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 extent seldom paralleled in the history of the world;

And whereas, because of the said insurrection, the execution of the laws for collecting taxes, and of various other laws of the United States, heretofore enacted by the Congress in the just exercise of their constitutional powers, has been, for more than two years past, and still is, obstructed and defeated throughout the insurrectionary States;

    And whereas it is the right and duty of the Congress to make all
    laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into
    execution the said constitutional powers;