Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/491

Rh in the violent provisions which were produced by the excited temper of the moment, was considered by Mr. Hill, of Georgia, and others as dignifying the proclamation beyond its real importance. Its author, President Lincoln, intended it as a brutem fulmen, and so Mr. Hill regarded it. He favored the simplest legal action of Congress in taking notice of it. In his opinion, the right existed to declare certain acts as crimes, and the actors as criminals, and a criminal cannot escape on a plea of being a soldier. As a member of the committee and in accordance with the understanding of the committee, he reported another bill, to be printed and considered by the Senate. Mr. Hill s bill, in two short sections, defined the injuries done to unarmed citizens under pretense of waging war, and the inciting of slaves to insurrection, or to abandon their owners, as crimes subjecting the offenders to be treated as criminals, and not as prisoners of war. The presumption would be against soldiers captured on Southern soil after the emancipation proclamation should be put into effective action, that they were there with intent to incite insurrection.

These bills and other resolutions were introduced and printed for consideration, all of which evinced the Southern feeling against any war measures which brought these unusual auxiliaries to the Federal armies against the lesser number of armed men which the South could bring into the field. But as the subject fully developed the extreme retaliation at first proposed grew into disfavor, so that on the last day the question was disposed of satisfactorily by referring the entire matter of retaliation to the discretion of the President.

The sequestration act proposed at this session authorizing the President by proclamation to direct all persons who adhere to the United States government to leave the Confederacy on pain of forfeiture of their property elicited discussion as to the powers of the government in time of war. The bill was opposed on account of the hardships it