The Great Conspiracy Part 21

The Proclamation of September 22d, 1862, was very generally endorsed and upheld by the People at large; and, in accordance with its promise, it was followed at the appointed time, January 1st, 1863, by the supplemental Proclamation specifically Emanc.i.p.ating the Slaves in the rebellious parts of the United States-in the following terms: "WHEREAS, On the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a Proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: "'That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all Persons held as Slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in Rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever Free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the Military and Naval Authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the Freedom of such Persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such Persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual Freedom.

"'That the Executive will, on the First day of January aforesaid, by Proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in Rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have partic.i.p.ated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in Rebellion against the United States.'

"Now, therefore, I ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, in time of actual armed Rebellion against the authority and Government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary War measure for suppressing said Rebellion, do, on this First day of January, in the Year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day first above mentioned, Order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in Rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit: "Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, a.s.sumption, Terre Bonne, Lafouche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans,) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this Proclamation were not issued.

"And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do Order and declare that all Persons held as Slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, Free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the Military and Naval authorities thereof; will recognize and maintain the Freedom of said Persons.

"And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be Free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

"And I further declare and make known that such Persons, of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Const.i.tution upon Military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty G.o.d.

"In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

"Done at the City of Was.h.i.+ngton, this First day of January, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

"By the President: "ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

"WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."

CHAPTER XIX.

HISTORICAL REVIEW.

Let us now refresh recollection by glancing backward over the history of our Country, and we shall see, as recorded in these pages, that, from the first, there existed in this Nation a cla.s.s of individuals greedily ambitious of power and determined to secure and maintain control of this Government; that they left unturned no stone which would contribute to the fostering and to the extension of African Slavery; that, hand in hand with African Slavery-and as a natural corollary to it-they advocated Free Trade as a means of degrading Free White labor to the level of Black Slave labor, and thus increasing their own power; that from the first, ever taking advantage of the general necessities of the Union, they arrogantly demanded and received from a brow-beaten People, concession after concession, and compromise after compromise; that every possible pretext and occasion was seized by them to increase, consolidate, and secure their power, and to extend the territorial limits over which their peculiar Pro-Slavery and Pro-Free-Trade doctrines prevailed; and that their nature was so exacting, and their greed so rapacious, that it was impossible ever to satisfy them.

Nor were they burdened with over-much of that high sense of honor-a quality of which they often vaunted themselves-which impelled others to stand by their agreements. It seemed as though they considered the most sacred promises and covenants of no account, and made only to be trampled upon, when in the way of their Moloch.

We remember the bitter Slavery agitation in Congress over the admission of the State of Missouri, and how it eventuated in the Missouri Compromise. That compromise, we have seen, they afterward trod upon, and broke, with as little compunction as they would have stepped upon and crushed a toad.

They felt their own growing power, and gloried in their strength and arrogance; and Northern timidity became a scoff and by-word in their mouths.

The fact is, that from its very conception, as well as birth, they hated and opposed the Union, because they disliked a Republican and preferred a Monarchical form of Government. Their very inability to prevent the consummation of that Union, imbittered them. Hence their determination to seize every possible occasion and pretext afterward to destroy it, believing, as they doubtless did, that upon the crumbled and mouldering ruins of a dissevered Union and ruptured Republic, Monarchical ideas might the more easily take root and grow. But experience had already taught them that it would be long before their real object could even be covertly hinted at, and that in the meantime it must be kept out of sight by the agitation of other political issues. The formulation and promulgation therefore, by Jefferson, in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and by Madison, in the Virginia Resolutions of 1799, of the doctrine of States Rights already referred to, was a perfect "G.o.d-send" to these men. For it not only enabled them to keep from public view and knowledge their ultimate aim and purpose, but const.i.tuted the whip which they thenceforth everlastingly flourished and cracked over the shrinking heads of other and more patriotic people-the whip with which, through the litter of their broken promises, they ruthlessly rode into, and, for so long a period of years held on to, supreme power and place in the Land.

