~\ ADDEESS BY John A. Dix BEFORE THE >0ttet2 0f % ^rmi) of f|e |p0tamatt AT PHILADELPHIA, On the 6th of June, 1&76. NEW YORK; JOHN F. TROW & SON, PRINTERS AND BOOKBINDERS, 205-213 EAST TWELFTH STREET. 1876. w Mr. President and Fellow-Soldiers of the Army of the Potomac: It is with no ordinary feeling of gratifi cation that I appear before you, though the pleasure of our meeting would have been greatly enhanced by the presence of the heroic commander by whom you were led, and whose distinguished military services have been crowned by the highest civic honors of the Repub lic. It would be more gratifying to me still if I were speaking to those, whose toils and triumphs it had been my good fortune to share. And yet this feeling on my part is not without a trace of alloy. I have under taken to address you on a very short notice, and while pressed by urgent avocations. I have had no time to go forth into the field of oratory and gather its flowers to give color and fragrance to your reunion. I must therefore throw myself on your indulgence, and ask you to accept a familiar discourse instead of the oration, which you had a right to expect. But there is in the surrounding circumstances an inspiration, which amply atones for its absence in the elocution of the speaker. You are assembled in the bosom of a city vast in extent and distinguished for its intelligence, its industry, and its wealth; and within its narrow precincts a hundred years ago was written that immortal paper which declared the American Colonies free and independent States, and proclaimed to the world as a fundamental truth the right of the people to a voice in the administration of their political systems. The century, which commenced with this practical advance in the philosophy of human government, terminates in the assertion and application to our own system of the great principle, of universal emancipation. These two transcendent tributes the cen tury brings to the national ovation about to be celebrated here. Well may the American heart be stirred, as it is, to its inmost depths by these achievements in the cause of truth, justice, and humanity ! Here, of all places on this continent — here, where the nation had its birth — it is natural that their influence should be most in tensely felt. Everything around us, if I may be allowed the expression, is redolent of the Centennial. It is in the air we breathe. It meets us in our daily Avalks. It per vades the dominion of our thoughts ; and the old associ ations seem to speak to us in the voices of the past, which were raised against the assumptions of arbitrary power with an unconquerable determination to cast them off for ever. It is in regard to the last of the two achievements of the century to which I have referred — the principle of universal emancipation — that I propose first of all to ad dress you. In the progress of our late unhappy civil war it became identified with the preservation of the Union ; and, as I shall more distinctly indicate to you before I sit down, it was for the maintenance of the principle that you toiled and fought and bled. Next to the Declara- tion of Independence it will be regarded in all future time as the great political event of the century on this continent, while the internal conflict, in which it origin ated, vast as were its proportions, will only be remem bered as one of those unsuccessful attempts to overthrow a government, in which history abounds. Kings have been deposed ; thrones have been overturned ; states have been combined, dissevered, dismembered, ob literated; rebellions have been set on foot and suc ceeded or failed ; but the emancipation of four mil lions of slaves, and their elevation to the rank of freemen by a single act of executive authority, stands alone in the annals of our race. I have thought it not unprofitable or inappropriate at this juncture to advert to the source to which this memorable event is to be traced, connected as they are historically : and especially as "the discussion may lead to the correction of some prevalent misapprehensions concerning the part we of the North have borne in the progress of the national movement in this direction. The reference will be as brief as possi ble, but it will take us back beyond the commencement of the century which is drawing to a close. I approach this subject in no sectional spirit. It belongs to the his tory of the country ; it is a part of the res gesta of the century — to be discussed without passion or prejudice. The position may seem questionable at first glance, but it is nevertheless true, that the aversion to slavery among us received a strong impulse from the early oppo sition of Virginia and her long continued remonstrances against it. She protested against the introduction of slaves into her territory during her colonial dependence, and she petitioned the British King to put an end to it. The protests of her distinguished men against human slavery as unjust, oppressive, and demoralizing, were able, earnest, and persevering; and it must be confessed that we were not unwilling or backward pupils in a school, of which the teachings were in harmony with our own in stincts and convictions. Among the most conspicuous of the protestants was Thomas Jefferson. In the origi nal draught of the Declaration, of Independence the King of Great Britain was denounced, in enumerating his offences against the American Colonies, in this indignant language : " Determined to keep 'open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his ne gative by suppressing every legislative attempt to restrain this execrable commerce." This clause was stricken out for reasons explained in one of Mr. Jefferson's letters, and is not contained in the Declaration as finally adopted. In April, 178 4, the very year following the termination of the war of the Revolution, and only three months after the ratification of the definitive treaty of