Brigadier General John W. Phelps, of the 1st Vermont Infantry.

"Proclamation of Brigadier-General Phelps to the loyal people of the Southwest.

HEADQUARTERS MIDDLESEX BRIGADE,

Ship Island, Mississippi, December 4, 1861.

To the loyal citizens of the Southwest:

Without any desire of my own, but contrary to my private inclinations, I again find myself among you as a military officer of the Government. A proper respect for my fellow-countrymen renders it not out of place that I should make known to you the motives and principles by which my command will be governed.

We believe that every State that has been admitted as a slave State into the Union since the adoption of the Constitution has been so admitted in direct violation of that Constitution.

We believe that the slave States which existed as such at the adoption of our Constitution are, by becoming parties to that compact, under the highest obligations of honor and morality to abolish slavery.

It is our conviction that monopolies are as destructive as competition is conservative of the principles and vitalities of republican Government; that slave labor is a monopoly which excludes free labor and competition; that slaves are kept in comparative idleness and ease in a fertile half of our arable national territory, while free white laborers, constantly augmenting in numbers from Europe, are confined to the other half and are often distressed by want; that the free labor of the North has more need of expansion into the Southern States, from which it is virtually excluded, than slavery had into Texas in 1846; that free labor is essential to free institutions; that these institutions are naturally better adapted and more congenial to the Anglo-Saxon race than are the despotic tendencies of slavery; and finally, that the dominant political principle of this North American Continent, so long as the Caucasian race continues to flow in upon us from Europe, must needs be that of free institutions and free government; any obstructions to the progress of that form of government in the United States must inevitably be attended with discord and war."

[There's more]

___________________
David Upton