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DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
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"OPEN THY MOUTH FOR THE DUMB, IN THE CAUSE OF ALL SUCH AS ARE APPOINTED TO DESTRUCTION; OPEN THY MOUTH, JUDGE RIGHTEOUSLY, AND PLEAD THE CAUSE OF THE POOR AND NEEDY." - 1[[italics]]st Eccl. xxxi.[[/italics]] 8,9
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VOLUME III. NUMBER V.
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, OCTOBER, 1860.
PRICE - ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM.
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CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
A False Alarm...337
A Peep into Colored Dwellings...337
The Abolition Movement Re-organized...338
Republican Opposition to the Right of Suffrage...339
The Liberty Party Nominations...339
Slaveholding Religion...340
Horse democracy...340
A Political Text-Book for 1860...341
What is the Duty of Radical Abolitionists in the Present Campaign?...342
The Suffrage Question...345
The Distribution of the John Brown Fund...346
The Colored Man's Catechism...346
The Colored People of Philadelphia...247[[347?poss typo in original?]]
Emancipation Day at Geneva...350
A Thrilling and True Story...351
Radical Abolition Convention...352
Terms of Douglass' Monthly...352
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DOUGHASS' MONTHLY.
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A FALSE ALARM.
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After all the gloomy catalogue of incendiarism and murder charged against the Abolitionists and the slaves in Texas; after all the alleged poisoning of wells and the destruction of property; after all the meditated rapes and robberies as a part of a general plan of a slave insurrection among the slaves or their friends in that State, the insurrection turns out to be a false alarm; and whatever disturbances have occurred, have been the work of a class of lawless people, the last in the world to have any sympathy with the slave, the work of a deliberate and skillfully contrived plan to kindle the flames of bloody persecution against a class of persons in Texas known to entertain sentiments opposed to the slave system.  If this last is the true explanation of the alarm, it demonstrates the devilish sagacity of the slaveholders. - They have succeeded, by means of the terror and alarm, to hang, torture, murder and drive out their victims in the most merciless and barbarous manner.  The New Orleans [[italics]]Picayune[[/italics]] thus disposes of the frightful stories about the Texas insurrection:
     'The investigations which have been prosecuted in the disturbed districts of Texas have not developed with any degree of distinctness, the existence of any other plot for ruin than what a few desperate characters, without connection with or hope of help from any other quarter, might have formed.  In some cases the negro population have been demoralized evidently by the insidious promises of these white men, and the work of ruin wrought has doubtless been mainly their work.  But not half of what has been confessed seems to be borne out by later facts.  The strychnine said to have been discovered in the hands of negroes turns out to be very harmless, having no affinity to the deadly poison, which it was supposed to be.  The wells thought to have been poisoned, late accounts declare to be untainted with any deleterious substance.  Texas, like all our frontier States has been the point where desperate men have congregated, and her whole history is full of violence and outrage inflicted by the foes of society.  Aroused by the present danger, the citizens have now taken the most effectual means to bring such offenders to justice, and to break up all combinations for their protection.'
     About one feature of this alarm there is no doubt, and that is the dreadful suffering inflicted on those charged with insurrectionary 
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designs.  One paper stated that between eighty and an hundred negroes were undergoing a secret examination before a committee of [[italics]]gentlemen[[/italics]].  The testimony before these [[italics]]gentlemen[[/italics]] was brought out under the lash.-
Short work was made of white men charged with or suspected of complicity.  The advise of Hangman WISE was acted out to the letter.  Men were hanged without trial or legal proof of guilt.  Slavery makes such barbarism necessary.  [[italics]] Self-preservation [[/italics]] overrides all law.  The slaveholders say, we must protect ourselves, our wives and our little ones, and no man's life must stand in the way of such protection.  Such is the logic - such is the plea of the tyrant - and at this moment no man is safe in Texas who is not a slaveholder.  Every non-slaveholder in the State of Texas, and most of the Southern slave States, is at the mercy of his slaveholding neighbors.  A mischievous slave may profess to have been tampered with; a malignant debtor may craftily drop a suspicion at the counter of a country grog-shop.  It is enough.  It is all over with the unfortunate non-slaveholder. He must leave the country, or he must die.  How long with the non-slaveholding white people of the South stand this monstrous and intolerable despotism?  
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A PEEP INTO COLORED DWELLINGS
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 It has long been the misfortune of the colored 
people in the free States to be viewed 
indiscriminately by the ruling classes among 
whom they live. They are all bound in one
bundle, the ignorant, lazy, thriftless and
unworthy, with the intelligent, industrious, thriving and worthy, and condemned to a common
level of degradation. The good amongst us
have been completely eclipsed by the bad, and
our better classes entirely obscured. While a
part of us are engaged in our various useful
occupations, seeking an honest livelihood---
seen only by the few--- large bodies in our cities,of idle, dissipated and worthless individuals,hang about the corners and dram shops,manufacturing their own ruin and a [[italics]]bad reputation[[/italics]] for the whole race to which they belong.  Prejudice, always blind to what it never wishes
to see, and quick to perceive all it wishes,
sees the whole race in the character of our
worst representatives, while it has no eyes for
our best. This, we say, has been our common
misfortune. [[italics]]'Oh! they are ALL alike' - 'mere animals' - 'can't improve them' - 'better off in slavery' - 'they can never rise' - 'doomed class.'[[/italics]] These, and a thousand other disheartening judgments, are flung from the lips of the ruling classes with as little concern or thought, as the smoker who knocks the ashes from his cigar in a bar room. The old men utter them, the middle aged reiterate them, and the young men perpetuate them.

