[Footnote 9:  The Secession Ordinance passed the Convention of South Carolina December 20, 1860.  The next day, December 21, the Convention adopted the “Declaration of Causes” which led to that Secession.  This document declares, as to the non-slaveholding States, that they have “denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery”; that they have “united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to Slavery,” and who declares that “the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”  And it winds up with this assertion:—­“All hope of remedy is rendered vain by the fact that the public opinion of the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief.”

These, first put forth by South Carolina, afterwards indorsed by each seceding State, are the causes officially declared to have produced, and which are held to justify, the present insurrection.]

All this is matter of history.  And there would be as much propriety in denying the connection between the sun and the light of day, as that between Slavery and the Rebellion.

There is a question upon which men differ:  namely, whether emancipation is the most prudent or the most effectual means to enforce violated law and suppress the insurrectionary movement.

It is my opinion that a majority of the people of the loyal States believe, at this moment, that emancipation is the necessary and proper means to effect the above objects.  But whether this opinion be well founded or not is immaterial to the present question.  According to Chief-Justice Marshall’s decision, when it is the right and duty of the Government to perform an act, (as here to enforce law and suppress insurrection,) it “must, according to the dictates of reason, be allowed to select the means.”  If Congress believes, that, in order to enforce law and suppress insurrection, it is necessary and proper to take and cancel all claims to life-long service or labor held in the Slave States, and if claims to service or labor, whether for years or for life, held by one inhabitant of the United States against another, be a species of property not specially exempted by the Constitution from seizure for public use, then an Act of Emancipation is strictly constitutional.

Congress is to be allowed to select the means; Congress is to be the judge of the necessity and propriety of these means:  Congress, not the Supreme Court; not even the People in their primary meetings; but the People constitutionally represented in their National Legislature; the People, speaking by the voice of those whom their votes have elected to that Legislature, there to act for them.

If Congress believes that Emancipation is no longer a question of sectional interference, but of national preservation, it has the right to judge, and the constitutional right to act upon that judgment.  And if Congress can properly allege, as motive for taking and cancelling a multitude of life-long claims to service, the preservation of the national existence, can a consideration of greater magnitude be imagined for any legislative act?