s, the joint resolution was
approved by Congress and received the signature of the President on
April 10.

Congress then passed an important measure, the expediency of which
Lincoln urged in 1849. This was emancipation in the District of
Columbia. Lincoln made no specific recommendations relative to this in
his annual message, but later sent a special message to Congress March
6, 1862, taking up the subject in its more extensive aspects. This
bill provided for the immediate emancipation of slaves in the
District of Columbia, and empowered a commission to distribute to
slave-holders for their manumitted slaves a compensation not to exceed
an aggregate of three hundred dollars a head, with an additional
appropriation for $100,000 for expenses of voluntary emigration of
freedmen to Haiti and Liberia.[27] Lincoln did not heartily approve
this measure, however, for he did not want this to interfere with his
policy of compensated emancipation in the border slave States. Even
after the bill had been amended, according to his suggestions, he
still hesitated and some of his friends thought that he might never
sign it, but he did.

The question of emancipation appeared in another form when, upon the
capture of Port Royal the previous November, many slaves, abandoned by
the fleeing slave-holders, sought protection in the Union army. These
slaves, thus dislodged by the misfortunes of war, outnumbered the
whites five to one and had to be organized in groups for government
protection. Relief societies in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
sent funds and teachers for the slaves. This educational enterprise
received the official sanction of Secretary Chase at President
Lincoln's request. Wishing further to improve their condition, General
David Hunter, commander of the Department of the South, issued on May
9, 1862, an order of military emancipation, proclaiming the Department
of the South under martial law and declaring persons in Georgia,
Florida, and South Carolina, heretofore held as slaves, forever
free.[28] Hunter regarded this an act of military necessity, not an
instrument of political import as General Fremont's proclamation in
Missouri, for Hunter's forces were insufficient for offensive
movements, and he was doing this as the first step toward training and
arming Negroes within his lines. Assuming that the instructions of the
War Department conferred the necessary authority he proclaimed the
order without delay.

The ne