riosity of a
village in the neighborhood of Boston.

It was now time to call upon the Government for a policy in dealing with
slave society thus disrupted and disorganized. Elsewhere, even under
the shadow of the Capitol, the action of military officers had been
irregular, and in some cases in palpable violation of personal rights.
An order of General McDowell excluded all slaves from the lines.
Sometimes officers assumed to decide the question whether a negro was a
slave, and deliver him to a claimant, when, certainly in the absence of
martial law, they had no authority in the premises, under the Act of
Congress,--that power being confided to commissioners and marshals. As
well might a member of Congress or a State sheriff usurp the function.
Worse yet, in defiance of the Common Law, they made color a presumptive
proof of bondage. In one case a free negro was delivered to a claimant
under this process, more summary than any which the Fugitive-Slave Act
provides. The colonel of a Massachusetts regiment showed some practical
humor in dealing with a pertinacious claimant who asserted title to a
negro found within his lines, and had brought a policeman along with
him to aid in enforcing it. The shrewd colonel, (a Democrat he is,)
retaining the policeman, put both the claimant and claimed outside of
the lines together to try their fleetness. The negro proved to be the
better gymnast and was heard of no more. This capricious treatment of
the subject was fraught with serious difficulties as well as personal
injuries, and it needed to be displaced by an authorized system.

On the 27th of May, General Butler, having in a previous communication
reported his interview with Major Cary, called the attention of the War
Department to the subject in a formal despatch,--indicating the hostile
purposes for which the negroes had been or might be successfully used,
stating the course he had pursued in employing them and recording
expenses and services, and suggesting pertinent military, political, and
humane considerations. The Secretary of War, under date of the 30th of
May, replied, cautiously approving the course of General Butler, and
intimating distinctions between interfering with the relations of
persons held to service and refusing to surrender them to their alleged
masters, which it is not easy to reconcile with well-defined views of
the new exigency, or at least with a desire to express them. The note
was characterized by diplo