Whitelaw Reid: “Our Proclamation of Emancipation bore wider blessings than they knew who signed it.”

Congress is supreme, and, for all the purposes of this department, has all the powers of the people of the United States, except such as have been expressly or by implication reserved in the prohibitions of the Constitution.

Let those who invoke the Supreme Law of the land learn and bow to it.

The question about the slaves being self-supporting, is a question no longer.

But proofs were not wanting of the spirit in which, to the very last, the conflict against the Government had been waged.