ied by the forces of the United
States, shall be deemed captives, shall be forever free of their
servitude, and not again held as slaves." This provision had a
very sweeping application. Even if the war had ended without a
formal and effective system of emancipation, it is believed that
this statute would have so operated as to render the slave system
practically valueless. When the war closed it is probable that
not less than one-half of all the slaves of the rebel States had
come within the scope of this statute, and had therefore been
declared legally free by the legislative power of the United States.

CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY.

Mr. Lincoln signed the Confiscation Act with reluctance. Indeed
he had prepared a veto, but a joint resolution had been passed in
order to remove the objections which in the President's view were
absolutely fatal to the original bill, either as regarded its
justice or its constitutionality. He had insisted to certain
senators that the Confiscation Law must in terms exclude the
possibility of its being applied to any act done by a rebel prior
to its passage, and that no punishment or proceeding under it should
be so construed as to work a forfeiture of the real estate of the
offender beyond his natural life. These, with some minor defects,
being corrected, the President affixed his signature and made public
proclamation of the intended enforcement of the Act as qualified
by the joint resolution approved on the same day. But there is
good reason for believing that Mr. Lincoln would have been glad to
confine its application to slave property, and he felt moreover
that he could deal with that subject without the co-operation of
Congress. The military situation was so discouraging that in the
President's view it would have been wiser for Congress to refrain
from enacting laws which, without success in the field, would be
null and void, and which, with success in the field, would be
rendered unnecessary. Congress adjourned on the same day that Mr.
Lincoln approved the bill, and on returning home the senators and
representatives found their constituents depressed, anxious, and
alarmed for the country.

It cannot be said that the results flowing from this measure, either
in restraining the action of Southern men or in securing to the
National Treasury money derived from confiscated property, were at
all in proportion to the importance as