President’s Proclamation

The Richmond Papers and the Proclamation.  The President’s proclamation has fallen like a fire brand in camp and Senate.  The rebel Congress, in debating retaliatory propositions, indulged in much billingsgate.  The newspapers also share in much excitement.  The Richmond Dispatch says the proclamation is nothing more than an authoritative declaration of the truth that the war has all along been an abolition one.  The Enquirer insists that the document “ordains a servile war,”, and abuses the President Lincoln, styling him “a savage”, and recalls the history of negro insurrections in the South to fire the Southern heart against him.

          (Liberator, Oct, 10, 1862, pg3)