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OCTOBER, 1861.      DOUGLASS MONTHLY.      537
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now respond to the open trumpet-call of Fremont--declaring liberty at a breath to sixty thousand slaves!

[From the Auburn Independent.]

The proclamation of Gen. Fremont is one of the best things that has happened since the war commenced--decidedly a step in advance.... It is useless to expect success in this war, until we meet the one grand issue which it involves.  It is not only a slaveholders' war, but a war for slavery, and the sooner we see it in this light, the sooner we shall conquer the rebels.  We have not to grapple with the disorganizers on their chosen ground--they mean to search the nation's heart on this subject.  The necessity which has controlled the action of Gen. Fremont, exists everywhere, and everywhere demands the same decisive course.  We must subdue the slaveholding rebels, or be subdued by them.--They have left us no other alternative; we must do or die.

[From the Syracuse Standard.]

This is the forerunner of other like proclamations by our commanding officers.  One by one the rebellious States will be declared free, until the sun shall not rise upon a slave within the wide limits of our Republic.  Patriots and philanthropists have long hoped for peaceful emancipation, not dreaming that the occasion for using violent measures would ever come.  They did not suppose that the slave oligarchy were so blind and desperate as to make open war upon the Government.  They did not believe that this power would ever attempt to try titles with a free people on the battle-field.  But it has ventured on the fatal experiment, and must go to the wall, adding one more to the example of those who, taking the sword, perished by the sword.

[From the American Wesleyan.]

It stirs the heart like the blast of a trumpet to read the proclamation by General Fremont.  We have wanted some decisive act of this stamp before.  Russell, the London Times correspondent, will think better of the military commandant of the Western District after reading this order.  At least it will be admitted if he has yet to prove his ability to 'lead large columns successfully,' that he knows how to open a campaign.
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DEED OF MANUMISSION.

Gen. Fremont before the arrival of the President's letter, had given freedom to a considerable number of slaves in accordance with his proclamation.  His mode of action may be seen in the following deed of manumission:

'Whereas, Thomas L. Snead, of the city and county of St Louis, State of Missouri, has been taking an active part with the enemies of the United States, in the present insurrectionary movement against the Government of the United States.  Now therefore, I, John Charles Fremont, Major-General commanding the Western Department of the Army of the United States, by authority of law and power vested in me as such commanding General, declare Hiram Reed, heretofore held to service or labor by Thomas L. Snead, to be FREE, and forever discharged from the bonds of servitude, giving him full right and authority to have, use and control his own labor or service as to him may seem proper, without any accountability whatever to said Thomas L. Snead, or any one to claim by, through, or under him.

'And this deed of Manumission shall be respected and treated by all persons, and in all Courts of Justice, as to full and complete evidence of the freedom of said Hiram Reed.

'In testimony whereof, this act if done at headquarters of the Western Department of the Army of the United States, in the city of St. Louis, State of Missouri, on this 12th day of September, A.D. eighteen hundred and sixty-one, as is evidenced by the Departmental Seal hereto affixed by my order.

'J.C. FREMONT,
'Major-General Commanding.

'Done at the office of the Provost-Marchal, in the city of St. Louis, this 12th day of September, A.D. 1861, at 9 o'clock in the evening of said day.

'Witness my hand and seal of office hereto affixed.

J.MCKINSTRY,
'Brigadier-General, Provost-Marshal.'
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THE PRESIDENTS POLICY CONDEMNED.

It is a pity that Gen. Fremont has been required to suspend his beneficent labors, and no longer pursue a line of action which promised to be more effectual than any other for the suppression of the rebellion.  There were rumors that he was about to resign, but they are not credited by those most likely to reflect his feelings and views.

The press of the North are nearly unanimous in condemning the President's letter, as it will not only take away the penalty of rebellion and leave the war a mere chance for mutual assassins, but it will have a bad effect in Missouri, and that backward steps now will lead to no good results.  The President's course has excited great surprise in St. Louis.  A correspondent of the N. Y. Tribune in that city says:

[[But even?]] rebellion, it seems, cannot destroy the sacredness of slavery.  The proclamation is countermanded at Washington.  The reason given for it is, that it imperilled the Union cause in Kentucky!  It might have hurt somebody's feelings; it might have turned the scale of a loyalty, so doubtful that it was trembling in the balance!  The Government to day is powerless to protect Union men over half the State of Missouri; and its solicitude to save the slaves of rebels, fighting against it, from emancipation, is, to say the least, remarkable.  It is too late, however, as regards two negroes lately belonging to Thomas L. Snead, a satellite of Claib. Jackson, who is serving in the rebel army, for they received deeds of manumission from Gen. Fremont, and left the State, this morning.  One of them, named Frank Lewis, is an intelligent young mulatto, with some education, and has gone to Massachusetts to commence the world anew on his own account.'
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IMPORTANT CORRESPONDENCE.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 1861.

DEAR SIR: I hasten to place in your hands the enclosed correspondence with the President of the United States.  The action which he has taken was firm and decided, and must prove satisfactory to the friends of the Union in Kentucky.

