Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/577

Rh States law he was viewed also as property subject to impressment. On account of this relation and because many questions arising under the existing law which authorized contracts and impressments for short terms the President suggested that the government acquire by purchase the entire property in the labor of the slave. &quot;Whenever the entire property," says the message, "in the service of a slave is thus acquired by the government, the question is presented. By what tenure should he be held? Should he be retained in servitude or should his emancipation be held out to him as a reward for faithful service, or should it be granted at once on the promise of such service?&quot; The policy of engaging to liberate the negro on his discharge after service faithfully rendered seemed to the President preferable to that of granting immediate manumission or to that of retaining him in servitude. An enlargement of negro enrollment on this plan to forty thousand in the number of negroes to be used for specified purposes and additions to the duties already performed by them of service as pioneers and engineer laborers was regarded by President Davis as desirable. The President carefully distinguished between employing negroes in defense of the homes where they were reared and the inciting the same negroes to insurrection and murder. He regarded it as justifiable if it became necessary to organize the negroes to repel the invasion of the country in which they lived, and that their freedom would be justly won by such employment of their services. On the other hand the incitement of negroes to insurrection was iniquitous and unworthy of a civilized people.&quot; Such is the judgment of all writers on public law as well as that insisted on by our enemies in all wars prior to that now waged against us. By none have the practices of which they are now guilty been denounced with greater severity than by themselves in the two wars with Great Britain in the last and in the present century; and in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 when enumeration was made