The Confederate authorities made a great outcry over the new departure.
They could not fail to see the immense effect it was destined to have in
the severe military struggle, and their prejudice of generations greatly
intensified the gloomy apprehensions they no doubt honestly felt. Yet
even allowing for this, the exaggerated language in which they described
it became absolutely ludicrous. The Confederate War Department early
declared Generals Hunter and Phelps to be outlaws, because they were
drilling and organizing slaves; and the sensational proclamation issued
by Jefferson Davis on December 23, 1862, ordered that Butler and his
commissioned officers, "robbers and criminals deserving death, ... be,
whenever captured, reserved for execution."
Mr. Lincoln's final emancipation proclamation excited them to a still
higher frenzy. The Confederate Senate talked of raising the black flag;
Jefferson Davis's message stigmatized it as "the most execrable measure
recorded in the history of guilty man"; and a joint resolution of the
Confederate Congress prescribed that white officers of negro Union
soldiers "shall, if captured, be put to death, or be otherwise punished
at the discretion of the court." The general orders of some subordinate
Confederate commanders repeated or rivaled such denunciations and
threats.
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