Cleveland (OH) Daily Herald, "Emancipation Movements," May 20, 1862

      EMANCIPATION MOVEMENTS. 

   The revolution has commenced and must go on. In Delaware, Mr. Fisher has entered the field for re-election to Congress on the emancipation issue. He will be bitterly opposed by the influence of Senators Bayard and Saulsbury and their secession sympathizers, and may be defeated in the present contest. That the emancipation policy of President Lincoln will triumph in Delaware in the end, has almost become one of the "fixed facts." Agitation of the subject has commenced, and discussion will hasten the work of giving freedom to the State. 

   In Maryland, the next election will in all probability turn entirely upon the emancipation question. The Baltimore American, the ablest paper in the State, strikes frequent and ponderous blows on the shackles which weigh down Maryland and came near binding her to the proposed New Africa of the Continent.––It faithfully shows the slaveholders that they have brought the revolution in progress upon themselves, and that if they and their friends further South had remained quite and obeyed the laws, they might have staved off the issue which is now before them. 

   The papers of Maryland have very generally entered upon the discussion of the President's policy, and the slave interest is alarmed. Slave property is fast becoming less and less valuable, and the feeling is evidently growing among owners that it is high time to take into consideration the offer recently made by the government, if they would save a modicum of the interest imperilled. On this subject the Cecil Whig says:

   We advise the people to take the money if they can get it, for their negroes are running away as fast as they can. All of the slaveholders we have heard speak of the project are in favor of it. But the miserable poor devils that never owned a negro, and never will be able to own one if they are surrounded with slavery all the day so their lives, to vary the notes of treason a little, cry out abolition whenever they hear a negro spoken of. 

   The recent stampede of over one thousand from a single county to the free District of Columbia, is a pretty strong pocket emancipation argument. The people of Maryland are also learning that the price of land rises just in proportion as slavery decreases in a neighborhood, and that this rise is far greater than the money value of the slaves. Another convincing fact is demonstrated by practical figures. It is that hired labor is cheaper than slave, and that of late years it has cost more to raise a negro ready for market than he brings. They see, too, that the largest slaveholder in the District of Columbia now gets the same work done by twenty hired men that formerly required ninety slaves to perform. A posted Washington writer says:

   These ideas are producing an emancipation sentiment that will cary all before it, and Maryland will rank among the Free States before two years, if no untoward outside influence is suffered to interfere. 

   In Missouri, a large party has already sprung up, eager to accept emancipation with Government aid, and the leading press of the State, American and German, warmly advocates the benign policy. A political organization has been formed under the title of "The General Emancipation Society of the State of Missouri." The parent society is in St. Louis, auxiliaries are forming over the State, and emancipation meetings are beginning to be held in the heaviest slaveholding counties. One was recently held and largely attended in Hannibal, Marion county, at which the Mayor presided. Hannibal is a Congressional district which had over 30,000 slaves by the census of 1860. Of the meeting the St. Louis Democrat says:

   The men, too, who were foremost in this meeting, themselves slaveholders (several of them at least), seem to represent a growing opinion in a new quarter, in favor of ridding the State of slavery. They are not fanatics of agitators, but sober-minded, practical men, who perceive the real state of the case––that Missouri is in a dilemma, her position repelling all valuable immigration, and that her only mode of extrication is by adopting an emancipation policy. 

   Since the census of 1860 was taken the population has greatly thinned out in Missouri. Ex-Governor Stewart, candidate for Congress in the St. Joseph District, said recently:

   He believed the damnable course of the secessionists had killed the institution dead in Missouri. Slaves South of the Missouri river were very scarce to find, while those north of the river were found hard to hold.––The institution existed here merely in name. It was merely a skeleton in our house. 

   The St. Louis Democrat shows by the census of 1860 that only one in fifty of the population of Missouri has any interest in slavery, and insists that as a political right it is high time the forty-nine were allowed a voice in shaping the institutions of the State.

   The St. Louis Evening News, a conservative journal, favors Mr. Lincoln's proposition, and remarks:

   It is such an emancipation policy as this that is growing in strength and favor every day in this State. Many of our most prominent public men, not only in St. Louis, but in the interior counties regard it with decided approval; and there are thousands of people in what is called the pro-slavery districts who would quietly vote for it at the polls, and rejoice in the day that witnessed its triumph. 

   The German population, numerous and influential, and the German press, all oppose emancipation most heartily; and so sweeping has the movement become that the pro-slavery party feels itself compelled to meet the issue squarely. The St. Louis Republican, the organ of that side, significantly remarks:

   The formation of emancipation societies in Missouri––with the leading society resting in St. Louis––leaves to the people of the State no other alternative than to prepare for the issue thus presented to them. 

   Col. Gratz Brown, formerly editor of the Missouri Democrat, who is a host in the State for any good cause, has taken a manly stand for emancipation. In a long and able letter discussing the subject, he expresses his sentiments in the following emphatic words:

   Like all other great reforms that spring from the popular heart, this too must depend in a great measure upon incessant agitation. I do not hesitate to confess myself an "agitator" in this behalf, and intend to continue an agitator if life be spared me, until Missouri takes her stand amid the free States of the great West. 

   West Virginia is nearly unanimous for a Free State, and the emancipation leaven is beginning to work in Kentucky and Tennessee. Such as the cheering signs of the Times.