The act of Congress alluded to was a necessity under the circumstances, and was fully justified by the usages of civilized warfare.  The Government has the same right to confiscate slaves engaged in digging trenches or mounting guns for the rebels that is has to confiscate their arms when captured during the progress of the war; but, having confiscated them, Congress goes no further.  Upon this law, the President stands firmly, and in doing so, and in disavowing Gen. Fremont's proclamation, he gives another of the ever multiplying proofs of the war, which is one for national existence, does not seek to extinguish or interfere with slavery as established in the States.  If this institution suffers detriment from the events or issues of the rebellion, the blow will come from those who, under the pretense of defending it, are striking at the life of a Government under whose constitution it has enjoyed complete shelter and protection for three quarters of a century.

The occupation of Columbus by armed Tennesseans, under the leadership of Bishop Polk and Pillow, has excited no surprise here where the unscrupulous character and ultimate aims of the rebel chieftains are well understood.  So long as Kentucky maintained that most illusory of all attitudes--neutrality--and carefully guarded an extended and exposed position of the frontier of the Rebel Government--in a word, so long as she subserved the purposes of the conspirators seeking the overthrow of the Republic, and gave reason to hope that she would finally unite her fortunes with them, she was graciously left alone; so soon, however, as she declared her loyalty to a Government to which she indebted for all her prosperity, and to which she is united by the most solemn ties of duty, of affection, and of interest, her soil is her ruthlessly invaded, under the promptings and guidance of traitors in her bosom; her vote at the polls is now to be reversed by the bayonets of Tennesseeans and the proud old Commonwealth reduced to the condition of a conquered province of that political Pandemonium called the Southern Confederacy.  Those who have read the history and know the spirit of her people can have no fears as to the result of this audacious assault upon her honor and independence.  The Government 
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here will give all possible support to the State at the earliest moment practicable.

Very sincerely yours,     
J. HOLT.
Gen. JAS. SPEED, Frankfort, Ky.
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 12.

DEAR SIR: The late act of Congress providing for the confiscation of the estates of persons in open rebellion against the Government, was as a necessary war measure accepted and fully approved by the loyal men of the country.  It limited the penalty of confiscation of property actually employed in the service of the rebellion with the knowledge and consent of its owners, and instead of emancipating slaves thus employed, left their status to be determined either by the Courts of the United States or by subsequent legislation.  The proclamation, however, of Gen. Fremont, under date of the 30th of August, transcends, and of course violates the law in both these particulars, and declares that the property of rebels, whether used in support of the rebellion or not, shall be confiscated, and if consisting in slaves, that they shall be at once manumitted.  The act of Congress referred to was believed to embody the Conservative policy of your Administration upon this delicate and perplexing question, and hence the loyal men of the Border Slave States have felt relieved of all fears of any attempt on the part of the Government of the United States to liberate suddenly in their midst a population unprepared for freedom and whose presence could not fail to prove a source of painful apprehension if not of terror to the homes and families of all.--You may therefore well judge of the alarm and comdemnation with which the Union loving citizens of Kentucky--that State with whose popular sentiment I am best acquainted--have read this proclamation.

The hope is earnestly indulged by them as it is by myself, that this paper was issued under the pressure of a military necessity which Gen. Fremont believed justified the step, but that in the particulars specified it has not your approbation, and will not be enforced in derogation of law.  The magnitude of the interest at stake and my extreme desire that by no misapprehension of your sentiments or purposes shall the power and fervor of the loyalty of Kentucky be at this moment abated or chilled, must be my apology for the frankness with which I have addressed you, and for the request I venture to make of the expression of your views upon the points of Gen. Fremont's proclamation, on which I have commented.

I have the honor to be very respectfully, your obedient servant, J . HOLT. 
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EXECUTIVE MANSION, Sept. 12, 1861.

Hon. JOSEPH HOLT--Dear Sir:  Yours of this day in relation to the late proclamation of Gen. Fremont is received.  Yesterday I addressed a letter to him by mail, on the same subject, and which is to be made public when he receives it.  I herewith sent you a copy of that letter, which perhaps shows my position as distinctly as any new one I could write.  I will thank you not to make it public until Gen. Fremont shall have had time to receive the original.

Your obedient servant, 
A. LINCOLN.
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--Rev. Matthew Hale Smith, late Chaplain in one of the New York regiments, recently stated in a sermon that the place of John Brown's execution had lately been visited by more than 30,000 Northern soldiers, and that a tree, under the shadow of which his body rested after it was taken down from the gallows, has been literally cut up into souvenirs, to be sent off in letter or retained in memory of the hero of Harper's Ferry.

--Rev. Dr. Cheever has prepared an Address entitled, "The Voice of Christian England for the Emancipation of the Slave."  He delivered this discourse in his own church in New York on Sunday last.

--We are pleased to observe that our old friend Dr. John S. Rock, a colored physician in Boston, has been examined and admitted to practice in all the courts of law in Massachusetts.

--Mr. Hamilton, a Canadian, and a fighting man in our Mexican war, recently offered to our Government a brigade of 5,000 colored men to be raised in Canada West.  Of course the offer was not accepted. 
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Transcription Notes:
2nd Column (The President's Policy Condemned) 2nd Paragraph. The first word of the quote from the NY Tribune correspondent seems to be ripped, exposing words from the next page.