Including within the scope of States Rights, the threats of Nullification, Disunion and Secession-ideas abhorrent to the Patriot's mind-small wonder is it that, in those days, every fresh demand made by these political autocrats was tremblingly acceded to, until patience and concession almost utterly exhausted themselves.

Originally disturbing only South Carolina and Georgia to any extent, these ambitious men, who believed in anything rather than a Republic, and who were determined to destroy the Union, gradually spread the spirit of jealousy and discontent into other States of the South; their immediate object being to bring the Southern States into the closest possible relations the one with the other; to inspire them all with common sympathies and purposes; to compact and solidify them, so that in all coming movements against the other States of the Union, they might move with proportionately increased power, and force, and effect, because of such unity of aim and strength.

This spirit of Southern discontent, and jealousy of the Northern States, was, as we have seen, artfully fanned by the Conspirators, in heated discussions over the Tariff Acts of 1824, and 1828, and 1832, until, by the latter date, the people of the Cotton-States were almost frantic, and ready to fight over their imaginary grievances. Then it was that the Conspirators thought the time had come, for which they had so long and so earnestly prayed and worked, when the cotton Sampson should wind his strong arms around the pillars of the Const.i.tution and pull down the great Temple of our Union-that they might rear upon its site another and a stronger edifice, dedicated not to Freedom, but to Free-Trade and to other false G.o.ds.

South Carolina was to lead off, and the other Cotton States would follow. South Carolina did lead off-but the other Cotton-States did not follow.

It has been shown in these pages how South Carolina declared the Tariff Acts aforesaid, null and void, armed herself to resist force, and declared that any attempt of the general Government to enforce those Acts would cause her to withdraw from the Union. But Jackson as we know throttled the treason with so firm a grip that Nullification and Secession and Disunion were at once paralyzed.

The concessions to the domineering South, in Clay's Compromise Tariff of 1833, let the Conspirators down easily, so to speak; and they pretended to be satisfied. But they were satisfied only as are the thirsty sands of Africa with the pa.s.sing shower.

The Conspirators had, however, after all, made substantial gains. They had established a precedent for an attempt to secede. That was something. They had demonstrated that a single Southern State could stand up, armed and threatening, strutting, bl.u.s.tering, and bullying, and at least make faces at the general Government without suffering any very dreadful consequences. That was still more.

They had also ascertained that, by adopting such a course, a single Southern State could force concessions from the fears of the rest of the United States. That was worth knowing, because the time might come, when it might be desirable not only for one but for all the Southern States to secede upon some other pretext, and when it would be awkward, and would interfere with the Disunion programme, to have the other States either offer or make concessions.

They had also learned the valuable lesson that the single issue of Free-Trade was not sufficiently strong of itself to unite all the Southern States in a determination to secede, and thus dissolve the Union. They saw they must agitate some other issue to unify the South more thoroughly and justify Disunion. On looking over the whole field they concluded that the Slavery question would best answer their purpose, and they adopted it.

It was doubtless a full knowledge of the fact that they had adopted it, that led Jackson to make the declaration, heretofore in these pages given, which has been termed "prophetic." At any rate, thenceforth the programme of the Conspirators was to agitate the Slavery question in all ways possible, so as to increase, extend and solidify the influence and strength of the Slave power; strain the bonds uniting them with the Free States; and weaken the Free States by dividing them upon the question. At the same time the Free-Trade question was to be pressed forward to a triumphal issue, so that the South might be enriched and strengthened, and the North impoverished and weakened, by the result.

That was their programme, in the rough, and it was relentlessly adhered to. Free-Trade and Slavery by turns, if not together, from that time onward, were ever at the front, agitating our People both North and South, and not only consolidating the Southern States on those lines, as the Conspirators designed, but also serving ultimately to consolidate, to some extent-in a manner quite unlooked for by the Conspirators-Northern sentiment, on the opposite lines of Protection and Freedom.

