Upon a measure so significant and so defended, debate
waxed hot, so that one gentleman proposed that the bill should be sent
back to the committee with instructions not to report it back "until the
cold weather." The irritation and alarm of the Border States rendered
modification necessary unless tact and caution were to be wholly thrown
to the winds. Ultimately, therefore, the offensive title was exchanged
for the simple one of "An Act to secure freedom to all persons within
the Territories of the United States," and the bill, curtailed to accord
with this expression, became law by approval of the President on June
19.
A measure likely in its operation to affect a much greater number of
persons than any other of those laws which have been mentioned was
introduced by Senator Trumbull of Illinois. This was "for the
confiscation of the property of rebels, and giving freedom to the
persons they hold in slavery." It made the slaves of all who had taken
up arms against the United States "forever thereafter free." It came up
for debate on February 25, and its mover defended it as "destroying to a
great extent the source and origin of the rebellion, and the only thing
which had ever seriously threatened the peace of the Union." The men of
the Border States, appalled at so general a manumission, declared that
it would produce intolerable conditions in their States, leading either
to reenslavement or extermination.
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