peace, Mr. Jeffer son, as chairman of a committee, introduced into the Congress of the Confederation a plan for the temporary government of the Western territories, including the memorable clause, which forms a part of the ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude. This clause failed to obtain the approval of Congress at that session; but it was modified and renewed in 1785 by Rufus King, then of Massachusetts; again failed ; and was renewed a second time by a committee of which Edward Carrington of Virginia was chair man, as a part of the ordinance of 1787, and was adopted by a vote of all the States present, including South Carolina and Georgia. To the anti-slavery clause of this ordinance Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan owe their existence as free States; and, as was naturally to be expected, the authorship of a mea sure of such magnitude and so propitious in its in fluence upon the character and institutions of the country was claimed for several of those who were instrumental in procuring its adoption. It was claimed at one time for Mr. King, by his friends ; and in a speech made by Mr. Webster on the Public Lands in ;the Senate of the United States, on the 30th of January 1830, alluding to the ordinance of 1787, he said: "That instrument was drawn by Nathan Dane, then and now a citizen of Massachusetts." "It fixed forever the character of the population in the vast regions north west of the Ohio 'by excluding \themyrrom]involuntary servitude." Mr. Dane was a leadjng member of the committee of which Mr". Carrington was chairman, and there is no reason to doubt his statement in the supplement to his Abridge ment of American Law that he drew the ordinance. The subject had been three years under discussion in Congress, and it is probable that the instrument bore the impress of many minds. Indeed, Mr. Dane indicates the portions, of Mr. Jefferson's plan which he incorpor ated into the ordinance. Nineteen years after Mr. Webster spoke, on an exam ination of the archives in the State Department at Wash ington during the debates in the Senate, in which I took part, in regard to the extension of slavery to the territories acquired from Mexico, I discovered the original draught of Mr. Jefferson's plan, to which I have referred. It was in his clear, careful handwriting. It provided for dividing all the territory ceded or to be ceded to the United States into separate States, commencing at the 31st parallel of latitude and extending northwardly to the 47th. It comprehended all territory, if any should be afterwards ceded, from the southern boundary of Georgia to the Lake of the Woods. It made no distinc tion between the North and the South. It designated the outlines or external boundaries of ten States in the territory north-west of the Ohio River, and prescribed their names. Among them were Sylvania, Chersonesus, Polypotamia, and Mesopotamia — a nomenclature par taking of the peculiar genius of the author, and estab lishing of itself, if any other proof than his hand writing were needed, the origin and authenticity of the instrument. The anti-slavery clause which it contained was this : " After the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." I will now reacl to you the sixth article of the ordi nance of 1787, as it was finally passed : " There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servi tude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punish ment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," — -with a proviso requiring the surrender of fugitive slaves. There was no such proviso in Mr. Jeffer son's plan. The other differences between the two instruments were these : Mr. Jefferson's plan was pros pective, to take effect in 1800. The ordinance went into operation on its adoption. Mr. Jefferson's would have excluded slavery from all territory thereafter ceded. The ordinance excluded it from the territory then ceded north-west of the Ohio River. Such were the origin and the character of this memora ble act of legislation. In the language of Mr. Webster, " It impressed on the soil itself, while yet it was a wilder ness, an incapacity to bear up any other than free men;" and I need not say that it was a source of sincere grati fication to me to be able to produce in the Senate of the United States, during a contest for the extension of slavery to the free territories acquired from Mexico, the incontrovertible evidence that Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was also the author of a plan of government for our territories, which repudiated slavery without regard to parallels of latitude. Let us now take another step in the progress of the movement we are reviewing. While the Congress of the 10 Confederation was framing the ordinance of 1787 in New York, the Federal Convention was framing the Constitution of the United States in this city. One of the great measures of the latter was the abolition of the slave trade. Virginia was one of the foremost in support of the measure. James Madison, George Mason, and Gov. Randolph advocated with distinguished ability its immediate suppression ; but from the fear that South Carolina and Georgia might be deterred by such a measure from becoming members of the Union, it was allowed to continue until 1808, when it was prohibited by Act of Congress. I *to not doubt that Virginia will at a future day regard with satisfaction and pride the part her revolu tionary sages bore in this triumph of freedom and humanity. But not yet : there are wounds to be healed ; losses to be repaired ; prosperities to be regained ; asperi ties in word and deed to be forgotten ; irritation to be assuaged by the soothing influences of time and friendly association. I am sure there is no one within the- sound of my voice who will not hail with gladness the day when these results shall have been accomplished, and when every trace of past alienation and unkindness