The Compromise Tariff Act of 1833-which Clay was weak enough to concede, and even stout old Jackson to permit to become law without his signature-gave to the Conspirators great joy for years afterward, as they witnessed the distress and disaster brought by it to Northern homes and incomes-not distress and disaster alone, but absolute and apparently irreparable ruin.

The reaction occasioned by this widespread ruin having brought the Whigs into power, led to the enactment of the Protective-Tariff of 1842 and-to the chagrin of the Conspirators-industrial prosperity and plenty to the Free North again ensued.

Even as Cain hated his brother Abel because his sacrifices were acceptable in the sight of G.o.d, while his own were not, so the Southern Conspirators, and other Slave-owners also, had, by this time, come to hate the Northern free-thinking, free-acting, freedom-loving mechanic and laboring man, because the very fact and existence of his G.o.dgiven Freedom and higher-resulting civilization was a powerful and perpetual protest against the-abounding iniquities and degradations of Slavery as practiced by themselves.

Hence, by trickery, by cajoling the People With his, and their own, a.s.surances that he was in favor of Protection-they secured the election in 1844 of a Free-Trade President, the consequent repeal of the Protective-Tariff of 1842-which had repaired the dreadful mischief wrought by the Compromise Act of 1833-and the enactment of the infamous Free-Trade Tariff of 1846, which blasted the manufacturing and farming and trade industries of the Country again, as with fire.

The discovery of the great gold fields of California, and the enormous amount of the precious metal poured by her for many succeeding years into the lap of the Nation, alone averted what otherwise would inevitably have been total ruin. As it was, in 1860, the National credit had sunk to a lower point than ever before in all its history. It was confessedly bankrupt, and ruin stalked abroad throughout the United States.

But while, with rapid pen, the carrying out of that part of the Southern Conspirators' Disunion programme which related to Free-Trade, is thus brought again to mind, the other part of that programme, which related to Slavery, must not be neglected or overlooked. On this question they had determined, as we have seen, to agitate without ceasing-having in view, primarily, as already hinted, the extension of Slave territory and the resulting increase of Slave power in the Land; and, ulteriorly, the solidifying of that power, and Disunion of the Republic, with a view to its conversion into an Oligarchy, if not a Monarchy.

The bitterness of the struggle over the admission of Missouri as a Slave State in 1820, under the Missouri Compromise, was to be revived by the Conspirators, at the earliest possible moment.

Accordingly in 1836-only three years after the failure of Nullification in South Carolina, the Territory, of Arkansas was forced in as a Slave State, and simultaneously the Slave-owning henchmen of the Conspirators, previously settled there for the purpose, proclaimed the secession from Mexico, and independence, of Texas. This was quickly followed, in 1844, by Calhoun's hastily negotiated treaty of annexation with Texas; its miscarriage in the Senate; and the Act of March 2, 1845-with its sham compromise-consenting to the admission of Texas to the Union of States.

Then came the War with Mexico; the attempt by means of the Wilmot proviso to check the growing territorial-greed and rapacity of the Slave-power; and the acquisition by the United States, of California and New Mexico, under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which brought Peace.

Then occurred the agitation over the organization of Territorial governments for Oregon, California, and New Mexico, and the strong effort to extend to the Pacific Ocean the Missouri-Compromise line of 36 30', and to extend to all future Territorial organizations the principles of that compromise.

Then came the struggle in 1850, over the admission of California as a State, and New Mexico and Utah to Territorial organization-ending in the pa.s.sage of Clay's Compromise measures of 1850.

Yet still the Southern Conspirators-whose forces, both in Congress and out, were now well-disciplined, compacted, solidified, experienced, and bigotedly enthusiastic and overbearing-were not satisfied. It was not their intention to be satisfied with anything less than the destruction of the Union and of our Republican form of Government. The trouble was only beginning, and, so far, almost everything had progressed to their liking. The work must proceed.

