claimed as a slave. We may seize all his other property
without question, lands, houses, cattle, jewels; but his asserted
property in man is more sacred than the gold which overlay the Ark of
the Covenant, and we may not profane it. This reverence for things
assumed to be sacred, which are not so, cannot long continue. The
Government can well turn away from the enthusiast, however generous his
impulses, who asks the abolition of slavery on general principles of
philanthropy, for the reason that it already has work enough on its
hands. It may not change the objects of the war, but it must of
necessity at times shift its tactics and its instruments, as the
exigency demands. Its solemn and imperative duty is to look every
issue, however grave and transcendent, firmly in the face; and having
ascertained upon mature and conscientious reflection what is necessary
to suppress the Rebellion, it must then proceed with inexorable purpose
to inflict the blows where Rebellion is the weakest and under which it
must inevitably fall.

On the 30th of July, General Butler, being still unprovided with
adequate instructions,--the number of contrabands having now reached
nine hundred,--applied to the War Department for further directions. His
inquiries, inspired by good sense and humanity alike, were of the most
fundamental character, and when they shall have received a full answer
the war will be near its end. Assuming the slaves to have been the
property of masters, he considers them waifs abandoned by their
owners, in which the Government as a finder cannot, however, acquire a
proprietary interest, and they have therefore reverted to the normal
condition of those made in God's image, "if not free-born, yet
free-manumitted, sent forth from the hand that held them, never to
return." The author of that document may never win a victor's laurels
on any renowned field, but, depositing it in the archives of the
Government, he leaves a record in history which will outlast the
traditions of battle or siege. It is proper to add, that the answer of
the War Department, so far as its meaning is clear, leaves the General
uninstructed as to all slaves not confiscated by the Act of Congress.

The documentary history being now completed, the personal narrative of
affairs at Fortress Monroe is resumed.

The encampment of Federal troops beyond the peninsula of the fort and in
the vicinity of the village of Hampton was immediately followed by an
hegira