shall be obliterated. I pass by the exasperated discussion in 1820 which ended in the Missouri Compromise, when slavery had in its growth become so interwoven with the frame-work of society in the South that those, who had been most con spicuous in former efforts to suppress it, even depre- 11 cated its discussion, from the apprehension that it could not be extirpated without overwhelming with destruction the communities in which it had taken root. I pass by the angry debates in Congress, nearly thirty vears ago, on the question of allowing slaves to be car ried into the territories acquired from Mexico, in which involuntary servitude had been abolished by the funda mental law — debates in which Jefferson Davis and others denied the constitutional validity of the Missouri Com promise, and insisted on the right to go with their slaves into any territory of the United States, even if it were at the north pole, and hold them in servitude there. I pass by all the intermediate stages of the movement, from the era of the anti-slavery ordinance of 1787 to the recent and more familiar era of Abraham Lincoln. I cannot name him without expressing my sincere admira tion of his justice and benignity, and my profound re spect for his strong common sense, his comprehensive views of government, and his almost unerring judgment. Indeed, in the presence of the great men of the country, with whom he had the wisdom to surround himself — ¦ Seward, Chase, and Stanton among the dead, and others among the living — he lost nothing by comparison in the chief essentials of statesmanship. It is my firm convic tion that there was no right, civil or political, individual or municipal, which he would not, under any circum stances, have held sacred ; there was no right which he did not maintain, so far as depended on him, until for feited by the laws of war. No one could have upheld 12 more firmly or faithfully the compromises of the Consti tution against a prevalent tendency in some quarters to disregard them, even though by so doing he was keeping faith with those who were in open warfare against the government. Let me give- you some examples of this conscientiousness on his part. On the 31st of August, 1861, Gen. Fremont issued a proclamation declaring martial law in Missouri, and con fiscating to the public use the property of those who had taken part against the United States in the field, adding in the same clause : " And their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." On the 2d of September ensuing, two days later, Mr. Lincoln wrote Gen. Fremont a letter disapproving of the proclamation in several par ticulars, including those I have mentioned, and asking him to modify it. During the summer and autumn of 1861 a considerable Confederate force, chiefly militia, had been gathered in Accomac and Northampton Counties, on the eastern shore of Virginia, formerly Governor Wise's congress district. I was then in command of a military' Department embracing that district, with my head-quarters at Balti more, and I sent a strong force to expel the Confed erate troops from it. A few days before the advance I issued a proclamation, and caused it to be circulated in those counties, summoning the troops embodied there to surrender or disperse, and promising immunity to the inhabitants if they submitted without resistance to the authority of the government. I will read to you the 13 most important clause of this proclamation : " Special directions have been given not to interfere with the con dition of any persons held to domestic service ; and in order that there may be no ground for mistake, or pre text for misrepresentation, commanders of regiments and corps have been instructed not to permit any such persons to come within their lines." On the publica tion of this proclamation, I received a letter from Mr. Seward approving of it. It had the desired effect. The hostile camp was broken up : the militia returning to their homes, and the small body of regulars crossing Chesapeake Bay and joining the Confederate forces at Richmond. On the 9th of May, 1862, General Hunter issued, at Hilton Head, South Carolina, a proclamation, of which I will read an extract : " The persons in these three States — Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina -hereto fore held as slaves, are, therefore, declared forever free." On the 1 9th of the same month the President issued a proclamation declaring General Hunter's "altogether void ;" and further, that no commander had authority to declare slaves free in any State ; and that whether it was competent for him, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether at any time, or in any case, it should become a necessity indispensable to the main tenance of the Government to exercise such supposed power, were questions which, under his responsibility, he reserved to himself. 14 I have adduced these instances of the forbearance as well as the good faith of Mr. Lincoln to show that he did not resort to the extreme measure of emancipat ing the slave population of the States in arms against the government, while there was a hope that they would return to their allegiance on any just terms, and until it was manifest that the issue could only be decided by the arbitrament of war. This forbearance was the more striking from the well-known fact that no man was more thoroughly imbued with the spirit of freedom, or more firmly convinced that human slavery was unjust, discreditable to us as a free people, and de moralizing in its influences on society and government. On the 22nd September, 1862, Mr. Lincoln issued a prospective proclamation, declaring free all persons held in slavery within any State, the people whereof should be in rebellion on the succeeding first of January. Accordingly, the condition of things being unchanged, Mr. Lincoln, on the first day of January, 1863,' issued his Emancipation Proclamation, placing it on the ground of military necessity, warranted by the Constitution, and invoking for it, to use his own language,' " the con siderate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God." Some of those who were most earnest in the support of the governmeut doubted its expediency, and feared its consequences,— a fact well known to him, but which did not cause him to hesitate in carrying out his well- considered purpose. 