In 1852-3 they commenced the Kansas-Nebraska agitation; and, what with their incessant political and colonizing movements in those Territories; the frequent and dreadful atrocities committed by their tools, the Border-ruffians; the incessant turmoil created by cruelties to their Fugitive-slaves; their persistent efforts to change the Supreme Court to their notions; these-with the decision and opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case-together worked the Slavery question up to a dangerous degree of heat, by the year 1858.

And, by 1860-when the people of the Free States, grown sick unto death of the rule of the Slave-power in the General Government, arose in their political might, and shook off this "Old Man of the Sea," electing, beyond cavil and by the Const.i.tutional mode, to the Presidential office, a man who thoroughly represented in himself their conscience, on the one hand, which instinctively revolted against human Slavery as a wrong committed against the laws of G.o.d, and their sense of justice and equity on the other, which would not lightly overlook, or interfere with vested rights under the Const.i.tution and the laws of man-the Conspirators had reached the point at which they had been aiming ever since that failure in 1832 of their first attempt at Disunion, in South Carolina.

They had now succeeded in irritating both the Free and the Slave-holding Sections of our Country against each other, to an almost unbearable point; had solidified the Southern States on the Slavery and Free-Trade questions; and at last-the machinations of these same Conspirators having resulted in a split in the Democratic Party, and the election of the Republican candidate to the Presidency, as the embodiment of the preponderating National belief in Freedom and equality to all before the Law, with Protection to both Labor and Capital-they also had the pretext for which they had both been praying and scheming and preparing all those long, long years-they, and some of their fathers before them.

It cannot be too often repeated that to secure a Monarchy, or at least an Oligarchy, over which the leading Conspirators should rule for life-whether that Monarchy or that Oligarchy should comprise the States of the South by themselves, or all the States on a new basis of Union-was the great ultimate aim of the Conspirators; and this could be secured only by first disrupting the then existing Republican Union of Republican States.

The doctrine of the right of Secession had now long been taught, and had become a part of the Southern Slave-holders' Democratic creed, as fully as had the desirability of Slavery and Free-Trade-and even many of the Northern Democrats, and some Republicans as well, were not much inclined to dispute, although they cared not to canva.s.s, the point.

The programme of action was therefore much the same as had been laid down in the first attempt in 1832:-first South Carolina would secede and declare her independence; then the other Slave States in quick succession would do likewise; then a new Const.i.tution for a solid Southern Union; then, if necessary, a brief War to cement it-which would end, of course, in the independence of the South at least, but more probably in the utter subjugation and humiliation of the Free States.

When the time should come, during or after this War-as come, in their belief, it would-for a change in the form of Government, then they could seize the first favorable occasion and change it. At present, however, the cry must be for "independence." That accomplished, the rest would be easy. And until that independence was accomplished, no terms of any sort, no settlement of any kind, were either to be proposed or accepted by them.

These were their dreams, their ambitions, their plans; and the tenacious courage with which they stuck to them "through thick and thin," through victory and disaster, were worthy of a better cause.

While, therefore, the pretexts for Secession were "Slavery" and "Free-Trade"-both of which were alleged to be jeopardized in the election and inauguration of Abraham Lincoln-yet, no sooner had hostilities commenced between the seceding States and the Union, than they declared to the World that their fight was not for Slavery, but for Independence.

They dared not acknowledge to the World that they fought for Slavery, lest the sympathies of the World should be against them. But it was well understood by the Southern ma.s.ses, as well as the other people of the Union, that both Slavery and Free-Trade were involved in the fight-as much as independence, and the consequent downfall of the Union.

President Lincoln, however, had made up his mind to do all he properly could to placate the South. None knew better than he, the history of this Secession movement, as herein described. None knew better than he, the fell purpose and spirit of the Conspirators. Yet still, his kindly heart refused to believe that the madness of the Southern leaders was so frenzied, and their hatred of Free men, Free labor, and Free inst.i.tutions, so implacable, that they would wilfully refuse to listen to reason and ever insist on absolutely inadmissible terms of reconciliation.

