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November, 1860. Douglass' Monthly. 365 [[line]] [[three columns]] [[column 1]] views of compensation and of dissolution.--- Perhaps my ignorance or forgetfulness was a fault. But such was the fact, and in this, too, I am not alone. To most of your friends, the announcement of those views, as being [[italics]] your's [[/italics]], was as new as to me. Within my own circle of acquaintances and distant correspondents, I know it to have been the general fact. We were taken by surprise. Mr. Garrison believed what he said, in the use, to be sure, of a sarcastic phrase, that you had made a great change in your views. He was doubtless honest in representing it as a great and sudden change. And you ought not to think him guilty of intentional injustice in the matter. Perhaps it may have been no fault of your's--certainly it could have been no intentional fault--that your views on compensation and on a dissolution of the Union were not more generally and distinctly understood. Yet I think it probable that your general statements failed to convey to others all the details that were present to your own mind. You claim, I think, to have taught the right to dissolution and secession, in your advocacy of the right of annexing Cuba. And, as a general proposition, I admit you did, though I had forgotten the fact, but, on referring, now, to your speech, I cannot see that it goes beyond a general recognition of an abstract right, subject, of course, to the condition of its being righteously and beneficially exercised.* I might, myself, thus assent to it, without admitting the moral or political right so to exercise the general right as to abdicate jurisdiction over the slaveholders and the slaves, while the latter remained slaves. My views of this were expressed in one of the Resolutions I sent to the Syracuse Convention.† I do not say that I have always had in mind that distinction, though I have, for several years. I remember too, when under the influence of that philosophy of despondency that I now repudiate, (and the more earnestly because I have felt as well as seen the effects of if) I once listened to proposals such as you now make. But that dark, dreary hour, with me, has gone by. I walk, today, and must vote, today, in the light of today, not in that darkness of that valley of the shadow of death through which I have passed, and in which so many of my dear old friends and fellow laborers are still groping. You surely remember the earnestness with which, in my [[italics]] Jubilee [[/italics]], in personal conversation with you and by letter, I opposed your Mexico and Cuba Speech, objecting to it in high moral grounds, insomuch that you misunderstood me as impeaching your fidelity to the cause of Freedom. That controversy cost me that support of some of your overzealous friends. I think, therefore, the reality of my present objections to it ought not to be impeached by you, even if I did err on the side of friendship, by continuing to give you my, vote,in the belief entertained by many others of your friends, that your speech was an inadvertancy, an error that you would 'outgrow' or lay aside, or forget,--- or at any rate, forbear to press. Weighty as were my objections to the positions of that speech, they would have been far weighter, had I read them in the light of your present expositions of them, as covering the ground of allowing a Southern secession, with abolition. If the half developed doctrine staggered me in 1854, the clearer revelation of it, in 1860, compels me to stand from under its weight.--- I objected to your ----- [[footnote]] *You said nothing, then, of a dissolution that should leave the slaves in their chains, a dissolution, by the State Governments without the consent of the slaves, a process which your exposition of your proposed annexation of Cuba would forbid, but against which I do not see that your present proposal provides. In your late letter to me, now before me, on which I am now commenting, I find nothing that looks as if you contemplated asking leave of the Slaves, before permitting their masters to secede. If they were to be the umpires between the North and South, or to cast the balance vote, the alternative of submitting to dissolution to prevent bloodshed becomes hard to be understood. †See last week's [[italics]] Principia [[/italics]]. [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] plan for annexing Cuba, so long as slavery existed in this nation, that it was virtually, (not designedly) equivalent to a proposal to open a slave trade with Cuba, and transfer the slaves to this country. The taking of them under our jurisdiction as slaves, I contended, was essentially the same [[italics]] national [[/italics]] act, in the one case, as in the other. And no consent of the slaves to the transfer, would authorize the process, in either form, any more than the entreaty of the slave Ambrose, authorized Dr. Ely to buy him, and hold him as a slave. The application of the principle to the permission of a sesession of the slaveholders, carrying their slaves along with them, is even worse. In effect (not intention) it is equivalent to authorizing a slave trade [[italics]] from [[/italics]] the country letting the slave go out from under our national jurisdiction, as slaves, beyond our future control over them and their masters. The [[italics]] Cuban [[/italics]] slaves, brought [[italics]] under [[/italics]] our jurisdiction, [[italics]] might [[/italics]] possibly be, one day, liberated, in their posterity, by a generation of abolitionists, (though it would doubtless diminish the facilities and defer if not prevent, the day of a peaceful abolition,) or by some other process, as, I think, you hoped.