15 Let me now revert to an allusion at an early stage of my remarks. This great measure — momentous in its consequences to us, to future generations, and to the course of civili zation throughout the world; — introduced a new ele ment into the conflict. You were no longer fighting for the preservation of the Union alone : you were fighting also for the vindication of the principle of universal freedom ; for if your toils, your marches, your vigils, your combats, your sufferings had been in vain, the Union would have been dissolved, slavery would have been re-established, and your two-fold triumph would have been lost to the country and to mankind. Fourteen days after the proclamation was issued, Mr. Lincoln addressed to me a letter which I will read to you. It was marked private and confidential, and has been preserved among my private papers until this hour. But the events of that day belong to the history of the past, and I violate no confidence in giving it to you who so gallantly sustained him in maintaining the integrity of the Union. It discloses the fact which I have already stated, that his proclamation did not command the undivided approbation of all who were acting with him in upholding the public authority. But I give it to you also" because it touches another ques tion on which I desire to say a few words— the employ ment of colored troops — in regard to which there was also at that time a difference of opinion. I think you will agree with me that the style of this 16 letter, brief as it is, is characteristic of the man — of his clear insight into his subject and his singular power of expressing his thoughts in the most concise and most effective language. Read it carefully when you shall see it in print, and then say whether there is a word wantino-, or whether there is a word which can be omit- ted without impairing its perspicuity and force. "Private and Confidential. "Executive Mansion, Washington, January 14, 1863. " Major General Dix : " My dear Sir : — The proclamation has been issued. We were not succeeding — at best were progressing too slowly — without it. 'Now that we have it, and bear all the disadvantage of it (as we do bear some in certain quar ters) we must also take some benefit from it, if practicable. I, therefore, will thank you for your well-considered opinion whether Fortress Monroe and Yorktown, one or both, could not, in whole or in part, be garrisoned by col ored troops, leaving the white forces now necessary at those places to be employed elsewhere. " Yours very truly, " A. Lincoln." In my reply, which was written on the following day, I stated that I regarded Fortress Monroe under any cir cumstances, and especially in view of the civil war in progress, as second in importance to no other in the Union ; that it was the key to the Chesapeake Bay and the great navigable rivers entering into it ; that the garri son necessary for it in time of war had always been esti mated at 2,450 men ; that I had only one regiment with 693 officers and men fit for duty ; that the time of the 17 regiment was about to expire ; that it was one of the best in the service, and that it shoidd be replaced by an other of the same description. In regard to Yorktown, of which the proper garrison was 4,000 men, I stated that one-half might be colored troops, and that there was no place where they could be used with less objec tion. My letter entered into details unnecessary to be stated here. I only touch the two points of Mr. Lin coln's inquiry. The expediency of employing colored troops was very seriously questioned on political grounds. Their effi ciency was also doubted ; but the doubt was of very brief duration. The 54th Mass. Regiment was one of the first colored corps in the field ; it was recruited, organ ized, and commanded by Col. Robert G. Shaw, one of the most respected and respectable of the young men of Boston. He had just been married, and against all the persuasive influences of domestic happiness and ease, had taken the field as a captain in a Mass. regiment. At the earnest solicitation of Gov. Andrew he laid aside all personal considerations ; and against a somewhat exten sive prejudice, he undertook the novel service required of him, and joined the army in the South, in June, 1863, with a regiment raised from among the colored freemen of New England, equal in all physical qualities to the best troops in service. Their courage and constancy were speedily tested. They were led by their gallant commander in the unsuccessful assault upon Fort Wagner, one of the most desperate enterprises of the war ; and 18 in the midst of the most fearful havoc, with half of their number killed and wounded, they stood firm until the retreat was ordered, and then fell back deliberately and without confusion in their ranks. Their heroic leader was shot after having gained the parapet of the fort, and fell inside of it with a large number of his men. He had finished the work he undertook to perform. He had vindicated his followers and their race from all doubt of their fearlessness and their capacity for the most audacious and fiery encounters of war. He gave to the country the assurance we all feel to-day that in case of danger from external violence (God forbid that we shall ever again be rent by internal strife !) we have an additional fund of patriotism and intrepidity to draw upon in the four millions raised by Mr. Lincoln to the rank of freemen. The only tribute it is in our power to pay to him, who put himself forward as their