By this power it has been this year decreed that every slave of a Rebel who reaches the lines of our army becomes a free man; that all slaves found deserted by their masters become free men; that every slave employed in any service for the United States thereby obtains his liberty; and that every slave employed against the United States in any capacity obtains his liberty:  and lest the army should contain officers disposed to remand slaves to their masters, the power of judging and delivering up slaves is denied to army-officers, and all such acts are made penal.

By this act, the Fugitive-Slave Law is for all present purposes practically repealed.  With this understanding and provision, wherever our armies march, they carry liberty with them.  For be it remembered that our army is almost entirely a volunteer one, and that the most zealous and ardent volunteers are those who have been for years fighting with tongue and pen the Abolition battle.  So marked is the character of our soldiers in this respect, that they are now familiarly designated in the official military despatches of the Confederate States as “The Abolitionists.”  Conceive the results, when an army, so empowered by national law, marches through a slave-territory.  One regiment alone has to our certain knowledge liberated two thousand slaves during the past year, and this regiment it but one out of hundreds.  We beg to lay before you some details given by an eye-witness of what has recently been done in this respect in the Department of the South.

“On Board Steamer from Fortress Monroe to Baltimore, Nov. 14, 1862.

“Events of no ordinary interest have just occurred in the Department of the South.  The negro troops have been tested, and, to their great joy, though not contrary to their own expectations, they have triumphed, not only over enemies armed with muskets and swords, but over what the black man dreads most, sharp and cruel prejudices.

“General Saxton, on the 28th of October, sent the captured steamer Darlington, Captain Crandell, down the coast of Georgia, and to Fernandina, Florida, to obtain recruits for the First Regiment South-Carolina Volunteers.  Lieutenant-Colonel O.T.  Beard, of the Forty-Eighth New-York Volunteers, was given the command of the expedition.  In addition to obtaining recruits, the condition and wants of the recent refugees from slavery along the coast were to be looked into, and, if occasion should offer, it was permitted to ’feel the enemy.’  At St. Simond’s, Georgia, Captain Trowbridge, with thirty-five men of the ‘Hunter Regiment of First South-Carolina Volunteers,’ who had been stationed there for three months, together with twenty-seven more men, were received on board.  With this company of sixty-two men the Darlington proceeded to Fernandina.