.tution. There is a moral principle involved. How came that government in danger? What has brought this wicked war, with all its evils and horrors, upon us? Whence comes the necessity for this uprising of the people? To these questions, there can be but one answer. SLAVERY HAS DONE IT. That accursed system, which has already cost us so much, has at length culminated in this present ruin and confusion. That system must be put down. The danger must never be suffered to occur again. The evil must be eradicated, cost what it may. We are for no half-way measures. So long as the slave system kept itself within the limits of the Const.i.tution, we were bound to let it alone, and to respect its legal rights; but when, overleaping those limits, it bids defiance to all law, and lays its vile hands on the sacred altar of liberty and the sacred flag of the country, and would overturn the Const.i.tution itself, thenceforth slavery has no const.i.tutional rights. It is by its own act an outlaw. It can never come back again into the temple, and claim a place by right among the worshippers of truth and liberty. It has ostracised itself, and that for ever.
Let us not be told, then, that the matter of slavery does not enter into the present controversy--that it is merely a war to uphold the government and put down secession. It is not so. So far from this, slavery is the very heart and head of this whole struggle. The conflict is between freedom on the one hand, maintaining its rights, and slavery on the other, usurping and demanding that to which it has no right. It is a war of principle as well as of self-preservation; and that is but a miserable and short-sighted policy which looks merely at the danger and overlooks the cause; which seeks merely to put out the fire, and lets the incendiary go at large, to repeat the experiment at his leisure. We must do both--put out the fire, and put out the incendiary too. We meet the danger effectually only by eradicating the disease.--Erie True American.
THE SLAVES AS A MILITARY ELEMENT.
The total white population of the eleven States now comprising the confederacy is six million, and, therefore, to fill up the ranks of the proposed army (600,000) about ten percent of the entire white population will be required. In any other country than our own, such a draft could not be met, but the Southern States can furnish that number of men, and still not leave the material interests of the country in a suffering condition. Those who are incapacitated for bearing arms can oversee the plantations, and the negroes can go on undisturbed in their usual labors. In the North, the case is different; the men who join the army of subjugation are the laborers, the producers, and the factory operatives. Nearly every man from that section, especially those from the rural districts, leaves some branch of industry to suffer during his absence. The inst.i.tution of slavery in the South alone enables her to place in the field a force much larger in proportion to her white population than the North, or indeed any country which is dependent entirely on free labor. The inst.i.tution is a tower of strength to the South, particularly at the present crisis, and our enemies will be likely to find that the "moral cancer," about which their orators are so fond of prating, is really one of the most effective weapons employed against the Union by the South. Whatever number of men may be needed for this war, we are confident our people stand ready to furnish. We are all enlisted for the war, and there must be no holding back until the independence of the South is fully acknowledged.--Montgomery (Ala.) Adv.
A NOVEL SIGHT.
A procession of several hundred stout negro men, members of the "domestic inst.i.tution," marched through our streets yesterday in military order, under the command of Confederate officers. They were well armed and equipped with shovels, axes, blankets, &c. A merrier set never were seen. They were brimful of patriotism, shouting for Jeff. Davis and singing war songs, and each looked as if he only wanted the privilege of shooting an Abolitionist.
An Abolitionist could not have looked upon this body of colored recruits for the Southern army without strongly suspecting that his intense sympathy for the "poor slave" was not appreciated, that it was wasted on an ungrateful subject.
The arms of these colored warriors were rather mysterious. Could it be that those gleaming axes were intended to drive into the thick skulls of the Abolitionists the truth, to which they are wilfully blind, that their interference in behalf of Southern slaves is neither appreciated nor desired; or that those shovels were intended to dig trenches for the interment of their carca.s.ses? It may be that the shovels are to be used in digging ditches, throwing up breastworks, or the construction of masked batteries, those abominations to every abolition Paul Pry who is so unlucky as to stumble upon them.--Memphis Avalanche, Sept. 3.