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the Mercury as a necessary means of maintaining national unity on the basis of the old status quo. By this time, however, Owen wrote, the seizure of slave-holders' property in the seceded states was justified as a means of hastening the reestablishment of national unity. Beyond and above all this, he saw freedom and free institutions as the "tendency of the age."^

Owen editorialized in December that the President could issue a general proclamation freeing all slaves without direct reference to any article in the Constitution. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he continued, this was the President's right.^ In a later issue Owen explained that personally he favored freeing the slaves by proclamation in the seceded states only, but not in the so-called border areas. For the latter states he favored "peaceable purchase" as the best means of meeting the problem.* He believed, however, that regardless of Government action the South in time would free its slaves as a means of self preservation.^ Undoubtedly he based this opinion upon the mistaken supposition that, if not freed, the slaves would rebel. To a charge that the abolition of Negro slavery would result in miscegenation he replied briefly that "our race has nothing to fear from contact with the lower races of mankind."^

The defeat of the McClay Negro Testimony Bill, which proposed giving the testimony of a Negro in the California courts the same weight as that of any other person, drew from Owen the most bitter and caustic editorial criticism. He reproached the legislators for their narrow-mindedness and their inference that because Negro blood flowed in the veins of a witness, that witness was incapable of uttering legal truths.'^

The editor saw slavery as one of the principal causes for the economic and sociological backwardness of the lower segments of the white population of the South. Slavery, in his opinion, was harmful to both Negro and slaveholder as well as to those whites who were in close contact with the institution, such as the "poor whites."*

Lincoln, in September 1862, issued a proclamation which stated that all slaves in the seceded states would be declared free on January i, 1863, unless the rebels would lay down their arms before that date. Barely three weeks before the deadline Owen wrote: "If it (the Emancipation Proclamation) fails, the Union fails." He emphasized the fact that he meant the union of both the loyal and the seceded segments of the nation.^

When the proclamation was issued, Owen asserted that the waning Union hopes would be revived and terror struck in the heart of the rebellion. He predicted that slave uprisings would complicate further the Confederate war effort.^^ The latter hope was never realized. As late as A4arch 1863, Owen suggested that the Federal Government utilize freed slaves to bear the brunt of the war against their former masters. It was his opinion that if they were so used the North would find itself "in a speedy and overwhelming victory embraced within the limits of a few weeks."^^ Just how these