We have not yet
emerged from the fine-drawn distinctions of peaceful times. We may
imprison or slaughter a Rebel, but we may not unloose his hold on a
person he has claimed as a slave. We may seize all his other property
without question, lands, houses, cattle, jewels; but his asserted
property in man is more sacred than the gold which overlay the Ark of
the Covenant, and we may not profane it. This reverence for things
assumed to be sacred, which are not so, cannot long continue. The
Government can well turn away from the enthusiast, however generous his
impulses, who asks the abolition of slavery on general principles of
philanthropy, for the reason that it already has work enough on its
hands. It may not change the objects of the war, but it must of
necessity at times shift its tactics and its instruments, as the
exigency demands. Its solemn and imperative duty is to look every
issue, however grave and transcendent, firmly in the face; and having
ascertained upon mature and conscientious reflection what is necessary
to suppress the Rebellion, it must then proceed with inexorable purpose
to inflict the blows where Rebellion is the weakest and under which it
must inevitably fall.
On the 30th of July, General Butler, being still unprovided with
adequate instructions,--the number of contrabands having now reached
nine hundred,--applied to the War Department for further directions.
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