CHAPTER V SIGNS OF THE TIMES CHAP. V. 1862. Hunter, Order, May 9, 1862. W. R. Vol. XIV., p. 341. EFORE enough time had elapsed to judge of ВЕН the probable effect of Lincoln's offer of compensation to the border States, a new incident occurred which further complicated the President's dealings with the slavery question. About the middle of May he was surprised to learn from the newspapers that General David Hunter, whom he had recently sent to command the Department of the South, had issued an order of military emancipation. Reciting that the Department of the South was under martial law, the order declared, "Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The persons in these three StatesGeorgia, Florida, and South Carolina- heretofore held as slaves are therefore declared forever free." So far as can be judged, General Hunter was moved to this step by what seemed to him the requirements of his new surroundings and the simple dictates of natural justice.' He was a warm personal and political friend of President Lincoln, 1 In a brief "Report of Military Services," made by General Hunter to the War Department in 1873, he says on this point: "My theory being that slavery, existing only by municipal enactments, ceased to exist the moment a subject by his rebellion placed himself beyond the pale of these enactments." March 31, 1862. was entirely free from motives of selfish ambition, CHAP. V. and was not a man who would suffer himself to be made the instrument of a political combination. Of strong antislavery convictions, his sense of duty in the service of the Union was as singlehearted and as sacred as that of a Crusader sent to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from the Infidel. In his eyes rebellion and slavery were intertwined abominations to be struck and conquered simultaneously. When he took command of the Department of the South he found himself surrounded by new conditions. The capture of Port Royal in the preceding November had been followed by the flight of the whole white population, leaving the entire coast from North Edisto River to Warsaw Sound, a distance of sixty or seventy miles, in the hands of the captors. This was the region of the famous sea island cotton plantations, in which the slaves outnumbered the whites nearly five to one. In their sudden flight the whites were compelled to abandon their slaves, and a large negro population thus fell gradually to the care and protection of the Union army. The exercise of common humanity forced the military administration of the department beyond mere warlike objects. The commander, General Thomas W. Sherman, issued an address to the Nov. 7, 1861 white inhabitants, inviting them to return and reoccupy their lands and homes, and continue their peaceful vocations under the auspices and protection of the Government of the United States. Except in a very few instances the friendly invitation was defiantly refused. They not only preferred pp. 200, 222. ruin and exile, but did such mischief as lay in their W. R. Vol. VI., power by ordering their cotton to be burned and circulating among the blacks the statement that the Yankees would seize them, and sell them into slavery in Cuba. Such was the distrust excited by the falsehood, that a month after the capture of Port Royal but about 320 blacks had ventured into Sherman's camps; nearly all these were decrepit, or were women and children, there being only sixty able-bodied men among them. For a while the slaves made the most of their abrupt holiday. But their scanty clothing wore out; the small stock of provisions on the plantations became exhausted. At the time of their masters' flight much of the cotton crop was still in the fields. In the increasing demand for this product it became an object for the Government to collect and preserve what was left; and this work, begun under the joint orders of the War and Treasury Departments, set on foot the first organization of the colored population for labor and government. Military orders divided the country into districts, with agents to superintend the plantations, to enroll and organize the blacks into working parties, to furnish them necessary food and clothing, and to pay them for their labor. Private philanthropy also gave timely and valuable assistance. Relief societies, organized in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, collected funds and employed teachers, some fifty of whom reached Beaufort the 9th of March, 1862, and began a much-needed work of combined encouragement, guardianship, and instruction, thus replacing the elements of social government which the slaves had lost by the withdrawal of their masters and mistresses. CHAP. V. 1862. The control of the captured and abandoned cotton and other property fell to the Treasury Department, and in this connection Secretary Chase, at the President's request, gave the educational enterprise his official sanction and supervision; later on, the War Department assumed and continued the work. Compelled from the first to rely upon "contrabands" for information and assistance, and to a large extent for military labor, it gave them in return not only wages for the actual service performed, but necessary food and shelter for the destitute, and with the return of the spring season furnished them, so far as possible, seed and implements of husbandry, and encouraged them to renew their accustomed labor in the gardens and fields of the abandoned plantations, in order to provide for, or at least contribute to, their own main- Sherman to tenance. Under this treatment confidence was quickly established. Meanwhile, by the military Feb. 9, 1862. occupation of additional territory, the number of blacks within the Union lines had increased in two PP. 205, 222, months from 320 to over 9000. When General Hunter took command of the Department of the South, this industrial and educational organization of the blacks was just beginning. Military usefulness was of the first importance in his eyes, particularly as his forces were insufficient for offensive movements. It was not unnatural that, seeing the large colored population within his lines, much of it unemployed, his thoughts should turn to the idea of organizing, arming, and training regiments of colored soldiers; and, assuming that the instructions of the War Department conferred the necessary authority, he T. W. AdjutantGeneral, Dec. 15,1861, and W. R. Vol. VI., 223. March 31, 1862. 1862. CHAP. V. began the experiment without delay. It was amid all these conditions, which at that time did not exist elsewhere, that General Hunter issued the already recited order announcing that slavery and martial law were incompatible, and declaring free all slaves in his department. The presence of the Union army had visibly created a new order of things, and he doubtless felt it a duty to proclaim officially what practically had come to pass. Warden, "Life of Salmon P. Chase," p. 434. The mails from the Department of the South could only come by sea; hence a week elapsed after the promulgation of Hunter's order before knowledge of it came to the President through its publication in the New York journals. The usual acrimonious comments immediately followed: radicals approved it, Democrats and conservatives denounced it; and the President was assailed for inaction on the one hand and for treachery on the other. Lincoln's own judgment of the act was definite and prompt. "No commanding general shall do such a thing, upon my responsibility, without consulting me," he wrote in answer to a note from Chase, who wished the order to stand. Three days later (May 19, 1862) the President published a proclamation reciting that the Government had no knowledge or part in the issuing of Hunter's order of emancipation, that neither Hunter nor any other person had been authorized to declare free the slaves of any State, and that his order in that respect was altogether void. The President continued: "I further make it known that whether it be competent for me, as Commanderin-Chief of the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether at |