about, until he is demanded.  Liberty is the law of nature.  Every man is presumed free in choice, and not even to be trammeled by apprenticeship, until the contrary is made clearly to appear.  One man may be a New York discharged convict, for instance—­an unpardoned convict.  He emigrates southward, he obtains property, according to local law, in a slave.  The slave escapes to New York.  The convict—­unpardoned—­master enters the tribunal there on his demand.  Quoth the escaped apprentice, producing the record of the conviction, ’Mr. Claimant, you have no standing in court.  Your civil rights are suspended in this State until you are pardoned.  You are not pardoned, therefore I will not answer aye or no to your claim, until you are legitimately in court, and recognized by the judges.’  I take it that plea would avail.  And if the crier wanted to employ a person to sweep the court-room the next moment, he could employ that defendant to do it.  There is not a man in the rebel States (whom we publicly know of) who has a standing under the Constitution regarding this slavery question.  By his own argument he lives in a foreign country; by our own argument he is not rectus in curia.  Were I an invading general and wanted horses, I would decoy them from the rebels with hay and stable enticements.  If I wanted trench-diggers, camp scullions, or artillerists, or pilots, or oarsmen, or guides, and, being that general, saw negroes about me, I should press them into my service.  Time enough to talk about the rights of some one to possess the negroes by better claim of title to service when that somebody, with the Constitution in one hand and stipulation of allegiance in the other, demands legal possession.  Even the fugitive slave is emancipated practically whilst in Ohio, and whilst not yet demanded.  Rebel soldiers daily leave their plantations and abandon their negroes. Pro tem, at least, the latter are then emancipated.  Let them, when within Our lines, continue emancipated.

Mr. Welles. Would you arm them?

Mr. Stanton. Yes, if exigencies of situation so demanded.  The beleaguered garrison at Lucknow armed every one about the place—­natives or not, servants or masters.  Did General Washington spare the whisky stills in the time of the insurrection in Western Virginia when they were in his way?  Yet the stills were universally agreed to be property, and were not taken by due process of law.  Shall we fight a rebel in Charleston streets, and at the same time protect his negro by a guard in the Charleston jail?

Mr. Blair. But what instructions would you give to the soldiers about this casus belli?