Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

49 страница из 156

Concerning the history of emancipation, as early as 1784 Thomas Jefferson sponsored a bill in the Continental Congress that would ban slavery from expanding into the western territories (words that were later incorporated into the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 preventing slavery north of the Ohio River). The First and Second Confiscation Acts passed by Congress in 1861 and 1862 allowed Union Armies to confiscate slaves as prizes of war and banned slavery in all places where the National Government has jurisdiction.⁴

In another example, on August 30, 1861, Major General John C. Frémont, a recent appointee as Commander of the Department of the West, in his attempt to drive the Confederate forces from Missouri, issued a proclamation indicating that the property of secessionists would be confiscated and the slaves of rebels emancipated. By November, Lincoln had revoked Frémont’s Missouri Proclamation and relieved him from his command. Lincoln feared that Frémont’s order would push Missouri (and other border states) to the southern cause.⁵ Finally, after Lincoln’s death the words of Jefferson were finally incorporated into the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.