The shape which the measure
ultimately took was the enactment of an additional article of war,
whereby all officers in the military service of the United States were
"prohibited from using any portion of the forces under their respective
commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor;"
any officer who should violate the article was to be dismissed from the
service. Again the men from the Border States, rallying their few
Democratic allies from the North to their assistance, made vehement
opposition, and again they were overwhelmed beneath an irresistible
majority: 83 to 42 in the House, 29 to 9 in the Senate. The President
signed the bill on March 13, 1862, and thereafter "nigger hunting" was a
dangerous sport in the Union camps.
On March 24, Mr. Arnold[2] of Illinois introduced a bill ambitiously
purporting "to render freedom national and slavery sectional." It
prohibited slavery wherever Congress could do so, that is to say, in all
Territories, present and future, in all forts, arsenals, dockyards,
etc., in all vessels on the high seas and on all national highways
beyond the territory and jurisdiction of the several States. Both by its
title and by its substance it went to the uttermost edge of the
Constitution and, in the matter of Territories, perhaps beyond that
edge. Mr. Arnold himself supported it with the bold avowal that slavery
was in deadly hostility to the national government, and therefore must
be destroyed.
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