4
manifested by Southern men against Union citizens within
their precincts.
2. In the second place, we contend, if the slave escapes, in
consequence of the war, from his master's control, it is to be
regarded as a voluntary relinquishment of him by the master.
If a Southern slaveholder brings his slave with him to a
Northern state, he voluntarily liberates him. If he is once
within a free state, and is not a fugitive, there is no law which
can hold him in bondage.
So where the treason of the master causes war, the master
voluntarily accepts all the results embraced in his acts ; and
if his hold over his slave is loosened thereby, so that he is
captured, or escapes to the enemy, it is a voluntary surrender
of him to those incidents that work out his freedom. When
peace returns, should the master follow him to a free state, to
reassert his right, the escape, under the circumstances, would
be held as, in effect, a voluntary manumission by the master,
which he would be estopped from denying. It may be con¬
sidered a maxim, that the slaveholder who declares war sub¬
jects himself, of his own free choice, to the loss of all slaves
that may be swept from him in its vortex.
3. Again, the slave, under such circumstances, is liberated,
because all law that could hold him is, for the time being,
practically abrogated.
While secession is paramount in any section of countiy, it
dissolves all connection with this government. Victory, after
a longer or shorter period, may reinstate our power, and revive
the rights we once held, but, in the meantime, there is an
entire interregnum ; and if, during that period, the slave
comes within our limits, he comes where there is no law in
force to bind him ; he is a free man, and no subsequent re¬
vival of any such law can react on him. It might react on
certain rights of property, known as such by public law, but
could not revive to reinslave a person held only by local stat¬
ute, from under which he had escaped while inoperative by
the voluntary action of such local power. No case is known,
after peace has been declared, of the compulsory return of
slaves that escaped to a belligerent in time of war • and a
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