From the very beginning of his Administration, he did all that was possible to mollify their resentment and calm their real or pretended fears. Nor was this from any dread or doubt as to what the outcome of an armed Conflict would be; for, in his speech at Cincinnati, in the Autumn of 1859, he had said, while addressing himself to Kentuckians and other Southern men: "Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant and as brave men as live; that you can fight as bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any other people living; that you have shown yourselves capable of this upon various occasions; but man for man, you are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us. You will never make much of a hand at whipping us. If we were fewer in numbers than you, I think that you could whip us; if we were equal it would likely be a drawn battle; but being inferior in numbers, you will make nothing by attempting to master us."

And early in 1860, in his famous New York Cooper Inst.i.tute speech he had said "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." He plainly believed to the end, that "right makes might;" and he believed in the power of numbers-as also did Napoleon, if we may judge from his famous declaration that "The G.o.d of battles is always on the side of the heaviest battalions." Yet, so believing, President Lincoln exerted himself in all possible ways to mollify the South. His a.s.surances, however, were far from satisfying the Conspirators. They never had been satisfied with anything in the shape of concession. They never would be. They had been dissatisfied with and had broken all the compacts and compromises, and had spit upon all the concessions, of the past; and nothing would now satisfy them, short of the impossible.

They were not satisfied now with Lincoln's promise that the Government would not a.s.sail them-organized as, by this time, they were into a so-called Southern "Confederacy" of States-and they proceeded accordingly to a.s.sail that Government which would not a.s.sail them. They opened fire on Fort Sumter.

This was done, as has duly appeared, in the hope that the shedding of blood would not only draw the States of the Southern Confederacy more closely together in their common cause, and prevent the return of any of them to their old allegiance, but also to so influence the wavering allegiance to the Union, of the Border States, as to strengthen that Confederacy and equivalently weaken that Union, by their Secession.

Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, of the Border States that were wavering, were thus gathered into the Confederate fold, by this policy of blood-spilling-carried bodily thither, by a desperate and frenzied minority, against the wishes of a patriotic majority.

Virginia, especially, was a great accession to the Rebel cause. She brought to it the prestige of her great name. To secure the active cooperation of "staid old Virginia," "the Mother of Statesmen," in the struggle, was, in the estimation of the Rebels, an a.s.surance of victory to their cause. And the Secession of Virginia for a time had a depressing influence upon the friends of the Union everywhere.

The refusal of West Virginia to go with the rest of the State into Rebellion, was, to be sure, some consolation; and the checkmating of the Conspirators' designs to secure to the Confederacy the States of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, helped the confidence of Union men. In fact, as long as the National Capital was secure, it was felt that the Union was still safe.

But while the Confederacy, by the firing upon Fort Sumter, and thus a.s.sailing that Government which Lincoln had promised would not a.s.sail the Rebels, had gained much in securing the aid of the States mentioned, yet the Union Cause, by that very act, had gained more. For the echoes of the Rebel guns of Fort Moultrie were the signal for such an uprising of the Patriots of the North and West and Middle States, as, for the moment, struck awe to the hearts of Traitors and inspired with courage and hopefulness the hearts of Union men throughout the Land.

Moreover it put the Rebels in their proper att.i.tude, in the eyes of the World-as the first aggressors-and thus deprived them, to a certain extent, of that moral support from the outside which flows from sympathy.

Those echoes were the signal, not only of that call to arms which led to such an uprising, but for the simultaneous calling together of the Thirty-seventh Congress of the United States in Extra Session-the Congress whose measures ultimately enabled President Lincoln and the Union Armies to subdue the Rebellion and save the Union-the Congress whose wise and patriotic deliberations resulted in the raising of those gigantic Armies and Navies, and in supplying the unlimited means, through the Tariff and National Bank Systems and otherwise, by which those tremendous Forces could be both created and effectively operated-the Congress which cooperated with President Lincoln and those Forces in preparing the way for the destruction of the very corner-stone of the Confederacy, Slavery itself.