champion is the respect we cherish for his memory. The leader in a cause is not unfrequently its first victim, and however much such a result is to be deplored, it is usually accom panied by the consolatory reflection that the triumph of a principle is promoted by his martyrdom. Fellow-soldiers of the past, and fellow-citizens of the present and the future, it is one of the necessities of your condition as members of a political system, in the admin istration of which every man has a voice, that your work is never finished ; that your liberties can only be made secure at the price of everlasting vigilance ; that each re volving year brings with it some new danger to be averted 19 or some wrong to be redressed. Under a federal govern ment like ours, which is sovereign only for the purposes expressed in the fundamental compact, the harmonious co-operation of the States is almost indispensable to the suc cessful action of the system in the present and its perpetuity in the future. It is nearly as indispensable that the har mony should be social as well as political. For this rea son no effort should be left untried to re-establish the amicable relations which existed before the war. There is nothing in the past which should be an obstacle to the restoration of kind feeling. There may be individ ual exceptions, but as a general proposition it is true that no intestine conflict was ever carried on with so little violation of the laws of war and so little outrage to the dictates of humanity ; and since its close the life of no combatant has been sacrificed on the altar of re venge. It remains only to forget that we have ever been alienated ; or if the memory cannot be thus constrained, we may act as though the past were forgotten. I know that such an appeal need not be addressed to you. Those who have been confronted in deadly combat are always the first to lay aside their animosities when the wager of battle has been tried and fairly decided. If at the North there are some who would rake open the ex piring embers of a strife, of which the flames have been burnt out and extinguished : if at the South there are those who persevere in fomenting the ancient bitter ness, and insist that their prosperity depends on the re storation of a social order on which the hand of Provi- 20 dence has set the seal of death ; let us be thankful that these are only sporadic cases of a moral distemper, from which the great body of the people are exempt. Let us begin the century which is about to commence as our fathers began that which is about to close — in a spirit of mutual forbearance, with no rivalry but that of promoting our common prosperity, in thankfulness for our rescue from the dangers we have passed, and in trustfulness in the Sovereign- Rulei; of the Universe for our deliverance from those which lie before us. If we were to consider our progress during the last hun dred years in physical improvements and in all the elements of national prosperity as the measure of our advancement in the hundred years that are to come, the imagination would be inadequate to the concep tion. On the 4th of July, 1776, the journey from Bos ton to this city, 330 miles, was usually the work of ten days. On the 4th of July, 1876, a railroad train can leave New York, on the Atlantic, and reach San Fran cisco, on the Pacific, 3,300 miles, in eighty -four hours, a feat which has been already accomplished. A hundred years ago it was the work of months to convey intelligence from ocean to ocean. Now a mes sage by telegraph leaving here at the rising of the sun will outrun him in his course, and reach the Paci fic before his rays have lighted up the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. At the beginning of the century we were a feeble community struggling for existence and scarcely known to the Great Powers of the Eastern 21 Hemisphere. We now stand before the world as their equal ; and all the nations of the earth come as contribu tors to the innumerable products of industry, science, art, taste, and genius which have their exposition here. This is the priceless inheritance which, as soldiers, you helped to maintain against the open shock of war. It devolves on you now by a conscientious and enlightened discharge of your duty as good citizens to resist the insidious dan gers of peace — the inroads of extravagance, faithlessness and corruption in private and public life. And now, fellow-soldiers, it is time for me to take my leave of you. In a few hours more you will take leave of each other, to meet again, we hope and trust, at the close of another year. But it is not in the order of our existence that another sun shall see you all re-assem bled. In your association, as in all others of human origin, there will be at your next annual meeting vacant seats, never again to be filled. Life is ever like that fabled bridge of Mirza which symbolizes it — bearing up the thronging multitudes who are pressing on to cross the stream, until they gradually fall by the way side, or, when the last broken and crumbling arches are reached, sink one by one into the waters beneath. But it is one of the properties audi perhaps one of the rewards of toils and sufferings like yours, that they seem to impart to those who pass through them with unbroken constitutions, a new tenacity of life. I part with you, then, in the hope and with the prayer that there may be reserved for you many more reunions 22 like this, though it be with diminished numbers ; that year succeeding year, far in the future, may bring you again together to join your gratulating hands, to freshen the remembrance of past associations, and to rejoice in the continued prosperity of the Union which you contri buted, by your courage, your constancy, and your uncon querable endurance, to save; endowing your country with a new tenure of life, and giving hope and confi dence to the friends of freedom throughout the civilized world. /