the resolution was
passed, such radical abolitionists as Owen Lovejoy warmly supporting
the proposition to pay for slaves out of the Treasury of the United
States. Mr. Henderson of Missouri and Mr. Willey of West Virginia
were the only Border State senators who saw the vast advantage to
be secured to their own constituents by the passage of the measure.
They supported it ably and heartily. It was earnestly opposed by
the senators from Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Mr. Carlile
of West Virginia was the only senator in nominal sympathy with the
Administration who voted against it. The hostility to the President's
policy by senators from the Border slave States was so fixed as to
prevent even a free discussion of the measure, and it was therefore
remanded to a future day for consideration.

CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY.

A still more aggressive movement against slavery was made by Congress
before the close of this eventful session. On the day that Congress
convened, in the preceding December, Mr. Trumbull gave notice of
his intention to introduce a bill "for the confiscation of the
property of rebels, and giving freedom to the persons they hold in
slavery." Three days later he formally introduced the bill, and
made a lucid explanation of its provisions and its objects. He
"disdained to press it upon the ground of a mere military power
superior to the civil in time of war." "Necessity," said he, "is
the plea of tyrants; and if our Constitution ceases to operate,
the moment a person charged with its observance thinks there is a
necessity to violate it, is of little value." So far from admitting
that the superiority of the military over the civil power in time
of war, Mr. Trumbull held that "under the Constitution the military
is as much the subject of control by the civil power in war as in
peace." He was for suppressing the rebellion "according to law,
and in no other way;" and he warned his countrymen who stood "ready
to tolerate almost any act done in good faith for the suppression
of the rebellion, not to sanction usurpations of power which may
hereafter become precedents for the destruction of constitutional
liberty." Though the bill was introduced on the second day of
December, 1861, it did not become a law until the 17th of July in
the next year.

In the months intervening, it was elaborately debated, almost every
senator taking part in the discussion. G