dealt in the bodies and souls of men whom they had stolen from their native land.
One Nathaniel Gordon was already in prison in New York, and his trial was fast approaching. It came, and he was convicted of piracy in the United States District Court in the city of New York; the piracy consisting in having fitted out a slaver, and shipped nine hundred Africans at Congo River, with a view to selling them as slaves. The same man had been tried for the same offence before; but the jury failed to agree, and he accordingly escaped punishment for the time. Every effort was made which the ingenuity of able lawyers could invent, or the power of money could enforce, to save this miscreant from the gallows; but all in vain; for President Lincoln utterly refused to interfere in any way whatever, and Gordon was executed on the 7th of February.
This blow appeared to give more offence to the commercial Copperheads than even the emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia; for it struck an effectual blow at a very lucrative branch of commerce, in which the New Yorkers were largely interested. Thus it will be seen that the nation was steadily moving on to the goal of freedom.
In September, 1862, the colored people of Cincinnati, Ohio, organized the "Black Brigade," and rendered eminent service in protecting that city from the raids of John Morgan and other brigands.
On the first of January, 1863, President Lincoln put forth his Emancipation Proclamation, as follows:—
"Whereas, On the 22d day of September, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
