Year: 1861

The following extraordinary proclamation
was issued by Brigadier General Phelps to
the people of the Southwest on taking pos
session Of Ship Island:


HEADQUARTERS MrpDLEsEx BRIGADE, |


Ship Island, Mississippi, Dec. 4, 1861. !
To the Loyal Citizens Of the Southeast:


Without any desire of my own, but con-
trary to my private inclinations, again find
myself among you as a military officer of the
Government. A proper respect for my
fellow -countrymen renders it not out of
place that should make known to you the
motives and principles by which my COM
mand will be governed. We believe that
every State that has been admitted as a
Slave State into the Union, since the adop-
ton of the Constitution, has been so admit
ted in direct violation of that Constitution.
We believe that the Slave States which ex-
listed, as such, at the adoption of our Con-
stitution, are. by becoming parties to that
compact. under the highest obligations of
honor and morality to abolish slavery.


1t is our conviction that monopoles are
as destructive as competition is conservative
of the principles and vitalities of republican
government that slave labor is a monopoly
which excludes free labor and competition
that slaves are kept in comparative idleness
and ease in fertile half of our arabic ma
tional territory, while free white laborers,
constantly augmenting in numbers from
Europe, are confined to the other half, and
are often distressed by want; that the free
| labor of the North has more need of expan-
sion into the Southern States, from which it
is virtually excluded, than slavary had into
Texas in 1916; that free labor is essential
to free institutions; that these institutions
are naturally better adapted and more con-
genial to the Anglo-Saxon race than are the
despotic tendencies of slavery; and, finally,
that the dominant political principle of this
North American continent, so long as the
Caucasian race continues to flow in upon us
from Europe, must needs be that of free in
stitutions and free government. Any OBJ
structions to the progress of that form of
government in the United States must in
evitably be attended with discord and war


Slavery, from the condition of univer-
sally recognized social and moral evil, has
become at length political institution, de-
manding political recognition. 1t demands
ttrights-te the.oxelusian and annihilation of
those rights which are insured to us by the
Constitution and we must choose between
them, which we will have, for We cannot
have both. The Constitution was made for
Freemen-not for Slaves. Slavery. as a
social evil. might for time be tolerated and
endured; but as a political institution it
becomes imperious and exacting, controlling
like dread necessity, all whom circum-
stances have compelled to live under its
sway, hampering their action and thus i'm
peding our national progress. AS politi-
cal institution it could exist as coordinate
part only of two forms of government. viz ::
the despotic and the free !; and it could exist
under free government only where public
sentiment, in the most unrestricted exercise
of robust freedom. leading to extravaganza
and licentiousness, had swayed the thoughts
and habits of the people beyond the bounds
and limits of their own moderate constitu-
tional provisions. It could exist under a
free government only where the people in a
period Of unreasoning extravaganza had per-
mitted popular clamor to overcome public
reason, and had attempted the impossibility
Of setting up, permanently. as political in
stitution, social evil which is opposed to
moral law.


By reverting to the history of the past,
we fad that one Of the most destructive wars
on record, that of the French Revolution,
was originated by the attempt to give poll
tical character to an institution which was
not susceptible of political character. The
Church, by being endowed with political
power, with its converts, its schools, it's i'm
mense landed wealth, it's associations, secret
and open. because the ruling power of the
State, and thus occasioned a war of more
strife and blood-shed, probably. than any
other war which has desolated the earth
Slavery is still less susceptible of political
character than was the Church. 1t is as fit
at this moment for the lumber room of the
past as was in 1898 the monastery the land
ed wealth, the exclusive privilege, etc., Of
the Catholic Church in France. It behooves
US to consider. as self-governing people,
bred, and reared and practiced in the habits
of self-government, whether we cannot,
} whether we ought not to revolutionize slav-
} cry out of existence, without the necessity
of conflict of arms like that of the French
Revolution.


Indeed, we feel assured that the moment
Slavery is abolished, from that moment our
Southern brethren, every ten of whom have
probably seven relatives in the North, would
begin to emerge from hateful delirium -
From that moment, relieved from imaginary
terrors, their days become happy, and their
nights peaceable and free from alarm the
aggregate amount of labor. under the new
stimulus of fair competition, becomes greater
day by day; property rises in value invig-
Grating influences succeed to stagnation,
degeneracy and decay and union, harmony
and peace, to which we have so long been
strangers, become restored, and bind us
again in the bonds of friendship and amity,
as when we first began our national career,
under our glorious Government Of 1889.


Why do the leaders of the rebellion
seek to change the form of your autient