The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1865-01-15
slavery Abolished I'm Tcnnessee-Progrcss
OF Emancipation.

slavery Abolished I'm Tennessee-Progress
OF Emancipation.
A Union State Convention in Tennessee has
unanimously decreed the immediate abolition
of slavery throughout the State and its prohibit
ton for ever; and II was further decreed that
there should be no compensation to slave
owners These propositions are to be sub
mitted for the ratification of the people on the
22d Of February, when, doubtless, the same
popular elements which brought together this
Convention will establish its work as the future
organic law of the Commonwealth.
Missouri was not far behind Maryland in her
revolution Of emancipation, and now Tennessee,
close upon the heels of missouri, has, in moment,
been added to the list Of free States. Such are
the results of that insane enterprise of narrow
sighted, selfconceited and reckless Southern
politicians to break up the Union and found an
independent Southern confederacy by war on
the "corner stone" Of slavery. Thus this trou-
blesome institution, which otherwise might have
survived in this country, under reign Of peace,
for century to come, may be pronounced as
already destroyed. Before the end of five
years from the bombardment of Fort Sumter,
we may hazard the prediction that there will
not be "neither slavery nor involuntary servi-
tude, except in the punishment Of crimes" in
any hole or corner of the United States from
the British possessions to the Mexican boundary.
1t will have ceased TO exist even in the prolific
swamps of South Carolina A constitutional
amendment covering the whole Union as it was
and as it will be, is the thing which will settle
this business.
Such are the fruits Of this momentous and
revolutionizing war, plunged into for the per-
petuation and expansion Of slavery. It seems
to us that it was but the other day that Presi-
dent Lincoln submitted his original plan Of
emancipation to Congress, whereby slavery
would be removed from the country by the year
grace 1900. We have just entered the year 1865,
and we find slavery abolished in West Virginia,
Maryland, Missouri and Tennessee, enveloped
beyond any chance Of escape in Delaware and
Kentucky, overthrow in Arkansas and Louisi-
ana, nearly swept away by the fires ofwar from
old Virginia, and so seriously cut up, crippled
and demoralized in all the rest Of the South that
its absolute extinction is threatened by jeff.
Davis as the last chance for saving o remnant
of his "confederacy."
The work which, through hundred years of
domestic peace we had hardly approached, is
thus substantially accomplished within four
years Of this tremendous and resistless civil
war. Let the friends Of the constitutional
amendment we have indicated wait in patience
. little longer, and we guess that they will yet
find, even in the present House Of Representa-
tives, the two-thirds vote required to carry the
proposition to the several States. Before the
end of the year 1866 we anticipate the complete
extinction of slavery, and reconstruction Of
States and parties upon different principles than
those Of Northern abolitonists and Southern
Gre-eaters. The revolution must finish its
course, and wise men will not stand in it's way