-- But United States Slaves, allowed to go [[italics]] out [[/italics]]] of the present United States, (the Northern half being all then left of it,) would go where Northern abolition could never again get hold of them, to free them. I have now, amply, and as I trust satisfactorily to yourself, vindicated the veritable reality, sincerity, integrity, and importance of my 'Reasons, No. one, two, three and four,' as you designate them, being all that you have discussed, except what pertains to Theology and Religion. I think you will now admit that each of those Reasons had great weight in my mind, aside from any Theological or Religious differences of opinion between us, however widely you may differ from me on those four topics. And you will concede to me my right, because it is my duty, to act in accordance with my own convictions, instead of acting in accordance with yours. Next comes your disposal of what you designate my 'reason No. five.' being the only remaining one of the series---the only one in which I made any mention of any of your distinctive views of [[italics]] Theology and Religion [[/italics]] in my Review of your letter to the Convention. And yet, here again strange to tell, you persist in affirming as before, that what I said was a reason in my mind, for not voting for you, was not a reason in my mind, for thus deciding! You go so far, under this head, as to express your strong assurance that i must be 'self-deceived in thinking' that this was a reason with me! When I had read thus far, I concluded that you would next affirm---as a fair inference from all you had been saying---that, in fact, I had no reason, in my own mind, for not voting for you, and therefore you were assured that I certainly would vote for you, I could not think of any other logical conclusion to which you could arrive.--- After having, to your own satisfaction, analyzed each one of the five items of my bill of objections against voting for you, as they lay in my own mind, and after having reduced each one of them to a cypher in my own mind, your footing up of the sum, I supposed would produce a row of cyphers at the bottom. Judge then, of my surprise, when I found that your footing up of the column, produced precisely the same aggregate that I had set down there, before the several items had been reduced by you, to cyphers. You reached the same conclusion that I had reached in my own mind, namely, that I was not going to vote for you. Here was a novel process in logic, that puzzled me. I was not long in discovering how you had effected it. In the place of my five cyphers as you had read them, you had put down 'THE ONE REASON'---NOT TO BE FOUND IN MY REVIEW OF YOUR SYRACUSE LETTER---but one which you had kindly manufactured for me, and put up there, just in the nick of time, to make up my original sum for me, and save me the necessity of voting for you. It was very considerate [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] in you, certainly, especially as your ingenuity in my behalf, lost you a vote, For how could I have declined voting for you, without a single reason against doing so, in my own mind? How did you reduce that 'Reason No. Five.' to a cypher? How did you prove that I had no reason in my own mind against voting for you, on this account, as I had alleged in my Review? You make certain extracts from you Syracuse letter, much the same as I had also made from it, in my Review, and having made them, you exclaimed, 'Here we have all there is in Reason No. Five. Surely, surely then you must be deceived,'&c. Not quite so fast, my good friend. With your leave, this is not all there is in 'Reason No. Five,'---no, nor any portion of it, if you dissever it,---as you do---from its proper connection in my Review. Look at that Review again, and see your huge mistake. I intimated plainly enough, that the letter, as well as the resolutions of the Convention that accompanied it, in the publication of the proceedings, might be so construed that I could 'readily agree with the sentiment.' But I proceeded to tell why, as coming from you, I was obliged to construe your letter in the light of some portions of your famous third 'Discourse on the Religion of Reason,' a paragraph of which I proceeded to copy.--- All this you wholly ignore, and give the extracts from your Syracuse letter alone, as containing 'all there is in Reason No. Five.'--- You do not disclaim the identity of meaning, supposed by me in the two documents, yet virtually, you deny that I could, in my own mind, have construed the latter utterance in the light of the former one. Or rather, you ignore the existence of the former one, as an element in 'Reason No. Five' altogether, and even the existence of the paragraph, quoted by me from your 'Religion of Reason.' I cannot dwell longer on this matter, in this letter, but must reserve it for another. I do not like to close, however, without noticing, briefly, some other things contained in your letter. 1. Yoy say you deserve the more credit and honor, not the less, for laboring and giving, in the enterprise of political action, while in a state of discouragement. I willingly accord to you all that can fairly be claimed by or for you, on that score. I should not grudge to award you all you have claimed or even more. I have admired, and do still admire, your strength in the depths of despondency. I have intended to say nothing, and I think I have said nothing in disparagement of your labors and appropriations. I should be the last of your friends to see injustice done you in this matter. But that does not do away the mischiefs of your discouragement, nor prove the wisdom of your appointment to a fact, that, of necessity, diffuses your discouragement, through your letters and speeches throughout all the ranks of those who regard you their leader. What would you say of an invading army, that should elect as their General, one who had just said to them. 'Fellow soldiers! You see the enemy's fortress yonder. I have little or no hope that you can ever get possession of it. I would not advise you to lay in a large store of amunition. But I shall not be sorry to learn that you do not partake of my discouragement. I shall be ready to co-operate with you upon any scale of effort that you my adopt.' Would you think that such an army was, or could be much in advance of their chosen leader, in their expectations? Or that it could be in a position to improve any real advantages of its position? 2. You say of me, that my lips and pen have long been employed in soliciting votes for you. True. But I have met with very little success in my labors. And wherefore? The hundreds upon hundreds of responses to my appeals verbally and by letter, from every part of the Free States, tell the reason.-- 'Gerrit Smith has little or no faith in the success of your Liberty Party, and why should we have? If we can't get what we want, we must take up with what we can get.' 'Gerrit Smith speaks well of Van Buren.' 'Ger- [[/column 3]]
