preservation of the national
existence, can a consideration of greater magnitude be imagined for any
legislative act?

In proceeding, however, to consummate such a measure, it is evidently most
fitting and proper, that, in the preamble to an Act of Emancipation, there
should be set forth, lucidly and succinctly, the causes and considerations
which impelled to so solemn and momentous an act.

As to the just compensation provided by the Constitution to be paid, when
private property is taken for public use, it is here to be remarked,--

1. If, when a minor is drafted, a father or an apprentice-master has no
claim against the Government for service lost, it may be argued with some
plausibility, that, under similar circumstances of public exigency, a
slave-owner has no claim when his slave is freed. But the argument fairly
applies only in cases in which a slave is drafted for military service,
and returned to slavery when that service terminates. In case of wholesale
taking and cancelling of life-long claims to service, a fair construction
of the Constitution may be held to require, as a general rule, that just
compensation should be made to the claimants.

2. But to Congress, by the Constitution, is expressly given the power to
declare the punishment of treason, without any limitation as to the
confiscation of personal property, including, of course, claims in the
nature of choses in action. Congress may, therefore, take and cancel
claims to service owned by Rebel slave-owners without any compensation
whatever. Under the feudal law, a serf, owing service to a noble guilty of
treason, became, because of his master's guilt, released from such
service.

3. If, because of the present insurrection, set on foot by claimants of
service or labor, such claims, from precariousness of tenure or otherwise,
have diminished in market-value, that diminution may be properly taken
into account in estimating just compensation.

These various considerations converge to this,--that a Preamble and Act of
Emancipation, somewhat in the terms following, may be constitutionally
enacted.

_A Bill to emancipate Persons of African Descent held to Service
or Labor in certain of the United States._

Whereas there is now flagrant, in certain of the United States, an
insurrection of proportions so gigantic that there has been
required, to hold it in check, an increase of the army and navy of
the United States to an exten