CHAPTER XX.

LINCOLN'S TROUBLES AND TEMPTATIONS.

The Rebels themselves, as has already been noted, by the employment of their Slaves in the construction of earthworks and other fortifications, and even in battle, at Bull Run and elsewhere, against the Union Forces, brought the Thirty-seventh Congress, as well as the Military Commanders, and the President, to an early consideration of the Slavery question. But it was none the less a question to be treated with the utmost delicacy.

The Union men, as well as the Secession-sympathizers, of Kentucky and Tennessee and Missouri and Maryland, largely believed in Slavery, or at least were averse to any interference with it. These, would not see that the right to destroy that unholy Inst.i.tution could pertain to any authority, or be justified by any exigency; much less that, as held by some authorities, its existence ceased at the moment when its hands, or those of the State in which it had existed, were used to a.s.sail the General Government.

They looked with especial suspicion and distrust upon the guarded utterances of the President upon all questions touching the future of the Colored Race.

[At Faneuil Hall, Edward Everett is reported to have said, in October of 1864: "It is very doubtful whether any act of the Government of the United States was necessary to liberate the Slaves in a State which is in Rebellion. There is much reason for the opinion that, by the simple act of levying War against the United States, the relation of Slavery was terminated; certainly, so far as concerns the duty of the United States to recognize it, or to refrain from interfering with it.

"Not being founded on the Law of Nature, and resting solely on positive Local Law-and that, not of the United States-as soon as it becomes either the motive or pretext of an unjust War against the Union-an efficient instrument in the hands of the Rebels for carrying on the War-source of Military strength to the Rebellion, and of danger to the Government at home and abroad, with the additional certainty that, in any event but its abandonment, it will continue, in all future time to work these mischiefs, who can suppose it is the duty of the United States to continue to recognize it.

"To maintain this would be a contradiction in terms. It would be two recognize a right in a Rebel master to employ his Slave in acts of Rebellion and Treason, and the duty of the Slave to aid and abet his master in the commission of the greatest crime known to the Law. No such absurdity can be admitted; and any citizen of the United States, from thee President down, who should, by any overt act, recognize the duty of a Slave to obey a Rebel master in a hostile operation, would himself be giving aid and comfort to the Enemy."]

They believed that when Fremont issued the General Order-heretofore given in full-in which that General declared that "The property, real and personal, of all persons, in the State of Missouri, who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use, and their Slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared Free men," it must have been with the concurrence, if not at the suggestion, of the President; and, when the President subsequently, September 11,1861, made an open Order directing that this clause of Fremont's General Order, or proclamation, should be "so modified, held, and construed, as to conform to, and not to transcend, the provisions on the same subject contained in the Act of Congress ent.i.tled 'An Act to Confiscate Property used for Insurrectionary Purposes,' approved August 6, 1861," they still were not satisfied.

[The sections of the above Act, bearing upon the matter, are the first and fourth, which are in these words: "That if, during the present or any future insurrection against the Government of the United States, after the President of the United States shall have declared, by proclamation, that the laws of the United States are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the power vested in the marshals by law, any person or persons, his, her, or their agent, attorney, or employee, shall purchase or acquire, sell or give, any property of whatsoever kind or description, with intent to use or employ the same, or suffer the same to be used or employed, in aiding, abetting, or promoting such insurrection or resistance to the laws, or any persons engaged therein; or if any person or persons, being the owner or owners of any such property, shall knowingly use or employ, or consent to the use or employment of the same as aforesaid, all such property is hereby declared to be lawful subject of prize and capture wherever found; and it shall be the duty of the President of the United States to cause the same to be seized, confiscated and condemned."