Once in a while, however, there is shown
by individuals of the ruling classes an
honorable disposition to form an intelligent and
an impartial judgment respecting the Anglo-
African race, which is so generally and hope-
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-lessly consigned to degradation and final extinction.

Such instances have not been frequent, but
they are becoming so. We hail them with
gratitude and hope. [[italics]]'Paint me as I am'[[/italics]] said OLIVER CROMWELL, the stern old Puritan of England. We make the same request to our white fellow-countrymen. We are willing
to stand by the facts, acquitted or condemned,
exalted or abased. While you nothing
extenuate, be sure to set down naught in
malice, and we are bound to be content.

American writers have peculiar difficulties
to overcome in getting at the facts, much
more in getting at the philosophy of the
facts even when they have attained the latter.
The first barrier they meet with is one
of their own building. Consciously or
unconsciously, almost every white man approaches
a colored man with an air of superiority and
condescension. The relation subsisting 
between the races at once shows itself between
the individuals, and each prepares, when
brought together, to soften the points of
antagonism. The white man tries his hand at
being negro, and the negro, to make himself
agreeable, plays the white man. The end is,
each knows the other only superficially.

About the best and most successful attempt at getting an inside view of the free colored people, has been recently made in Philadelphia by a reporter for the [[italics]] Weekly Press [[/italics]] of that city.  Five columns come to us in that journal, filled with the reporter's observations made during a series of visits to the homes and various business places of colored people in Philadelphia.  His portraitures are remarkably correct, and his reflections are eminently just.  We recognize the originals of the pictures he paints, and could name most of the parties to his dialogues.  As an evidence of our appreciation of this effort on the part of the Philadelphia [[italics]] Press [[/italics]] to give the public correct information about the colored citizens of Philadelphia, and at the same time to extend this benefit to our readers, we have transcribed the whole report to the columns of our present monthly.  The account published is all the more significant and gratifying, considering that it is the work of no Abolition or Republican paper, but of a Democratic paper.  Mr. FORNEY, as all know, is a Democrat of the DOUGLAS school, and has no prejudices in favor of Anglo-African blood.
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FUGITIVE SLAVE CASE IN OHIO - On Thursday of last week the U.S. Marshal, accompanied by two deputies and eight or ten men, went to Iberia, with warrants to arrest three slaves, brothers, who ran away from Germantown about four months since.  One negro was captured and taken before the Commissioner, who remanded him to the custody of his former master.  But taking him back was another thing.  A crowd of negroes surrounded the offficer[[typo in original]], tearing off his clothes, cutting off his hair, and attempting to hang him, which we are sorry to say proved unsuccessful.  The kidnappers were then allowed to depart without their prey.
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